I guess we have different friends, but that doesn't match my experience. Of course, pumping yourself up and making yourself look more impressive for perf/promo is a huge thing, and accounts for a lot of pointless stuff being done just so you can say you "launched"/"landed" something. But the flip side of that is the recurrent memes about stuff like so-and-so over in that other division solved some incredibly hard technical problem, and "I'm just here copying protos around." Lots of Googlers realize they are just worker drones.