I'm the type of person that can recognize an actor by their face and remember movies that they've been in, but couldn't tell you their name or the name of the movies.

My first career was in systems engineering. In that industry, there is no P.E., accreditation is handled by industry manufacturers and their certifications draw on a knowledge-base equivalent to bachelor, masters, even doctorate levels of experience. When people asked what I did, I told them I was a systems engineer, that was literally my job title. Some chick got super offended because I wasn't a P.E. despite the fact that I had more experience and industry accreditation than many newly minted P.E.s.

Here's my thought--not everything revolves around titles or accreditation. These are important signifiers of ability which we know employers rely on to ascertain ability. At best, these things are a perfect reflection of knowledge and experience, at best they represent those things... but they're just that: a representation, not the essence.

It sucks that the world needs benchmarks to ensure people are accurately representing their qualifications. In a perfect world, everyone would be able to give a complete and honest assessment of their abilities. However, those who are adept with thinking and analysis are doing themselves a disservice by letting the tail wag the dog, the title wag the ability. I tend to assume people who get really caught up on this are not very confident that their ability can speak for itself.