In my experience, there's very little correlation between salary and longevity. There definitely seems to be a correlation between salary and "demand." For ins

In my experience, there's very little correlation between salary and longevity. There definitely seems to be a correlation between salary and "demand." For instance, Kubernetes is really hot right now, and there's a limited supply of people who know it, so people that know it can make upwards of $200K. OTOH, you could be the world's greatest Windows admin and you'll be lucky to make half that, because there's a million people who know Windows. TLDR: specialization is more lucrative than sheer hard work and expertise.