ASG - Many of my pals are engineers. That is not a precursor to me now slagging youse off
but I would suggest that the 'in your head' pressures in each job are completely different. I worked with software before ATC - if I took my time or didn't fix things quite right the first time, sure it pissed the users off, but the time pressure to get the task done 'in my head' was not 'ever present'. (Whether the boss was happy is another matter.)
BUT it is a different ball game in ATC. We often only have seconds to make a critical decision - and believe me when two ac are closing at 15 miles a minute and every landline call you make is engaged, or every r/t call gets 'say again, was that for us?' - each second that that 'thing to do' doesn't get done makes the pressure rise and makes it more likely that another ac comes on frequency to put that 'to do' item further down the list. And we can't just shout clocks off or take a timeout to think about it, the situation just keeps developing ..... at 500kts.
I'm not introducing an us+them mentality, but ATCOs ATSAs and ATEs do different jobs, all needed as a vital part of the team, but, different jobs. And in the same logical vein I don't see nurses asking for parity with doctors.