Because that's not how they perceive their works. Instead it is "advocating for one's own team and passion", "helping others advance their career", "networking and building long-term connections".

Well you can "work to live" in a nice big house, with a nanny, eating steaks, flying business class to ski in the alps or scuba in the Galapagos... I think it takes a lot of money before you feel like you don't need more money.

It feels unsavory from the outside, but politics is also the art of getting stuff done. It’s not throwing your life away if you can point at an org chart and a roadmap delivered and say “I helped build that”. Leadership is just as important as implementation.

You need to have the right personality. Either actually enjoy the game, or have an unsatiable (fear-driven?) need for status, or something else of this sort. We don't get to choose our personalities, though some limited modifications are possible - see treatments for personality disorders, for example.

I question this every single day. Constantly the argument arises that if I played politics and ass-kissed, I might receive more opportunities to create bigger impact to help people / entertain people / provide some valuable service or product. Yet it feels painful to have to self-promote (even if framing it as "documentation of your work").

It is akin to musicianship in a sense. How many of the absolutely, obscenely, most talented musicians have you come across in completely obscured settings? At the pub, the hole-in-the-wall jazz club in a C-tier city, deep on the internet with 13 plays on SoundCloud. But we all know that pop music doesn't necessarily reward technical musicianship.

It's similar in life & career.

Well, I think that it depends on perspective and motivations.

Kissing asses/politics can be treated as skill used for different purposes. Imagine your ambition is to build bridge, skyscraper or fancy opera house.

To be chosen as the one for such projects, you must play many games including politics.

(I assume good intentions, selfish ones are possible too, but are they worth discussing?)

Depends where you want to live, but $5M to $10M would help with enough passive income to future proof one’s family and their kids.

For some, that's not only their competency but they enjoy it.

Is building relationships and status less worthwhile than building code or bridges or houses or painting pictures?

People get to choose the game they play.

> …for what, money? How much money do you need!?

"more" seems to be the answer to many.

I've done both things, and they have their pros and cons. Big businesses can build bigger and more impactful things, and it is very satisfying to contribute to those things. The original poster is still clearly proud of the things they were able to build by "playing politics and kissing ass".

But (for me) there is definitely a certain ennui to being a little cog in a big machine, especially because everybody else there is doing the same thing. So being in smaller more cohesive companies definitely has its advantages.

The grass is always greener and all that!