Disagreeing with social norms doesn't strike me as humble.
I didn't say anything about whether experience was important. What I said was "these words are used to describe years of experience, and people trying to use them to describe skillset are making an error."
Most of the resume is about skillset. Why try to make this about skillset too? You've got entire lists of your specific skills, plus your jobs where and how they were applied.
To me, this seems like saying "no, college degree means I have the skills, skills are more relevant than education, I didn't actually get the degree but I have the skills, so I can wear the title"
Except that phrase doesn't mean "skilled," it means "years of experience," just like a degree doesn't mean skilled.
The reason we in hiring want to know how many years someone has under their belt is:
1) Everyone who's been in the job two years thinks they're the smartest and most motivated and that means they're just as good as everyone above them, and
2) Very little about seniority is actually about skillset. It's mostly about being able to define work, to be dependable, and to be able to clearly communicate expectations
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> There is no industry-wide agreement what senior engineer is.
There doesn't need to be. This is nationwide, across industries, and a matter of law for government jobs. Agreement, by industry or individual, isn't relevant.
This would be like asserting that there's no industry-wide agreement on what age of employment is. There doesn't need to be; we have society for that.
You can crack any HR college textbook and look this up. These words have meanings, regardless of whether you imagine an industry wide agreement exists.
What use does a word like "senior" have if it means something different company to company? What's it even there for, at that point? In hiring someone, what do I learn from "oh well they performed at that company's senior level?" Do you think I know what every company individually defines that word to mean? Who is gaining calibration there?