My experience as a geek, on shores very far from Silicon Valley, is that engineers are second-class citizens almost everywhere, but particularly where "creatives" are on top.
Look at any high paying industry/job, apart from FAANG tech or doctors - it's either marketing or sales at the end of the day. I'll go so far as to say that even most doctors in the US are in the sales business.
There are places where engineers' and creatives' opinions are valued and taken into account when making decisions, for instance certain quant funds or Hollywood studios. If you want to not be considered a second-class citizen, so to speak, work in a place where ideally your job isn't just coding or building content, but also convincing others of your own ideas (sales) and building consensus within the organization to back them (marketing).
> Hollywood's really different than Silicon Valley. And neither understands the other at all. People up here think being creative is some guys in their late 20s and early 30s sitting around old couches drinking beer thinking up jokes. It couldn't be further from the truth. The creative process is just as disciplined as the technical process; it requires just as much talent. And yet people in Hollywood think technology is only as deep as something you buy. There's no technical culture in Hollywood, they couldn't attract and retain good engineers to save their life, because they're second class citizens down there. Just like creative people are second class citizens in Silicon Valley.
http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,32207-6...