[wpietri]

I don't think they're commonly stated beliefs. I think that people commonly behave as if they believe those things, though.

My first technical job was working for my university. I learned early on that the admin people were the backbone of the place. They were smart, competent, and hardworking, and a lot of people treated them like furniture. They were used to it, but I found it rage-inducing.

I've definitely seen a lot of stuff like that here. A number of times I've had words with fellow engineers who apparently thought they were too good to get their hands dirty. I've had engineering managers explicitly tell me that engineers were too expensive or important a resource to do anything but code. It doesn't take a lot of that for an implicit caste system to develop.