I recently saw a resume claiming to be a "Senior X" where they claimed literally zero experience in X. (X in this case is a type of work, not a language.) Given that the person in question had what appeared to be a standard bachelor's degree with no particular focus in X and less than two years of work experience in the general field total... it was a bit hard to believe.

(If that's "Senior", then what of someone that does have ten years of experience? "Decrepit Software Engineer"? Maybe a series of promotions named after increasingly elaborate tombs? Grave Marker, Marble Headstone, Vault, Mausoleum, Master of the Crypt. Who wouldn't want to be introduced as "Software Engineer and Master of the Crypt"? Apropos of the current day. Or maybe progressive tiers of Undead. "Jerf, Lich Lord of Software Engineering". That could work. Or maybe you want to go up the Vampire tier... "Jerf, Vampire Patriarch of Software Engineering".)

Yep, same thing happened to me. I was a computer operator for a small company that was trying to start a new line of business in the mid 90s. I was introduced as their "lead developer with 5+ years of experience". The "experience" was writing Applesoft Basic and Assembly language programs in middle school and high school and doing a contract for a college while I was in college writing HyperCard Stacks....

Now 20 years later, I'm introduced as the "Lead AWS Architect" because I have about a year of experience with AWS and three certs....

That's my experience as well. In the first 6 months in my first job out of college the product manager started introducing me as the senior developer, and some years later while working for another company the project manager introduced me as the senior backend developer at a point where I had zero professional backend experience.

Agreed with this completely. People really shouldn't be offended by job titles as they vary so much between companies.

Experience and output matter. I can't imagine interviewing someone and asking about the current job title.

Has this person managed people? Lead teams? Done good work? Great. Title doesn't really matter for that.

At my startup, the sycophant with the least skills got promoted to CTO when the other one threw in the towel and there was only 3 weeks to the AGM. So... yeah - job titles don't belie abilities/experience

This isn't unique to tech, either. In a lot of enterprise sales orgs, literally everyone is a "VP".

Duetsche Bank counts a metric ton of Director's haha. I noticed it when clicking through LinkedIn.