That's all true, and yet, and yet. > and seeing your influence grow as you are trusted with more things. That's the ideal scenario, that you earn the esteem a

That's all true, and yet, and yet. > and seeing your influence grow as you are trusted with more things. That's the ideal scenario, that you earn the esteem and trust of your peers because the work you do speaks for itself. The flipside with this is, this process takes time. It really takes years. Sometimes there will not be that time. You are a new hire brought in to do a high-impact thing; or a high-impact project crosses across the entire organization where suddenly all participants are relative stranger; or the team you worked in was of very low external visibility but a mentor recognized your potential and pulled you out to help recalibrate a different but malfunctioning team, etc... Then titles are important. It is very unfortunate that we are very cynical of titles, because, in well-run organizations, they are meaningful, and in fact, should be meaningful. Imagine in the military if every officer had to prove themselves over and over again. It's unworkable. At some point, larger organizations will need to grant leverage to a technical individual. A title helps with providing that.