I'm fascinated that in the UK, software engineers are not viewed as white-collar professionals. That seems to be a rather big difference between the work culture of the UK and the USA.
Yes, like I say, the class system, and the typical engineer's strongly expressed desire to dress scruffily and generally nonconfom, disregard hierarchy and so on. There's no reason that software professionals shouldn't be on a par with lawyers and accountants, the work is similar enough (describing the current and desired states of complex systems in very precise terms, and creating finely detailed plans for getting from here to there).
> describing the current and desired states of complex systems in very precise terms, and creating finely detailed plans for getting from here to there
What a beautiful and elegant description of software engineering!