Again, not everyone wants to progress all the way to the top in their careers. The higher you go, the more your job changes into helping people help people help people do the actual work, which isn't all that appealing if you chosen a particular career because of the lower-level work being done.
It's like in Star Trek, with this common advice to given to captains on the show by their friends/colleagues: never let yourself be promoted to admiral, because you'll be taken off the starship and put behind a desk to push paperwork, and that is just boring.
This makes me think of Eisenhower, who I only found out recently apparently never saw combat, yet pretty much went to the top in his career and then became President.
Whether paperwork is boring or meaningless is a subjective value judgment. What if it's the paperwork for planning D-Day?
The paperwork isn't necessarily meaningless. But for someone who feels best being "out there", where interesting things happen, being dragged back all the way to HQ to forever watch the things they loved from the distance - that's soul-breaking.
Caring too much is a bad bargain. The companies don't care too much about you and me