Trajectories differ and paths differ. Starting point is important which is often dependent on name of uni, grades, and program. Aside from that things can happen that throw you off your plan/path.
The three ways I have seen is getting in a larger company with career paths and growing and moving up with effort as well as ppl skills, networking, looking for opportunities etc. The second thing is to make moves, making moved up to a different organization should be a focus and not just lateral or parallel move. Third is to go to a senior role in a smaller company, with a goal to return to a larger company at a more senior role. Essentially bypassing the churn and rise phases at the large company.
Parallel moves are fine if they place you in a position to move up, but you will spend some time before moving up.
Two risks
1- staying in a dead end role or team, because you have diminishing returns for each year you are there. The big risk here is that you may end up being too expensive for that level role on a different organization so parallel moved are tough, and u have to focus on getting up.
2- making too many parallel moves. If you feel you are not moving up and move sideways to another team or company, now you have to put in the time before you can move up, and if you don’t and make a move again, you can be in the same situation
Now aside from just moves and all, what will enable you to do that or more.
Skills… What is up and coming that will have need of experts. Go get trained, spend own money even, try getting into projects that have some overlap with this growth area, get involved in associations, meet up groups etc.
Build your brand, who are you, what differentiates you from others.
Lastly, career success is relative, title, money, passion, fun, interest all play a role. Some ppl want to be experts in their field and don’t want mgmt responsibilities for some it’s something else. Don’t gauge success by any other scale than your own primarily. That is first and foremost. Others come after that.
As far as your question, yes there are some who are doing much better than me, and others who are not. Fields, drive, plan, luck, circumstances all play a role. The question is if you feel you can be doing more, how do you get there..so that calls for honest introspection, goal setting and planning. It will not happen in a day or a year, but every day or year you are not going on a plan you are losing out on driving to the plan