[SmellTheGlove]

You're getting very close to the root cause - customers and even colleagues don't really care about the work that goes into the data. They care about the end deliverable, because that's what creates value for them, and fairly so. That gets at why data engineering as a discipline isn't (IMHO) very well respected.

I know this isn't reddit, so I'll point you to reddit. Check out /r/datascience where those folks talk about what it takes to be a data scientist. Some folks are honest about data engineering, but most handwave past it, or talk about it like it's beneath them. Their role would not be possible without solid data engineering, rather than a complementary and equally important discipline. Good luck doing "data science" or "analytics" or "machine learning" or every other buzzword without clean data, and for us data engineers, good luck ever demonstrating value without the analytics folks working with us.