I think it’s not wrong, just incomplete. Doing a good job on an important problem will be rewarded, in time. Once a persons impact and reliability is trusted, opportunities come to them.
Usually they jump into the projects that have more visibility or hype, focus their work on the aspects the org considers most valuable for the "next step in the ladder" and jump ship to a different team/project/department as soon as possible.
I've seen that both on engineering and product sides, most of the people I worked with that progressed quickly in their career weren't actually reliable, at least not reliable to the people they worked closely with: they jumped ship to other teams/parts of the org as soon as possible, leaving just a trail of half-done initiatives that were just good enough to tick the boxes needed for a promotion.
Doing a good job is secondary to this, sometimes doing a good job aligns with the box-ticking, sometimes it doesn't really matter. If you are decent at salesmanship and persuasion, and can get some visibility from the upper echelons the actual delivery will only matter in 1-2 years, by then they're already out and up.
There are few small companies where this could work, otherwise dont rely on it, you will end up very sad.