Sure, but we have high growth on top of that - meaning all those "perpetual intermediaries" are always the minority and gravitate upwards in the org chain, while ~all the coding work is done by people who just started working in the field, and didn't even learn enough yet to become mediocre.
It's worse, look up perpetual intermediates. Most people in any given field aren't good at what they're doing. They're at best mediocre.