You are asking for the holy grail: aligning individual objectives with corporate objectives. The company that manages to do that will eat the world. It would be

You are asking for the holy grail: aligning individual objectives with corporate objectives. The company that manages to do that will eat the world. It would be bigger than nuclear fussion or solving P vs NP. The first thing to ask is how you measure recognition. Because there are plenty of people that get recognition but not a lot of pay. What you get paid depends more on what other companies are willing to pay you. The second thing to ask is by whom do you want to get recognized? It's much easier to get recognition by your peers: they spend much more time with you and have the technical knowledge to appreciate your work, and get impacted by your work too. Getting recognized by your peers is important, mostly for your own happiness and sometimes it also permeates upwards (just a little). I bet that you mean: getting recognized by your manager and getting more pay. Regarding the pay: statistically your are not going to accumulate raises every year. It's unmaintainable. Of course some people manage to do that but you need to be extremely lucky and work very hard. Switching companies is the best way of getting raises. Regarding getting recognized by your manager: that depends a lot on your manager. Do you give your manager recognition? If the answer is no then it may be because you know little about her work or maybe she is a horrible manager. In the later case screw everything and switch companies, don't bother, run, run fast, life is too short and the job market is great. In the first case communicate more with your manager and understand her problems. Solving her problems is the best way to get recognition. Even trying to solve them and failing will get you recognition. If you are doing something that you think is impressive communicate with your manager and explain why is important. So to summarize my advice is: align your objectives with your manager and super-manager objectives.