Engineering titles have always had limited external meaning, but it's not an issue that needs to be "solved".
At a tech company I worked at, we started with no engineering titles (everyone was a SWE) but management eventually added them. My impression was this was due to (1) some candidate wanted a title in order to join the company and (2) executives wanted to quickly distinguish how respected + compensated someone was within the engineering org.
The reality is what one company/team values in terms of engineering skillset could completely differ from another. One company could be working the latest techniques in machine learning, while the other is working on web apps requiring database expertise.
Software engineering is far from a single linear skillset, so expecting titles to accurately reflect that doesn't make sense.
At a tech company I worked at, we started with no engineering titles (everyone was a SWE) but management eventually added them. My impression was this was due to (1) some candidate wanted a title in order to join the company and (2) executives wanted to quickly distinguish how respected + compensated someone was within the engineering org.
The reality is what one company/team values in terms of engineering skillset could completely differ from another. One company could be working the latest techniques in machine learning, while the other is working on web apps requiring database expertise.
Software engineering is far from a single linear skillset, so expecting titles to accurately reflect that doesn't make sense.