It seems the author has given their own meaning to Senior Engineer as a sort of weird gatekeeping, "you aren't a REAL senior engineer unless you're done X, Y, and Z"

My counterargument is that the very few job titles in Software Engineering was a bug, not a feature, and forced good engineers into management, as it was the only way to climb the career ladder.

By now creating more defined rungs on the latter, software engineers are able to climb a more reasonable career ladder with more than "junior engineer" and "forged in the crucible."