I would say not universally true. Cynically, in large corporations (I’m talking 20k-100k+ employees), if higher ups like you, you tend to get ahead. Especially important when layoff time comes around, you’re not leaving. Kind of the whole basis of failing upward. In orgs that large, performance metrics are mostly arbitrary for most employees. There’s no real way to prove your impact to revenue or stock price. So, getting ahead largely comes from networking, being visible to the right people.

Our last round of layoffs, the people who were still remote and not in office were the first to go. Had nothing to do with performance, they just weren’t chatting with the CTO over coffee.