[bluGill]

Companies that promote from within will look within (first) for the senior engineers. To get to the really high pay you need experience in something in depth. Knowing a little about a lot of the same things everyone else knows gets you the mid grade positions, but if you really want to move up you need to grok the details that matter to your company. Very few get to (or want!) these high level positions where you know the complex details of something useful nly to your company, but they go to those who have been around long enough to have experience.

Of course you risk tying yourself to a dead horse that will never go anywhere and now you need to start over from the below the rest: you have experience that nobody needs and none of the general experience everyone else wants for an okay position. Good luck recognizing when/where you need to be to get the good position in 10 years vs a dead end that they don't care about...