I'm onto my third big project and each of them shipped with my solo effort (but on the backend). It's wildly successfully and impacted 10s of millions of people but the ratings always make it seem that what I thought was exceptional contributions were "expected"! Thankfully the bonus/money is decent.
So, the more good work one does, the lower one's rating can be? (But not too low of course)
That's interesting and a bit counter intuitive like so many other things
What about people the manager wants to leave? Might s/he give them higher ratings?
Sucking up to a manager is exactly the kind of toxic bureaucracy that destroys companies and ultimately societies.
Do good work. Do the best work you can. If you want to be Machiavelli, go into politics.
People who have good relationship skills can also tell the difference between having a good relationship with mutual respect, as opposed to actually sucking up to some narcissist. All technical people need to be able to have that level of relationship wisdom, the ability to see the difference. Sadly, and this is the most unfortunate part, people who are bad at it often think that they're good at it, and so they don't understand why they're being attacked when they're not actually being attacked; then they get angry and disgruntled, creating what was a preventable situation.
For the record, you are not employed by nor for your manager. Have a look at your employment contract, it is probably not written that your job is to please or help promote your manager. Usually, your job is to perform some kind of action directed towards the outside of the company (like shipping software to customers).
That's really my issue with big companies: by the sheer effect of inflated volume, one gets surrounded more and more by coworkers, internal projects, etc, and come to forget that the purpose of it all is to act on the outside world not within the corporation itself.
That's at least how I understood the parent's "think only about doing your job" and I agree wholeheartedly.
