this is for part of it. I have been SWE for almost 30 years now and do not have a resume. I interviewed for a ton of positions when I graduated from Uni, got my first job and subsequently never looked for a job again.

I think more of an issue here is that there is just way too many SWEs and we can’t all be “elite.” In my 30 years in I have worked with roughly same percentage of “elite” as the post is alluding to. The history/structure of just about every project I worked on boils down to needing two distinct group of SWEs, the inovators and closers. The inovators are the “elite” (within the project) and they figure all the shit out. The closers crank it out once all the shit is figured out for them