I don't know. I feel like there's a pretty clear power law governing the skill-ceiling below which additional experience adds actual value to dev work. ~80% of programming labor (testing, basic REST services, static web content, managing a small-to-medium-size SQL database, etc.) has a very low skill-ceiling. I've been in the industry for 7 years, I now run my own show doing all of these things. It's just simple grunt work. Then there's a very long tail of projects that require actual software engineering, where the skill ceiling is very, very high. Those latter positions exist all over the place, but you have to either create them or actively seek them out.
Conversely the skill-ceiling on managing technical projects is incredibly high. So although one certainly can efficiently stay on as an engineer, there is a much larger pool of opportunities in technical management, and they are much easier to find if you're grinding away at a FANG / enterprise company / growing startup / whatever.
If you want to do work that rewards many years of experience, it's there. Management work is just much more likely to fall into your lap (which, let's face it, is how the median employee finds anything).
For additional context, I also don't really think "programmer" is a profession in a vacuum. You need to level up inside a business vertical to really start adding specialized value, otherwise yes, you're a fungible cog. There's no shame in that, it just is what it is.
Conversely the skill-ceiling on managing technical projects is incredibly high. So although one certainly can efficiently stay on as an engineer, there is a much larger pool of opportunities in technical management, and they are much easier to find if you're grinding away at a FANG / enterprise company / growing startup / whatever.
If you want to do work that rewards many years of experience, it's there. Management work is just much more likely to fall into your lap (which, let's face it, is how the median employee finds anything).
For additional context, I also don't really think "programmer" is a profession in a vacuum. You need to level up inside a business vertical to really start adding specialized value, otherwise yes, you're a fungible cog. There's no shame in that, it just is what it is.