This is presented as revolutionary, but it’s not clear to me that the results would’ve been any different if they’d surveyed the older generations at the same age.
This has not been my experience most places I’ve worked - you’ve gotta get a couple rungs up the management ladder (director or such) before the pay scale gets above staff and sr staff.
(It’s how we wound up with a few people at a previous gig managing teams as staff engineers - they didn’t want to take the pay cut for the title.)
Had you been granted the authority to oversee a critical responsibility/project/initiative you might have been imbued.
It's very exciting, like a drug, to be given responsibility for which you know that you are immediately shit canned (by your friends no less) if it doesn't go well or rewarded handsomely if you get it over the finish line. You have to hold key peoples' (founders/investors/executives) trust to get those roles because your success/failure ripples into them right quick.