After a certain amount of time (my guess is around 5 years experience) software engineers tend to experience diminishing levels of returns when it comes to prod

After a certain amount of time (my guess is around 5 years experience) software engineers tend to experience diminishing levels of returns when it comes to productivity over years of experience. The difference between an SWE with 5 years experience and one with 1 year experience is massive, but the difference between somebody with 5 years experience and 10 years experience is much less so. I'm talking about standard software engineering roles - CRUD based applications and so on. The story is different for more specialised roles that involve expert knowledge i.e. machine learning, data science, computer graphics, info security etc. If I see the CV of somebody who has been doing the same kind of software engineering jobs for 20 years my thought is that this is somebody with no real interest in it and just does it as a 9-5 job. Now personally I don't see anything wrong with that. However, the problem is the difference between an "enthusiast" and a "9-5er" is much less apparent when they are young, their CVs will likely be very similar if they both have 3-5 years experience, however after 20 years it will become clear who is "passionate" about their craft and who just wants to go home to their family at the end of the day. Again I have nothing against people like that and I'm sorry for using the word passionate like that but I think that this is one of the root causes of this issue..