Titles are stupid, I agree. I've had varying titles throughout my career and they've never meant anything, all I care about is the compensation, call me whatever you want. In larger companies I understand the reasoning behind them a little more but outside of FAANG they really don't matter. I've even worked at places that had SE 1, SE 2, Senior SE levels, the compensation has zero ties to those titles. I know for a fact there were SE2's that made a lot more than the seniors (and no, this wasn't just some overlap in compensation tiers, there were no compensation tiers, just made up titles).
