Yep. I see a lot of suits in their native habitats, as Lords of the Cubicles. These Lords, in their familiar environment, are experts at navigating a formal hierarchy, where rights and privileges are strictly defined by rank. They know that their power derives not from their innate worth but from the badges of office conferred upon them by the hierarchy. And marketeers...good lord, their rank is "earned" by bullshit artistry.

Did that "look" by any chance resemble a deer caught in the headlights? I strongly suspect that that snobbishness covered insecurity. Your buddy can say "I am a [insert rank here]" and if you ask him what's he's done, he can only say "I done been a [insert rank here]". All he builds are ephemeral slogans to induce people to drink sugared water.

Lot of interesting responses on this thread, and a lot that hit on that theme and variations. The suits have gained control of the system, so it's not surprising that the system exalts the suits. You're not the first to notice the problem. Management and labor aren't natural enemies because of some shallow notion of "class warfare", but because suits consider Expense to be a mortal enemy, and human labor is the major expense in the vast majority of businesses. They fear honest labor. I'm not surprised your buddy got a little shifty, face to face with somebody his caste is trying to spreadsheet out of existence. It's galling to a suit to meet somebody whose skills are resistant to automation and outsourcing.

I know you can't get your hands dirty typing at a keyboard, but the geek professions are still engineering professions and still based on the notion of building things. In my three decades as a geek I've seen Silicon Valley taken over by suits, ejecting the legendary engineer-entreprneurs and bringing in MBAs to "put the place on a business-like footing". Like Carly Fiorina.xls, who transformed Hewlett-Packard into the brand "HP". (And who is now McCain's chief handler from corporate America.) Part of "rationalizing" software geeks has involved transforming their work through the use of "software components" into essentially an assembly line job, plugging off-the-shelf components into a design dictated by marketing in a gaudy Microsoft PowerPoint presentation, and executed in lockstep to meet a deadline mandated by a pretty schedule created in Microsoft Project. Marching in formation has replaced gazing out the window thinking up the Next Big Thing and building it.

I have some ideas about what a better world would look like, and even how to get there. But it'll sound like politics, and I'd be leaving myself wide open for a scream-and-leap from that indefatigable free-marketeer Tom. Lotsa scar tissue on my back already...I'll just drop the hint "what variation on free-market capitalism did Heinlein favor?", and "how would it lead to a free market in labor that would result in an honest valuation of human labor?".

The problem isn't that people have forgotten the value of real labor and skill. It's simply that the present system takes a dim view of those things and works night and day to squeeze them out of existence.