In the past I did many mistakes like pulling all nighters to because I found a way to make checkout experience more pleasant. That resulted in massive increase of revenue and none of that benefitted me. Or unblocked other team, they couldn't find a reason why their app would randomly crash. Board was panicking as client was going to pull out. I saved the day. Multi-million contract gone through. "Thank yous" didn't help me pay off debts.
Only be curious for your own stuff. For corporations? Do bare minimum.
As far as knowing more, the best way to get promotions raises and job opportunities is via networking, the ability to market yourself inside and outside of the company and soft skills.
Well the best way to make more money is to work for companies that pay more money - ie BigTech and adjacent [1] - and then learn the politics of promotions.
[1] Yes “grind leetCode and work for a FAANG” (tm r/cscareerquestions)
Luckily though, none of those places would ever even look at my resume.
I would hope there to be a healthy medium between "pulling all nighters" and "Do bare minimum" -- perhaps somewhere where we all try to do our best, but don't push ourselves too hard for no reason? I mean, that's more reasonable than imagining we'll one day overthrow our corporate overlords. Probably, I'm naive and idealistic. But I can't help but feel like the result of apathy is not satisfaction.
There was time when being a software developer was not a particularly prestigious or well-paying job in corporations, or maybe a weird hobby of developing games for the toy 8-bit entertainment computers of the day. It was mostly attracting people who enjoyed interacting with computers, were highly curious, etc.
Then there was a glorious time when the profession of software engineering was growing in importance by the day, hackers became heroes, some made fortunes (see e.g. Carmack or, well, Zuckerberg). But this very wave was the harbinger of the demise: the field became a magnet for people who primarily wanted money. These people definitely can be competent engineers! But the structure of their motivation is different, so the culture was shifting, too. Now programming is a well-paid skilled trade, like being a carpenter or a nurse.
If you want hacker ethos again, look for an obscure field which is considered weird, is not particularly well-paid, but attracts you.