I live in Austria. With the risk that comes from generalizations, I think you are mostly correct. They get respect from the general population, but when it comes to management and executives, software engineers are mostly seen as IT support, which is of course reflected in the very, very (!) low salaries.

There's this societal idea that "working in IT" is a good thing, but there is no distinction in most people's mind between different IT fields. Most people think that software engineers and people installing printers are more alike than similar.