[zdragnar]

It is an easy way to justify multiple pay bands.

I formerly worked for a company that for a few years referred to all of the engineers as "rock stars" etc. As the company matured a bit, that was dropped from all of the top-down type communication.

The company didn't actually value the employees any less, and we were still praised appropriately for good work and / or solid efforts. The issue was that people simply had to acknowledge that no, not all of the engineers put in the same level of effort or had the same natural talents, and pay disparities couldn't make sense when "everyone is a rock star programmer".

Granted, by the time i had left, we only had 3 or 4 pay bands from most junior to highest job title that still programmed, but the company wasn't in the west coast and didn't pay west coast salary either, so the actual compensation gradient was narrower than what you might find at a FAANG company.