Yeah, to add to this: the best year of my working life, I got an average review. I just happened to be an expert in a bunch of tech that my team had forced on them, ramped them all up, and generally contributed a bunch. And I failed to communicate with my manager - as in, I went three months without meeting him. He had no real idea how much I'd contributed. Now obviously, that's on my manager as well, but ultimately it was me it affected. Since then I've made an effort to own the communication with my manager more, and it's had much better results career-wise.
