I... would have in my early twenties agreed with you, but now I see the that if you're employed, you should do the most visible and most
evidently rewarded for work, anything else is just extra if you've got time for it, but I'd argue you should give yourself that time back if possible. Or you can just do anything you can to make yourself valuable to keep around in some genuine way, but you need to have a keen sense of what's actually valuable.
Put another way, regular forms of success in NA business culture, at least from my PoV, comes from "reading the room", and the unspoken implications that your higher ups who actually do have control over your ability to stay employed, are saying even if they're not saying it. If you spend more time on something because you feel it's virtuous or stylistic to do so, but your manager wanted just the most basic bullshit for some presentation, you've failed, and you've wasted time and money, and I think this is more common than not. Nobody ever got fired for picking Bootstrap or w/e the saying is. In rare circumstances you chance your way into doing something so efficiently or well, within budget in a way that specifically fulfills all the wishes of everyone who has tangible control over your income, and also in a way that was worth the time and money, so much so that you get praise and a raise eventually. You can't try and do this all the time thought, you'll burnout or maybe destroy trust or read the room wrong about your requirement. If there's not a very clear path to being well-rewarded, then focus on what you're getting paid for.
The alternative is specialty contracting or running your own business, where you can choose your customers based on the fact that they want your unique expertise, if you're lucky.
If you succeed at either, great, but don't necessarily set that bar for yourself.
Put another way, regular forms of success in NA business culture, at least from my PoV, comes from "reading the room", and the unspoken implications that your higher ups who actually do have control over your ability to stay employed, are saying even if they're not saying it. If you spend more time on something because you feel it's virtuous or stylistic to do so, but your manager wanted just the most basic bullshit for some presentation, you've failed, and you've wasted time and money, and I think this is more common than not. Nobody ever got fired for picking Bootstrap or w/e the saying is. In rare circumstances you chance your way into doing something so efficiently or well, within budget in a way that specifically fulfills all the wishes of everyone who has tangible control over your income, and also in a way that was worth the time and money, so much so that you get praise and a raise eventually. You can't try and do this all the time thought, you'll burnout or maybe destroy trust or read the room wrong about your requirement. If there's not a very clear path to being well-rewarded, then focus on what you're getting paid for.
The alternative is specialty contracting or running your own business, where you can choose your customers based on the fact that they want your unique expertise, if you're lucky.
If you succeed at either, great, but don't necessarily set that bar for yourself.