Many do. More common the further up the ladder you get. But I’ve been able to gain enough influence to affect most of the things I care about without engaging in that, unless you consider being friendly and supportive (something that did not come remotely naturally to me) to be brown-nosing.

If you want to significantly influence a lot of high-level strategic decision-making at very large companies, then you do probably need to engage in nasty things like that. But most of us don’t work at that scope.