It's more complex than that, though. If you're meeting with people outside your company, your title can influence how they see you. If you're meeting with a bunch of "Director" level people and you're a "Senior", they may treat you as a lesser member of the group. This can be impactful to your ability to accomplish your goals within that group at times.

That may be true, but definitely not in my experience. I have included my job historically on emails eg: Software Engineer but never my level. I don't even put that on internal emails because I see it as my business and no one else's. This includes when I worked side by side with sales folks from time to time at a start up. If you didn't feel like working with me if I was a SWE I but you feel like it with a Principal, why would I want to work with you?

People do care that someone will show up and answer all their questions in a thorough and non-elitist (read: talking over people's heads) way.

I think your experience is fairly characteristic of software developers. However, there's a lot of other segments out there where title comes into play a lot heavier; where it caries weight in the same way experience does.

It's probably also worth noting that title can impact pay when it comes to a job; a lot of companies have pay caps based on title.

Really, my point was that title is more than just self-gratification.

> Reminds me of American Psycho, where everybody is a damn Vice President (reflective of the time)

Reflective of the industry, really. It’s still that way in banking.

Vice President has legal meaning as a title. Only a vice president or above can make some loans. Since banks make those loans all the time they need a lot of vice presidents to do it. In a small town bank with at most 10 people it makes sense, but for a large banks with branches all over the country you end up with a ton of vice presidents just for that need, but they don't really get any other authority.

Interesting. I always wondered why Senior level engineers at banks got the VP title. It seemed odd for someone formerly an IC to suddenly step into a VP level role, but this makes sense now.

My Father-in-law is a VP at a banking firm, he's just a senior engineer, but he does handle plenty of financials. Makes total sense why he's a VP.

but does it? are these software engineers actually making loans?

No, but there are people at that level in the company who need to sign those contracts (I don't think it's loans specifically), and it's easiest to use a consistent title for everyone at that level.

> Reminds me of American Psycho, where everybody is a damn Vice President (reflective of the time)

My understanding was that this still happens as a way to get around corporate card policies (either from the company or the credit company) that prevent anyone with a lower-than-leadership title from having signature power for purchasing. Want to give someone a corporate card so they can buy their own necessities? Give them a VP title.

I’m not sure that’s true, I had a company credit card when I worked at Oracle and I was just a grunt sys-admin.

> get around corporate card policies

This isn't true for tech companies (except maybe the antiquated ones). At my current firm, everyone got a corp card on request.

At my company everyone beyond intern is expected to have one, just in case we get sent on a trip.