I think that feeling is almost universal mate!.....remember,as long as you get your hands dirty you will be viewed as 'pond life'...and anything that drains a companies profit(engineering of course) will never get the 'feeling of worth 'from the upper echelons of management!....Just remember , you fix the great white bird,they just drive it! if it was difficult to fly engineers would do it!
You may be more intelligent/common sensical/human than some of the seat-to-stick-interface we deal with....(has anyone seen the psych tests lately??) but they are doing the 'smart' thing as one F/O correctly pointed out to me.
If you've got the money,and can put up with the butt-kiss world of flight dick ,most of us could do it