OK, but the people who keep on harping on this never seem to mention that the boss "liking you" is not about you cracking jokes and bringing in muffins on Thursday. It's about you being low drama and helping them achieve their KPIs in a way that helps them get promoted so they can bring you along with them.

It's the guy/gal who you know needs to be informed that the feature they've been painstakingly working on for the last 2 months is scrapped due to a strategic realignment and now they're tasked on working on some non-revenue bullshit to win a turf war and their response is a shrug and brainstorming of how do we play this rather than getting all up in their feelings and require emotional babysitting for the next 2 months.

Yep, this. Being aligned with an influential and well-liked manager is probably the biggest indicator of your overall career trajectory at a company.

Basically, yes. You still should be able to make easy for those in power to argue that you 'deserve' it, but the dynamic is impossible to deny.

I can't think of a scenario where it's directly counterproductive, at least not to the point where its counterproductivity overshadows the degree to which the people who make decisions like you.