When people only have a passion for climbing it is detrimental to the organization as a whole. What has been shown in corporate studies again and again is that if you pit people against each other and only incentivize personal achievement over all else, the organization as a whole will inevitably suffer.

The key is to incentivize and foster team development, where the team is rewarded for performing well. The problem is that almost all of people who get to a C-suite operate entirely on the premise that 'individual achievement is the only real metric for success', and then the only way to get them to cooperate is by making sure it is in their individual interest to not fuck over the organization.

Edit: Basically, OP's friend is making the classic mistake of conflating 'passion for doing a specific job well' to 'passion for making money or personal social success'.

It doesn't matter how passionate of a janitor you are, there are only so many hours in the day, and you will eventually have to become a passionate manager of janitors or seller of cleaning supplies to actually make a lot of money. There are a few jobs where there is potential for passion for the individual job to translate into wild career success (cooking for one), but even then, the most monetarily successful chefs are the ones who go into media production, not just cooking.