Hard Work vs. Personality

When did society start valuing what we consider to be people skills over honesty and hard work? For the 10 plus years that I worked I could never understand why I was never considered successful. I worked hard and knew my job better than 95 percent of the people. Now that I am a stay at home mom I am watching my husband go through the same thing. We have been given many books and websites to look at to try to "better" ourselves and make us more successful, but there is one thing that I have found to be true with success today. You have to be dishonest or have a great personality. One article I read about whatever number of laws of success had my jaw on the floor. It never said to work hard and be good at what you do. It said to take credit for the work of weaker people and allow your boss to think he is smarter than you and take the credit for your work (which was actually someone else's). All the while, stabbing everyone in the back and never lifting a finger. I guess it must be true that 90 percent of the people do 10 percent of the work and 10 percent of the people do 90 percent of the work. Another article I read said that you need to get people to like you in order to be successful. It also never mentioned hard work. My entire career I hated those people who spent all their work time schmoozing while I was working. I never understood how that worked. I guess if you stroke someone's ego enough then they will never look under the carpet to see the lies and deceit. I guess a person in this day in age has to make a choice, find a way to accept these unwritten rules of society and follow suit, or be a lowly working and be happy with doing all the work and never getting the respect you deserve. Now, there are those few individuals that honestly work hard and have great people skills, but for the rest of us we must chose.