Dogma in the tech industry is that the ceiling on individual contributions is close to the median. That the leverage is all in coordinating larger groups of engineers. Belief in, affection for, or aspiration to be the lone-wolf super-genius coder who does something transformative in his own editor is a negative signal, associated with "brilliant jerk" and "not a team player" archetypes. Tech companies are generally set up to socialize it out of younger engineers and to have an immune system to reject any more senior engineers who endorse it.
Strong coders are usually pressed into technical leadership roles where they don’t have much time to code. It’s true that if you shirk your non-coding duties you’ll get managed out.
