Has there been any official word on this issue? I've been holding off on starting a new character until I find out for sure, since I'd kinda like to grab a particular character early on and keep them for most/all of the game. That follower joined my current character at a very low level, but by the 20's they were constantly getting one-shotted by nearly everything and had really lost their usefulness in combat, despite being in heavy armor and carrying decent weaponry. It seems rather artificial to specifically avoid an area/npc/quest line at low levels, just so a particular follower will be stronger when you do eventually acquire them.

I'm on PC so I suppose I could use the console command to despawn/respawn a companion and catch their level up to mine, but I'd still prefer to have some official word on whether or not this non-leveling of followers is intended (and if it's not, is there an ETA on a fix?)