What was your experience climbing the career ladder in tech?

I've seen people call themselves "senior" after 3 years on the job, other become CTOs in the same time, and others still have a senior title after 20(!) years in the industry yet have a fuckton of technical experience.

I've heard that they are all just titles and opinions from "if you don't have the technical skill you can't call yourself a senior", to "senior and staff are just a feeling, principal is the actual senior" and "staff? above senior? we call that manager".

What's your story? Is there a ladder? Do you feel like you belong on it? Where are you on it? Does it make sense? Did you see major bumps in salary? Did titles count at all?