You can be a junior developer with 15 years of experience, but it's quite hard to hear.
I sort of feel bad for them because without a large step down in title they’d never get another job. Perhaps that’s the trick - title inflation to mask bad pay?
How does inflating titles help to attract talent?
Do you mean this: let's say they want to hire a senior software engineer, but the salary for this level would not attract any candidates so instead they try to hire a staff engineer?
Mostly trying to understand if this is middle-managers tricking their higher ups or if it's the company trying to trick the candidates.
If the salary range for "senior" is 50-70k, this might be attractive for a customer service rep but not for a senior software developer. Thus, you'll need to inflate the title to be either a manager, director, or staff/prinicple (if HR recognizes that) to be authorized to offer market compensation for a senior software developer.
This is particularly apparent in large cities, where salaries can be almost double at each end of the spectrum. From what I have seen promotion to senior or hiring inexperienced staff at senior level is the only way these companies can retain or recruit staff.