In my opinion, it's because, outside a few rare companies, programmers are generally viewed as mental laborers: the digital, modern equivalent of blue collar wo

In my opinion, it's because, outside a few rare companies, programmers are generally viewed as mental laborers: the digital, modern equivalent of blue collar workers. Some comments above seem to rationalize this by saying that software development is viewed as a cost center. Perhaps that's part of it. But, there are many types of cost centers but which aren't viewed like programming.