It's also possible to get satisfaction from delivering a big project, doing something hard with your team and so on though, instead of a purely adversarial attitude.
There have been many times in my career where I went the extra mile, but didn't communicate it well enough and ended up not getting rewarded for it. I also noticed other people over-communicated what they did, even in cases where I didn't think what they did was really that hard. If they get rewarded for that, is it fair? My opinion today is it doesn't matter. If I want that bonus or that promotion, I'm going to "perform" for my boss to make sure I get my share.
You need to both do good work and take responsibility to communicate this to your manager.
If you just do good work, but don't communicate it, your manager might not know and won't reward you properly.
If you don't do good work but only "perform", you lack integrity, you're not developing yourself, you're cheating your customers, and you are a drain on your employer and society.
“Tell me how you will measure me, and then I will tell you how I will behave. If you measure me in an illogical way, don’t complain about illogical behavior.” – Eli Goldratt
A drain on the people that are enabling this type of attitude in the first place? I have a hard time understanding your reasoning here.
and then getting fired because obviously don't need you anymore!
I have a hard time faulting people for attitudes or behaviors that are adversarial considering that the system seems to be designed to be adversarial, although I must admit I find myself unable to play those games as they seem too tiring than just trying to work hard and deliver and hope that works out.
So while I don't fault them (as being immoral or unethical) I sure can be annoyed by them.
I see this a lot in our industry (and other industries) as well. People will endlessly bikeshed for a perfect solution until well past the point that "any action at all" was a better choice than continual bikeshedding. This dynamic is often used by stakeholders with a significant investment in the status quo to politically kill any change while appearing to be onboard with change.
It's hard to keep that adversarial attitude at bay when that is the lifeblood of management.
Satisfaction from good work turns into resentment quickly when you find yourself respected less then peers.
This isn't a zero-sum game, at the IC level at least. Winning doesn't mean others lose. It just means you get paid. There are many roads to victory, including empty performance.