They really don't. Your skill gives you legitimacy, a title is just a good heuristic for someone who doesn't otherwise know you, but nobody should assume your skill level based only on your title.
I was semi-considering at one place making my title Computational Demonologist, especially since I primarily did systems level programming and reverse engineering there.
Titles at small companies are flexible, and at large companies may not even be indicative of what you do. My first software job my official title was "Data Analyst". I wrote a good chunk of the server code, did gatekeeping on getting stuff into prod, did application rearchitecture of the backend. That sound like a Data Analyst?
They really don't. Your skill gives you legitimacy, a title is just a good heuristic for someone who doesn't otherwise know you, but nobody should assume your skill level based only on your title.
I was semi-considering at one place making my title Computational Demonologist, especially since I primarily did systems level programming and reverse engineering there.
Titles at small companies are flexible, and at large companies may not even be indicative of what you do. My first software job my official title was "Data Analyst". I wrote a good chunk of the server code, did gatekeeping on getting stuff into prod, did application rearchitecture of the backend. That sound like a Data Analyst?
It’s likely that people you meet at work will make a quick judgement based on your title, since they don’t know your skills yet.
If they're smart, they won't bet all that much on those assumptions though. Then again, not everybody is smart.