Yea. As a traditional engineer (non software) I shudder in horror at what y'all go through. My industry is all about what you know and there seems to be nearly infinite things to know. That knowledge takes years to accumulate, so a Senior Engineer with 10 years of experience almost always has an order of magnitude more value than a novice engineer. Although there are some seniors that I have no idea how they got promoted, it is generally rare.