[fhd2]

I generally didn't pay pay seniors all _that_ much more than the juniors. And I happily hired people >60 in the past. It's not linear, it someone has 10 years, 20 years or 50 years experience, they're in the same senior range. Depending on how much they can bring to the table, I can increase their salary within that range, not purely based on age. Experience in years just tells me what range to put them in, not where in the range. I fear I haven't made that clear at all in my parent post, sorry about that.

[usrusr]

The way tech worker ageism works is that many employers would never consider offering someone with a few years of experience (even if it's just life experience) little money. It's either a generous offer of the full package or a pass. And if previous employers skipped on the titles game ("my job description said 'programmer'"), the chance for anything other than "pass" is miniscule at employers who take titles as a given (and where people could not possibly imagine a world without).

That's what i meant: the titles don't have to mean anything in your company, but if you don't hand them out, even if only as a meaningless formality without any consequence, you're making life unnecessarily hard for employees when they need to look elsewhere. That's why i called it lead handcuffs: it makes leaving more difficult. And i don't get the impression that it's an intentional strategy ("yay, less fluctuation! Let's call them all junior janitors!"), that's why i was pointing out this aspect of "no junior or senior".