except if you self-employed. I have maxed the shit out of my 401k (i401k, self-managed) and after 3 decade career have more saved than I can spend in 8 lifetimes
Well don't know your life but I suspect for a lot of people then it would've been more advantageous to not max out the 401k and retire pre-55 and spend the non-401k funds until 55.
This largely being my gripe about the Trump accounts in that you're allocating funds into them that can't be touched without penalties until like 50 years later. And for most people this probably isn't even a benefit because you can lifetime gift ~$15 million so like unless you're Bezos just invest the money yourself and gift your kid whatever large value item they wanted.
When you retire is a personal decision (and also a financial one but I think for most people on this forum it's mostly a personal one).
That said, if somebody is say counting the days until 55 so that they can retire then it's likely they also wanted to retire pre-55. If the money is "stuck" in a 401k and so they are unwilling to retired beforehand then it probably would've been better for them to have stuck some portion of their 401k contributions into a taxable brokerage account and then retired pre-55.
But in this specific example, the guy I responded to was self-employed I'm kinda guessing their "hobby" is their job and so they kept working despite not needing to.