What is the career goal of most people

Hey, I'm a bit new to the finance scene and I'm wondering if someone here could answer my question. In most other high paying industries (engineering, medicine, CS, some forms of law) there's usually only one set career path that you stay on until retirement. I don't quite get the end goal to finance.

If you stay in IB chances to make MD are really slim and so you most likely get laid off at the VP level at the max.

If you leave, you go into PE for a couple of years and then go to b-school where the majority of people don't get a continuing offer. Even if they did, making partner from what I hear is harder than making MD.

If you go into other routes like consulting, making partner is around the same difficulty as MD, maybe a bit easier but if you stall out you're immediately let go.

I'm in no way experienced in finance, I'm just trying to figure out where most people aspire to end up in the long run in finance.

(Also everything in my post isn't fact obviously, just my take on the industry from stuff I've read here)