I do not see myself in direct competition with them
It's not a competition to secure the chain. While there is clearly competition for higher rank, it's a cooperative effort to secure Hive, and I am aware that Marky, for example, whose chops are significant, has provided node monitoring software he provides to witnesses. In that cooperative effort interpersonal chops matter as much as technical prowess, because enabling all nodes to provide the best security depends on mutual effort. No witness can do it alone. If they tried they'd create a fork.
I will shortly be using the very same software that Marky has available on github to monitor my own node. Their help was instrumental in me getting the node up and running.