[BowBun]

When I meet fellow devs, I ask what projects they've shipped. Roles are near-meaningless across companies and convey 0 information about what their work involves in my experience. I appreciate that OP learned something about the job through this article.

[boron1006]

This isn’t foolproof either and plenty of people can talk convincingly about running projects that they had little to nothing to do with.

[BowBun]

Totally agreed, I've been 'got' in interviews before. Now I ask follow-ups with specifics. If you were an IC, you should know libraries/architectures that were used. If you were in leadership, you should be able to tell me the story leading up to a project, about the parties involved, and the outcomes.

It takes time to do properly, though. And most of the time I just don't care about evaluating someone's capabilities like that.

[holden_nelson]

I agree, it feels like roles help the most by getting you through the recruiter and in front of a hiring manager. Which is unfortunate.