Depending on the circumstances, individual contributors that are good enough can often set their own personal requirements and get them. Setting your own expec

Depending on the circumstances, individual contributors that are good enough can often set their own personal requirements and get them. Setting your own expectations and requiring that they be met isn't playing politics, it's just setting the terms of your employment that you require from your employer. When working for others I'd rather flog myself and deliver bottom line excellence than have to cow tow to some low level managers whims or plans for promotion. I remember a 10x engineer friend of mine (a better engineer and generally smarter person than myself) who when he was younger, on the first day of a new job was gotten onto by some HR exec about how he used the elevator, it was something boring, insignificant and not even wrong (so insignificant I can no longer remember the details) that he was "corrected" on, and in that moment he realized he could ignore HR on almost anything, they weren't going to fire him for some perceived, undocumented, etiquette breach, he's a high value employee.