Pursuing a career inside an organization means picking one of two modes. The local max strategy is simple: you don't need to outrun the bear, only the next person. You stay slightly ahead of your cohort, take the next promotion, never look like you're losing. It works. People build excellent careers this way. The cost is that your career becomes about the bear. Your ceiling is set by the peer group's floor; you're only as fast as you need to be. The skills you sharpen are the skills of staying ahead, which is not the same as the skills of going somewhere.

The alternative is the climber on an infinite mountain. There is no summit, only the next ridge. The mountain doesn't grade against other climbers and doesn't care who else is on it. This mode runs on what physicists call simulated annealing: you accept temporary descent to find a better route up. In an org, that means lateral moves, projects with no obvious payoff, stretches where you look like you're not winning. The local max runner cannot afford any of this.

The bear is real either way. Orgs are ruthless and if you're ambitious there's always a bear. What path do you choose? A career spent outrunning the bear is not the same as a career spent climbing anything.