I don't fully understand why what alexbanks wrote implies that there is no leadership. It just means that new hires are not placed in leadership positions right

I don't fully understand why what alexbanks wrote implies that there is no leadership. It just means that new hires are not placed in leadership positions right out of the gate. There will certainly still be a strong leadership structure in place. As far as I can tell, the company I'm at follows the model alexbanks described, and it seems to work quite well. We generally do not hire people on in senior or lead roles. If someone has 15 years of experience and they're a team lead at their previous job, the chances are still very high they'll have to start as a "normal" developer with us. (Notably, we do not tie salary to title. A "software developer" can have an arbitrarily high salary if needed.) If they demonstrate the capacity for leadership, we will identify that and very quickly offer them more responsibility and promotions whenever the opportunity arises.