Guessing you maybe work in the consulting industry?
The "seniors" tend to be glorified salespeople whose job is to put together presentations and reassure clients that everything's going well, while the one or more interns/recent grads do all the technical work. Some projects there'd be one junior literally writing every line of code while the seniors spent their entire time in meeting rooms talking about god knows what.
Dressing smart, talking smoothly, and being older looking (to imply experience to clients) are the attributes that get you a senior role.
I have worked as a software development consultant for more than 20 years and have never seen what you describe.
Not at all my experience of consulting companies. What I saw was that they were very useful training pipelines for juniors.
The companies would staff projects with a mix of seniors and juniors. Seniors to get started fast, in the right direction, and actually guarantee the delivery; juniors to keep the costs lower and to have a pipeline of new people. Hands-on from day 1, sitting with seniors in a project with clear timelines and deliverables, with projects and technologies changing regularly, tended to level up the newcomers fast.
This was in small to midsize (50-500) consulting companies where the projects did not come via CEOs being buddies with others.