I doubt this was ever a thing at all. I think the author falls to the common nostalgia trap of an imagined "perfect" past that has degraded somehow. It's a trap

I doubt this was ever a thing at all. I think the author falls to the common nostalgia trap of an imagined "perfect" past that has degraded somehow. It's a trap all human beings easily fall into, so I wouldn't blame him, but I fail to remember any such period from my career or older historical accounts that titles were reliably and consistently meaningful across the industry. The moment you've got more than a handful of companies doing software, each company will do its own thing with the titles it gives — and there are few incentives (if any) to heavily gatekeep titles with a complex and hard-to-implement certification process. And if a company does end up implementing some sort of certification anyway, it would be specific for that particular company and not something that's relevant for the entire industry. I would even argue that's not just the case for software, but for any industry that is not regulated by the state or by a mandatory certifying body such as law, accounting and medicine — and even in those industries, the standardized certificates you get are generally limited to a fairly entry level. The only imagined past where career progression was strongly regulated that I can think of is European Professional guilds in the late Middle Ages through the Early Modern period, where you'd often apprentice for 7 years or so before attaining the title of Journeyman, and then you would have to wait anything between 10 to 20 years to never (the most common result) before you obtain the necessary funds and approval to become a master and practice on your own. I'm not sure there is any point going back to THAT system.