While I agree with what most of the replies, especially that a title can't make up for skill and knowledge, one thing I have to disagree on is with any time analogy. Time doing a job doesn't necessarily have an effect on retaining skills.
We have a guy working for us (for now anyway) who has been doing IT work (desktop and laptop help desk type work) for the better part of 10+ years, yet he is still on a junior level. I had to help him figure out a very basic networking problem on his own computer that any first year IT person should have been able to troubleshoot. I've tried to teach him some basic skills and yet, he just doesn't get it. He doesn't seem like an idiot but after 10 years, 90% of his job, it's almost like we have to train him on the exact same things every few months.
I would agree that a junior level person is given tasks to accomplish, they need that eagle eye on them most of the time, and should be considered a beginner. They have neither the real world skills nor time "behind the wheel" to gain the experience needed.
A mid-level person is someone who has mastered some areas of expertise, is given some jobs, but can also find their own work to do as well, but really doesn't need the hand holding a junior person would need and they would be in a position to offer advice & some training to junior personal.
A master is someone who we all go to when your world breaks around you. They are the calm, cool, and collected person who has seen it all and done it all before. They know the in's and out's and could tell you everything and anything about that particular program, hardware, network etc. etc. etc. they are the trainers, mentors and people that offer up advice on how things really work.
Just my two cents on it. I think we all can be all three levels in certain areas it just depends on your job, your skills, how long you've been doing it and how long you retain that information. I know senior DBA's that are masters at SQL, mid-level at Sybase and juniors at Oracle. Yet a Senior DBA could be a master at any one of them or all of them.
Cheers
Rob
The answer is always "PEBKAC!