Right - I get exactly the same thing. I have a PhD and am a senior staff engineer and people in UK society still assume I'm very low paid and very low status, and that I work in a cubicle as an underclass troll. I have my feet in two camps because I'm also an Army officer. As soon as I put that hat on (literally) my social status goes up by an order of magnitude. I think a lot of people in CS don't know what it's like in other fields and they assume they're relatively well regarded and respected by society. They aren't!