[silvertonia]

I think the reason this attitude exists is because the barrier of entry for engineering is higher and more concrete than it is for marketing, or sales, or product. Most people can walk into an entry-level marketing job and get things done, at least poorly. The same isn't true for an entry-level engineering job-- it's literally a nonstarter if you've never written code.

The truth is, very high level marketers or sales people or product managers are every bit as rare as very high level engineers. And at some point in your career you realize there's a crapton of expertise in those areas you don't have, but others do. And working with them and even deferring to their judgement in those areas gets you a lot better results than getting to be king of the castle.