Juniors with tons of experience aren't very uncommon.

The way i've seen it is Junior/Senior as a label of wisdom/engineering acumen and experience (not just a title) is not directly correlated to years of experience. Some people just have the same year of experience/level repeated 3-5 years. Some "Junior" with 1 YoE can come away with learnings some seniors never get in their careers. Not wholly their own fault, but it's a fact.

I cannot grok this. Are you saying that “juniors with tons of experience are very common?”

Do you mean that there are seniors with a lack of experience? I believe yes I was also making that same point.

Ageism in the industry also encourages seniors to appear to be plugged in with the newest shiniest thing, so we kind of do it to ourselves with our hiring practices.

We need to divorce seniority from talent.

As the adage goes: Some senior developers have 20 years of experience, and some have one year repeated 20 times.

“Juniors with tons of experience are common” means that people with many years of experience who are nonetheless at the level of a junior engineer are common.

This phrase is divorcing seniority from talent, albeit perhaps not in the way experienced engineers might prefer.

Seniority from skill, most likely, talent wouldn't change over time

If someone has only used a handheld wood sander, they will be ecstatic when someone shows them a powered belt sander.

But someone who has used a palm sander, orbital sander, belt sander, disc sander, and so on will be able to see a new type of sander in the context of existing tools and know what’s right for what job.

Your average junior will be in the first scenario. However, it’s possible to be experienced yet still be stuck in the first scenario.