>Honest question: how are you a junior to mid junior after working for 5+ years?

Not the OP, but it's easy to get in a maintenance rut in larger companies where you don't really learn much, and what you do learn is obsolete or getting there simply due to time.

Also not the OP, but it's easy to just have impostor syndrome.

Some shops also don't use those titles, and they vary by shop anyway, and so he may just not know exactly how to describe his ability level.

Legacy support, basically. You're hired to maintain some key legacy monster created by people long since fired, and there is no option of refactoring it due to sunk cost fallacy by the business.

So, you're stuck just doing nothing but little "keep the lights on" tasks, your only job is to keep the buggy mess running, and you have little-to-no opportunities to modernize or do any best practices due to the limitations of the legacy monster and total lack of interest on the business-side.

It is extremely easy, and I don't say this lightly, extremely easy, to fall into the trap of having 1 years of experience 5 times, rather than 5 years of experience.

Becuase I was stuck at a single company where the stack didn't require anything more than basic PHP.

After covid I fell into depression and it took a bit of time for me to get out the hole.