Doesn't it mean more like it's an acceptable end, a destination - obviously not everyone's career track is to take over the company as CEO one day, but nor is it necessarily to progress to Staff and beyond.
The idea being that it's a bit of a role change, to a greater extent than the levels before it which could be seen as advancement. Or, we've long had the idea of 'technical' and 'management' tracks, the more recent (I think?) idea here being that actually maybe they're both specialist tracks you switch onto, and you don't necessarily have to do either.
But I think, outside FAANG et al., whether companies subscribe to that sort of thinking is vastly more varied (or it's more niche) than titles and 'track' splits (or lack of them) already are.
The idea is that command requires a separate set of skills and that experience needs to start early to have senior officers in their 50s.
In practice, junior officers are "advised" by senior enlisted on how to order people around and not taking that advice is a bad idea.
Kind of like how companies have managers and technical tracks where a line manager ignoring a senior technical person always blows up in their face.
But the big difference, I believe, is that being at the top of a ladder in one company may be completely different from being at the top in another one.
It's easy to be the CTO of a company of 2, much harder for BigTech. Even if the company of 2 has the same levels.
I have met people being very very proud of their title of CTO, and when I asked, their company had a handful of developers.