We have general expectations on the velocity an engineer should be able to work at. If it took someone 5 weeks to deliver the exact same feature another engineer could deliver in 1 week, that would be considered "falling behind" at most places. Would you disagree?
The notion of falling behind because you refuse to adopt an advance in the field seems both uncontroversial and not aggressive at all to me.
Yes I would disagree. I've never had a co-worker who was consistently producing output chastised in any way. No matter how far "behind" me they were.