Tongue in cheek? I'm not sure.
This cultural disdain has happening for a long time.
There were few petroleum engineers in the early days of the industry. The industry trained field hands, who used their high school math skills, to work as engineers. The few engineers created templates for the quasi-engineers to follow as they were making their engineering decisions. I did encounter a few of these "quasi engineers" in the last years of their career.
In the 1960s, the petroleum industry started training young engineers from other engineering disciplines (usually mechanical and chemical) who could not get a job in their preferred discipline. It was usually considered a step down to accept a job in the petroleum industry. But these engineers had a choice between being an engineer in the petroleum industry or driving a truck.
In a like manner, engineering students who passed their first year are given their choice of engineering discipline; the highest marks got the first choice. The petroleum engineering faculties were usually filled by the bottom of the first-year engineering class.
There has been a social stigma against petroleum (and mining) engineers for a long time. Probably more so today. It never has been an honorable occupation, but it pays better than the other engineering disciplines.
Like it or not, we will still be using petroleum products for another 50 years. We do need well educated engineers to get this oil out of the ground. If we get too hard on the social stigma, then the industry will find less capable people. There was a good reason why the industry does not have the quasi-engineers any more.
------------
Yes, we should lose the Christmas card tradition. Thankfully there is a lot less of that than before, but the greeting card section of my stores is still quite large. These traditions are a great waste of resources.
Mr. Ritchford sent me a nasty note on Mastodon. He said he was going to block me, but I still get his posts.
I have any article in the works that I can be blamed for climate change. I should not have quit politics until I got my "much higher fuel tax" in place.
