I&#x27;ve lived in the UK for about 10 years now and though I&#x27;m not sure I read or picked up this idea, it has felt &quot;true&quot; in a truthy sort of way - the UK, culturally, regards software engineers or those similar to be little more than educated manual labor. You&#x27;re not in management, so you&#x27;re labor. It&#x27;s a result of the significance of &quot;class&quot; here in the UK and the different ways to define that. And &quot;middle class&quot; here is roughly the equivalent of &quot;upper middle class&quot; in America and IT folks don&#x27;t make enough to be in the &quot;middle class&quot;.<p>&quot;Lions ruled by donkeys&quot; - this saying about British society is still true today and has its roots in the  class divisions and structure. I have heard it said many times by now that Britain is still fundamentally a feudal society, certainly on the psychological level. (And I can see it)  So that is going to certainly influence what management pays labor...<p>It has made me very appreciative of the strengths of American culture&#x2F;society, though there are lots of things to complain about America as well.