The answer varies wildly with your role. In some roles, effort put toward your job description aligns neatly with improving your personal career path. E.g. as

The answer varies wildly with your role. In some roles, effort put toward your job description aligns neatly with improving your personal career path. E.g. as a salesman, you want to get a lot of contacts and develop a good reputation. It's what the company wants from you, but it's also going to be a great personal asset for when you move on. In others, they're entirely unrelated. E.g. you got hired as a code monkey and the company just wants you to crank out CRUD forms as fast as possible, it doesn't need another senior developer or architect.