[walshemj]

But how does this compare to other professions say a lawyer or a medical doctor with the same experience.

I suspect in Europe and the UK in particular engineering is seen as a lower status profession - may be less so in Germany

[Cephlin]

In the UK when I tell people I'm a programmer, software engineer, web developer, systems engineer or whatever role I've had at the time, they usually ask me to fix their Windows machine... I guess that's the level of respect we get here.

[steevenwee]

In my experience that's not specific to the UK.