[lucideer]

While informal culture and individuals' self-importance do play a role, it's also down to strict old-fashioned salary scales that many universities have in place (even if your day-to-day colleagues see you as a peer, the administrative systems defining your salary range can't/won't). Salaries are often strictly attached to letters behind your name, at a high level, and largely immovable by individual research departments.

And secondly, while your PHD peers may earn more than you, they also often earn much less than software industry averages.

[blululu]

I don’t think this is true in the slightest. At UC, research assistants typically make more than Grad Students or post-docs (of course the overhead and mentorship are also different and allegedly there is some possibility for greater career advancement). The snobbery is just plain snobbery. In industry there are plenty of people who make substantially more than me and I have never once felt the levels of condescension that I got from mediocre academics. There are maybe rationalizations related to scarcity and all that but jerk behavior is still jerk behavior.

[lucideer]

The intent of my comment wasn't to make out snobbery doesn't exist (or isn't rampant - it is & I've experienced plenty of snobbery from academics myself). Just that there are additional factors.

> At UC, research assistants typically make more than Grad Students or post-docs

That's cool but I didn't say every university; I don't think one counterexample makes my comment "[not] true in the slightest".