> IMHO as you get more senior in software, after a while the only interesting metric becomes: are you raising the level of the people around you?

Strongly agree, especially given how helping your teammates scales geometrically rather than linearly like improving your own output. If you work on a team team of five people with roughly equal output, and each becomes 20% more productive because of improvements you make, your team's output is increased the same as if you doubled your own productivity without helping anyone else on your team. (The math doesn't work out the same if your teammates aren't as productive as you already, but that's just an another argument for why it's better in the long run to be someone who can enable those around them rather than someone who only helps themself; helping everyone else has compounding returns if you keep doing it!)

I personally just also find it more fulfilling to be someone who makes everyone else around me better rather than just trying to be better than anyone else, but I recognize that not everyone will be motivated by that, so sometimes framing it in terms of raw output can help. The other potentially strong argument for those who are a bit more motivated by their own experiences only is that it's usually a lot more fun to have smart productive coworkers than ones who make you scoff and say "skill issue" to!