What's Up with Title Inflation, and "Software Engineers"?

Something like "software engineer" is vague enough that they can force non-programming tasks into your job description.

Post 2010 it's all been some variation on distributed systems. You can't really just "program" your way to a working K8s cluster.

My degree is in "software engineering", I graduated in 2006 from a Welsh university, so that isn't an example of FAANG anything.

Nor title inflation IMO, original etymology is "one who designs, constructs, or operates military works for attack or defence, etc.", and anyone who uses security components will be doing some of that given how cyberspace as a warfare domain doesn't seem to be particularly constrained these days.