[d357r0y3r]

Man. Lots of defeatism so far. I understand the points being made, though.

Becoming a go-to person is necessary but not sufficient to advance. If all you are is a reliable Swiss army knife for the company, you will indeed be stuck with the salary and station of a reliable Swiss army knife.

The tricky part is to be able to decouple the "knowing" and the "doing." If you know how to do all the work, and you also actually do it, yes, you become the infinite sink for all of those things.

If you can, instead, be a sink of knowledge and wisdom, e.g. "here's how I'd approach the problem", "maybe you should connect with Joe in...", "hasn't this problem already been solved with...", that starts to look more like L6+ behavior.

It's the hardest pill to swallow for builders, though - that you can never be good enough at pure building to justify promotion beyond senior level. It's like professional sports. If you're a greater shooter but you can't get other people involved, there's a hard cap on how far your team can go and how far your career will go.