[mattlondon]

There is only so much you can hustle, a lot is out of your control.

We all know people who have repeatedly been given plum projects that are a bit of a fait acompli - highly-visible, wanted, and easy to implement both technically and organizationally - and surprise surprise they get promo after promo for landing high-impact projects. Yet suddenly they arrive in some new team and their career progress grinds to a halt because there is not the same "low hanging fruit" and they can't just slam dunk everything they touch any more. All of a sudden they are left holding some doomed tarball and it is not so easy to look good any more because it's messy and hard and super-complicated and unpopular. They keep putting in the hours yet don't get anywhere.

TL;Dr You need to opportunity, and working more hours won't make those appear every time.

Yes you can try to weasel your way into "making" the opportunity, but then you start playing The Politics Game and that is a totally different kettle of fish.