Businesses use title inflation selectively. If I want to toss a carrot that costs virtually nothing to someone, I can give a title promotion of sorts. To some l

Businesses use title inflation selectively. If I want to toss a carrot that costs virtually nothing to someone, I can give a title promotion of sorts. To some labor, that's attractive because they see it as a way to grow their career: someone else at another company may value that title higher to improve my mobility to jump positions, whether or not I'm fully qualified already. Meanwhile, when companies are hiring, they tend to ignore your previous titles and focus on evaluating things objectively. They're aware of title ambiguities because it's a charade they all play. They want to see your actual skillset, look at what you did in your previous role and assess that. During salary and role negotiations, they can use titles against you if they find your previous title wasn't inflated, even if they know you're actually more qualified than the title projects. It can be a way to rationalize lower pay bands or roles at another business. So companies tend to project value in titles when they give them away yet value them as worthless when it matters to them, meanwhile leverage titles any way they can to their advantage. It's an intangible commodity for manipulation.