I've been lucky in that anywhere I've worked, titles like that came with additional technical responsibilities and were awarded by technical managers who actually had a stake in whether or not people were qualified for them. The youngest company I've worked for started in the early 90s, though, so I've weirdly avoided a lot of the practices born from startup culture over the past couple of decades, and haven't had the chance to get burned by (many of) them. Sort of parallel to your criticism is the "what do I call myself on LinkedIn before I've had any actual job titles" thing, which I really don't care about. I've had a bunch of job titles over the years and I've gotten 'less' descriptive in my 'business card' level title for those sorts of uses— I think it's all up to whoever is doing the hiring to cut through the chaffe, and anything on LinkedIn should be considered marketing fluff anyway. Maybe it's different with ATS job applications and HR people?