You only get ahead by shipping a product, and getting a project approved is largely politicking

Yep - I had a friend who worked for three years at Google, none of the products he worked on ever shipped and eventually he gave up on ever receiving a good salary (bonuses/stock options/etc are supposed to be most of the pay, but you only get that by working on a successful product)

They have ten major campuses worldwide that focus on product development, but only one of those actually ships products regularly.