Except he didn’t say “for ten years” but “in ten years” referring to the extreme length of time companies take to upgrade

You haven't done it, then. Just the re-testing of everything in these large companies is terrifying and complex. Particularly the real-time stuff like Kafka. Most companies refuse to update unless absolutely necessary as they see the solution as an investment that has to produce. Security concerns have changed that attitude somewhat, but you would be surprised how much re-work is often necessary. The frustration of sorting it all out is not worth the money, imho--I'd rather just do something else, so I am.

I'm doing that in 2 weeks. The next major version of our product will require 25.

edit: I wrote "require" when I meant "ship with". We ship a Temurin JRE together with our product, so it's being updated with each new installation.