It is easy to be a hero when the company is shitty.

My career advice is to work in a field / company / job where you can be somewhere in the top 10-20% of all employees. Just don't overdo it, if you are top 1% you are probably aiming too low and could be working for better paying, more rewarding field / company / job.

For a lot of my career I was working for financial institutions like banks. A lot of really badly managed projects with definitely not top level developers. Easy to be a top performer. I really like helping people and projects and it was working well for me especially when it was easy for me to provide valuable help.

I got hired once for a really good company with really top performers and suddenly I lost the status that I was so used to. I was keeping up with my work, sure, but I was no longer a shiny star. I got back to working for banks.