Yes, we definitely need to avoid career path patterns that rely on nothing more than just "old ways". I have a friend (who used to a colleague) who is barely 30, and is a principal software engineer. I think in reality, it can all be relative. In a small company where competition of skills is little, one can advance quickly and get to senior, staff or principal level in a mere 4-5 years within the same company.

In larger corporations however, where talent comes and goes all the time, merely staying there won't necessarily help moving up quickly.

Another thing I noticed is very specialised career levels, such as senior React engineer. I would agree that if you code React for 5 years, you're probably principal level by the age of 23 if you started in a company at 18. The problem I see there is however that the skills and experience aren't very transferable and when that specialised skill-set falls out of grace, they cannot argue for a principal role in say Flutter mobile development.

The article does make one super important point though, which I think deserves an article in itself - one should never judge by age, race, ethnicity, gender or anything other than skills and experience. And perhaps a bit of personality (but with a lot of caution).