This sounds naive. Most companies have some degree of 'politics' which is essentially people working in their own interests over the company's. This is somewhat unrelated to skills and value.

Also particularly in large organisations, work is not a perfect information game - there is no easy way to assign a fair / public a "value" to people to let you compare two employees. Most people will need to sell themselves or have other people sell them to get noticed, and some degree of social bonding can go a long way with this.

> Most companies have some degree of 'politics' which is essentially people working in their own interests over the company's. This is somewhat unrelated to skills and value.

as someone else put it: there are sides in office politics, and by choosing not to play you are picking a side by default, which is often the losing side.

"you can't be neutral on a moving train"

I didn’t mean to dismiss the importance of advocating for yourself or building relationships. My comment was more about the foundation of success

I think that depends on the company and the circumstances it finds itself in. Office politics can be more complex than what you are describing.

I think career success is purely whether people like you or not.

Your skills and contributions don't matter at all as long as they are not so bad that people absolutely can not ignore it. Companies are mostly build on diffusing individual responsibility. Even if you majorly mess up as long as the right people like you you will be fine.

Doesn't mean one needs to be an extrovert. Just have good social skills in general. It really depends on what your superiors prefer and the general company culture. Sometimes being quiet and not sticking out can be an asset as well. Sometimes people will like you because you have (or pretend to have) deep technical knowledge, sometimes they will hate you because you make them feel inferior and it is better to play dumb. Know your audience.

I think skills and contributions may not guarantee success on their own, but they provide the foundation for building credibility and trust

I think this is wrong. Career success comes from providing value to people (who have power over you). Getting them to like you is the easiest but not only way.

Isn't being liked by someone and providing value to someone basically the same? At least in a corporate context, a healthy way to think about this stuff this way in your private life.

I only examples I can think of where you are valued but not liked is maybe when you are valued as a scapegoat or something, like abusive stuff but generally being liked and providing value should be ideally be the same.

Of course you can be liked for different aspects, be it for performing well and so making your superiors look good to being a yes-man who validates their ideas or plainly being quiet and low maintenance. Depends on who is managing you.

You could be valued in the sense of you get the job done competently, but not liked in the sense of not being friends (being actively disliked is a bit different and that is dedinitely a problem).