The worst part is that after a point in your career there's no path to promotion just for doing your job really well. You are expected to always take on new roles and responsibilities, some of which may not be suited for your personality or interests, and the net result often is that you get promoted and make more money but your overall useful output decreases. I know so many amazing engineers who had to essentially give up writing code, prototyping and tinkering – stuff they were really passionate about – to advance to staff+ levels. Now their time is spent in an endless stream of meetings, and the entire organization is worse off because of it.