How you view competitors

So I was thinking about this the other day. Many of the people who work for competitors in my industry/region I actually have a solid professional /acquaintance type of relationship with, some of whom are actually good friends at this point.

When you are calling on the same customers and attending the same events together for years it was kind of inevitable. At first I was admittedly standoffish (like who is this person trying to take my sales??), especially pre-pandemic when you could run into them at the customers office at the same time, and this would happen frequently. But now there is a lot of comradery built up, we talk about each others families even, it is truly a friendship at some levels, especially the ones who have good reputations (you for sure hear the same names over and over again, and clients are not shy about giving opinions typically).

Frankly in our industry and market, there is a lot of cannibalization going on too. I know many of the people who work for competitors because I use to work with them at one point. And there is always the chance a competitor today could end up working with me in the future. It is the same with customers, many of them jump around to different contractors and engineers over the years.

I was wondering, is it like this in the tech space?

Do you have relationships with your competitors? know who they are individually? Run into them often? Or is it always an 'us VS them' approach regardless? If you do run into them are you professional and courteous, chat them up? Or do you immediately challenge them to Mortal Kombat?

How big of a deal is individual and company reputation in your various industries?