A buddy of mine in grad school (he was an HEP postdoc), once told me (computational condensed matter), that I was working in the dirt left over from the "real" physics. He was a nice guy, but enjoyed ribbing me a bit.

That said, I do recollect mostly condescending attitudes from the HEP folks.

After finishing my Ph.D., I moved on to a successful career with building, deploying, supporting supercomputers, and the codes that run on them. My friend meanwhile, wound up working in condensed matter physics, modeling semiconductors (which is what I wrote my thesis on) for a large chip company.

It seems reality sometimes has a sense of humor.