It seems pretty unavoidable to me that people will ‘win’ status this way. On the other hand, if ‘level 4 programmer’ means something specific, and someone claims to be one, that claim should be falsifiable, and they should lose a significant chunk of status if it’s falsified—more than they’d gain from the lie in the first place, in fact. So it’s still unlikely to be a problem.
It seems pretty unavoidable to me that people will ‘win’ status this way. On the other hand, if ‘level 4 programmer’ means something specific, and someone claims to be one, that claim should be falsifiable, and they should lose a significant chunk of status if it’s falsified—more than they’d gain from the lie in the first place, in fact. So it’s still unlikely to be a problem.