It's all so tiresome.
a shift I feel has occurred in the last 10y in the tech industry is that engineers themselves now are pulled into the political games if they want to continue their path beyond senior engineer roles. of course they aren't compelled to play politics. they could simply do their work well, but then they are likely to stay right where they are unless their manager take the political fight for them. (and often do, in order to keep them).
being visible isn't enough. embellishing your visibility is needed since that's exactly what the others have been doing.
the tech space is becoming terribly sad, with a growing portion of energy expenditure spent outside engineering work.
Politics is the art of communication and other tactic and strategies to gain (or influence those who have) power and control. Spending time embellishing accomplishments or simply making sure our own contributions get better visibility in order to access higher level of seniority is a common political tactic. No difference in merit or abilities or result, but effort to navigate and manipulate perceptions to get endorsement.
I could only deplore my entire life that national/state affairs are over taken by political moves rather than focus on change.It may be what attracted me to tech initially, as it seemed pretty immune to politics (it works or it doesn't). Yet, to my astonishment, politics is prevalent now, and it is even surprisingly difficult to not get objections when I dare to share that observation. At least thank you for sparing me whataboutism fallacious counter arguments.
TL-DR: communication isn't limited to being political.
But this is not inevitable. You can work for a small/medium sized company where the objective is to get things done. Aim at a project where the realization of the product is its own reward, where you learn a lot, where you appreciate your colleagues, where the life/work balance is sane and where the money allows you to live well and prepare for your retirement.
Once you get that, who cares about your title?
What's wrong with that? Senior SDE is a great job; one of the best jobs humanity has ever come up with.