You're describing one of two routes people go.
Some people stay in a job for 15-20 years. They are a programmer for maybe 10 of those, but over time they grow into a niche, the company grows, and that becomes a job title.
Maybe they get called a project manager, or a product owner, head of QA or engineering or lead architect. Either way they aren't a programmer any more and they mostly manage something instead of doing - manage people, contracts, processes, customers...
And that's why programming has a pay ceiling - careerist programmers become something else, and footloose programmers become consultants and contractors and leave the regular pay figures.
The value of a good programmer probably becomes diminishing returns after a certain point. The best programmer in the world can't raise the sales of your web app past a point - if they do what it takes to do that they become something else, like a product manager. That point depends on the technical difficulty of the task and the size of the opportunity, but most code needs a good coder, not a great one, and beyond that it's all product fit, sales and luck.
I'm footloose too, and I'm noticing as I get older that the people interviewing me have often been in their job a long time. They bet on the company and became less flexible in the general labor market in return for better opportunities internally.
Honestly, when I work for them, I'm usually surprised how many normal things they don't know. Maybe they've never seen proper unit testing, or don't know what ITIL is, or think linux is still an immature product and you should stay safe with a microsoft stack.
But they know why the code is the way it is. They know what was tried in the past, and how it failed. And their boss has seen what they do in a crisis, which is much better than trusting someone unpredictable.
My suggestion to someone young, if you have the temperament, is to stay for up to a decade and grow into a new, higher value role. Then learn that until you know it well enough to get a job elsewhere and move before you stagnate.