Yes past 5 years. That’s what the Apple documentation says, since it says it applies to any Mac that was T2 or newer. That doesn’t mean that it would have worked this way 5 years ago. Software improvements with macOS have undoubtedly made the process simpler than it used to be.

"Erase All Content and Settings" did not exist in macOS Catalina. Back then, you had to manually boot into recovery and reinstall the OS that way, which unfortunately did nothing for Activation Lock, and was a confusingly advanced procedure to expect end users to perform. Now, someone just has to go into settings and click that button and macOS will handle everything.