I think there's work and there's work. The people who've I've observed with great engineering talent have certainly worked to get it, but they have been selective to the point of selfishness about what work they do. That work might look like "fun" to colleagues, and so they are diplomatic about it, or don't do it completely out in the open.

Of course the proliferation of free engineering tools makes it possible for them to have two lives, one doing the "hard work" that satisfies colleagues during the day, and the other "hard work" that develops talent at night.

I've also seen many young engineers plunge straight into "hard work" consisting of running the CAD terminal and fighting fires, and those engineers were recognized as being productive but lost their fundamental knowledge and did not become great engineers.