I've used a bunch of distributions, even rolled my own when I was a teenager. Kernel version back then was around 2.6, and a new release didn't change anything for me as a mostly desktop user.
Is it different for many professionals? Are there people waiting for a new release, are there big problems to be solved or "Linux is ready" and it's mostly maintenance nowadays?
Due to the unparalleled transparency of not just a GPL source but a completely open development model, there's a whole lot more than just a version number to appreciate and investigate if so inclined.
Also having the bulk of drivers in-tree, kernel releases affect a lot more than just core stuff like the scheduler, memory management, and interrupt controllers.
io_uring looks like it will be a big deal, it will probably be a while before it really hits mainstream, but I was waiting on 5.10 before trying it out.
I managed to on 5.10-rc6? Had to upgrade to the "shortlived" version of the driver, but that went smoothly.
The whole tracing story in Linux has changed in the recent years. It's really useful in practice.
Wireguard and exFAT are a couple of notable ones that have been mainlined since 5.4, with the latter impacting basically anything that uses SD cards (as it's a required part of the SDXC spec)