Oh yes this happens all the time! Last year an engineer in my org got promoted to Senior Staff. In order to get there he alienated and burnt out many other eng

Oh yes this happens all the time! Last year an engineer in my org got promoted to Senior Staff. In order to get there he alienated and burnt out many other engineers, including me. But guess what? he got the promotion, which is what he was gunning for, and he only alienated his peers. Leadership still support him and think he is a genius (BTW for doing things like taking credit from others). Also he seems to have chilled down a lot since the promo, so if you only interacted with him afterwards you would have a very different opinion of him. There is this idea that tech is a small world, your fame will precede you and such, but in practice I have seen the opposite. It seems way too easy to outrun your mistakes, either by changing teams or companies. I guess that is why it is relatively common to switch companies right after a promo. I have seen not so brilliant people greatly exaggerate their accomplishments and jump to greater highs. They say that you can't fool all the people all the time, but that framing is wrong. You only need to fool the right people long enough. And in tech, long enough seems to be 2-3 years, after which you can jump ship and rinse and repeat. I don't know about your company, but in mine executives never get fired. They always "leave for new and exciting opportunities" or "to spend more time with their families". I remember reading an article from an entrepreneur saying that a high % of executive hires are duds, but this is often kept under wraps to save face for both the company and the executive. Bottom line, min-maxing your career progress *can* backfire, but statistically you'll be ahead by doing it than not. And you can minimize the downside by outrunning your mistakes, moving to other teams or companies (this applies less with the current job market).