[hga]

Hmmm, that's true in the US as well. Are there any countries/cultures in the world where "technical people" get a seriously greater amount of respect?

MIT takes it position as the world's preeminent technical school seriously and in the mid-80s decided this was the single biggest external issue it/the STEM professions had.

[wmil]

It's an ego problem. They can't do your job, so they assume you can't do theirs. If you could, then clearly you're smarter and that's hard to handle.

Of course the real problem is that non-tech people rely more on political skills and networking to get and keep their jobs. Their day to day work skill set is often quite low.