It so happens that at that company everyone's title was simply 'Software Engineer'. There was no ego bs so it was a great place to work. I think how helpful you were to others being part of the review is another reason for that. There was a way to see some people's 'rank' by looking at the org chart if you really wanted to. In general swe and senior swe would be under an eng manager, if someone was directly under a director that told you something, and if someone was directly under a vp that also told you something.
I worked at a place that had a system like this. Started great, but turned toxic after a hiring spree.
> Everyone would have responsibility to be a solid engineer.
You would think so, but people with other intentions try to find ways to manipulate the system to achieve various strange goals. They're often successful.
I was thinking about this a bit after reading your comment. Now, I say this as having recently negotiated pretty hard for a "Staff" title, and previously had a "Team Lead" title. I think in certain situations it makes sense to have the title authority to shoot obviously bad engineering problems down, but this has been the exception, rather than the rule, in most of my 12 years of being a software engineer.
So your comment makes me wonder: would it make sense to have a system where everyone would simply be called "Engineer", but allow engineers to vote secretly after having worked with another engineer, on various aspects of their colleague's technical expertise. Engineering Managers or perhaps HR would be aware of the engineering votes, but engineers wouldn't, which would remove much of the implicit bias in engineering meetings. Rather, pay grades would be determined by votes, but no one would ever just "Leave it to Yakaaccount, she's the principal engineer". Everyone would have responsibility to be a solid engineer.