[scarface74]

If someone's going to deny me a promotion for linking a wikipedia page that answers a basic question and completely ignore my technical contributions, I absolutely do not trust that place has the best interests of its developers in mind and is likely driven more by politics than anything else.

No place has the "best interest of its developers in mind". That's true for any industry. It's a lot easier to replace the on the floor factory worker (i.e. the developer) than the foreman (the architect) and they get paid accordingly.

Don't get caught up on the title, role power is the least effective type of power in an organization. If you leverage relationships and can be seen as the expert, you can easily punch above your weight.

[FLUX-YOU]

Why do I need to punch above my weight? So I can finally tell people 'no' when they try to take my time away with stuff that they can fix themselves?

I think it's clear we have two very different motivating factors in careers. You want to climb the corporate ladder and get power and influence, and I'm content building things.

[scarface74]

That's just the point I've been making "climbing the corporate ladder" is about gaining role power. Role power is the least effective method of getting things done in an organization.

I wanted to "build things" my entire career and was stymied by management and team leads who I couldn't convince to see my "vision", net ops and dev ops who made me go through mounds of red tape to get anything done and coworkers who had their own agendas and wanted to get noticed and get the prime projects just as much as I did. It led to a lot of frustration.

The best way to be able to "build things" the way you want is to have the influence to do so by getting people on your side through relationship building and getting people to trust your expertise.

I like to "build things" too and have no desire for management. But, the way to stand out and make more money than the average, heads down developer is to have soft skills.

[msiyer]

What you say makes complete sense. It is correct as per my observations. However, one big issue is that sociopaths (manipulators, idea\effort-appropriators...) have an edge. Also, such people accumulate and ruin workplace.