Succeed in which way? Some empty career in some soulless company that doesn't care about you? Some miniscule extra cash on the account? Those are not proper life successes in any meaningful way.

Most of engineers are rather introverts with rich internal life and strong imagination. You can lose most of it and transform for more 'success' over time, but at great costs to yourself. I am not arguing against say better communication or organizational skills, we all benefit from it, but you can't avoid various form of highly functioning sociopaths once you climb above ground level. Those tend to drag weaker individuals down to their rabbit holes. That's the core of the 'politics' I've seen over past 20 years in all corporations I've worked for. Looking at people and measuring how good relationship is right now, how you can use them, how worthy they are. Forging alliances always doing such calculus in your mind, everything is a chess board, everybody is a chess figure.

Don't forget how you behave and think at work will end up permeating rest of your life, you are just you in all places. One example I see very consistently - folks promoted to more responsibility get over time much bigger egos, very few are immune to this and one has to realize it and actively fight it to avoid it.

Be a good human being, help others in need, be a properly good parent, husband, son/daughter, friend. For many folks high on organizational charts, in above metrics they failed in life while drowning in money of career. No thank you.

What you wrote resonated with me, I think the same way and so, allow me the pushback. :) Does it have to be that way, a severance type of scenario where the work life is opposite of the "life" life ? I feel that it should, perhaps could, be different. Yeah, it depends on what you do for a living, your need for money and so on, but do people that win at career always lose at life ?