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> If you've never held a management position that includes decisions around compensation increases

In large organisations, yes.

In smaller organisations and startups, the "salary bands" are less fixed and there's more freedom to just pay people what you think they're worth. Consequently the title means less and in a lot of cases a small business really doesn't care what its staff call themselves. Titles can get inflated easily here too [0].

[0] Anecdote: a friend of mine attended a bootcamp, got a job with a small (<20 headcount) business, got up to Senior Developer title within 2 years because the business didn't care. Then transferred to a large org at a suitable Senior pay scale.

> One of the most important roles that titles play in the tech industry (at least the US-centric tech industry) is to help evaluate compensation.

I think there are some hints left by management and HR. We often hear excuses around appraisal like:

"we want to give you a hike, but your current job title doesn't allow us to pay beyond xyz and we don't have budget for a promotion".

I guess there's an element of truth in it sometimes (often these are excuses) because your title may limit your hike but it doesn't stop your manager from assigning and expecting you to take on work above your pay grade.

I would call out that BS excuse. They could pay you whatever they want for your title, the only thing stopping them is an arbitrary policy.

Yeah I've heard that exact phrase. I was told I was already at the top of the band for my title (Senior Engineer haha) and not eligible for the annual salary increase. Then six months later laid off.

One way to get out of this is to have a title wildly out of range relative to your compensation.

If you're title is "engineer" and you're overseeing a technical team and participate in the architectural decision for your company, anyone dealing with your salary (including when moving jobs) will need to actually look at your job instead of just the title.

In the same vein I had a coworker request "staff” as title and we were small enough that it didn't matter.

Worth mentioning that staying in line with other companies is critical for company sponsored immigration in the US. If an individual is paid too differently from their title at other companies, their visa might be denied for being unfair to citizens looking for similar positions. It could be similarly unfair if they're paid differently from citizens with the same title within your company. Hence everyone at your company needs salaries that align with industry titles, or you risk not being able to get visas for international employees.

Yes absolutely! I used to not care about my title at all, then I immigrated to the USA and suddenly all those "creative technologist" titles from my past didn't seem like such a good idea when I was filling out the visa forms.

This is exactly it. This is why often people will have titles change along with increases in compensation even though there may not be any change whatsoever in job description or responsibilities.

I worked for a company where what you said was entirely true - for all offices except the one in Gurgaon.

Those guys had some ridiculous job titles.

What companies? I’ve never worked for a company that did this.