"Respect" is a social construct that relies highly on social interaction. Since programming is a lonely activity it's hard to earn respect beyond peers. Not tha

"Respect" is a social construct that relies highly on social interaction. Since programming is a lonely activity it's hard to earn respect beyond peers. Not that one should really care about that much. I have found that i earned more respect when i started introducing myself as "entrepreneur" than i got when i was "programmer", even though i actually work less in general now. As for working in other fields, from my experience in a biology lab, yes, you may earn "God-like" status sometimes, that is, become the last resort for everyone, but truth-be-told, sometimes you find yourself doing boilerplate work by just implementing some algorithm and nothing too exciting.