I used to think being a good engineer meant being fast. Pick up a ticket, ship it, grab the next one. Repeat. My Jira board was clean.
My PRs were consistent. I was, by every visible metric, doing great work. And I was completely invisible. Nobody pulled me aside and told me I was doing it wrong.
That's the tricky part. Closing tickets is the job. But it's the job description, not the career path.