"The Font Fondlers say that being a professional is about serving the users, understanding what they need, and fighting mgmt for an appreciation of the needs of users as integral to product and company success.
The Technophiliacs think being a professional is about demonstrating your technological competence (you can write code, that you understand how the technology works (not just parrot a SME), etc), AND understanding the demands of the business world."
I don't distrust your observations, but this division doesn't make much sense to me. You can't help the user if you don't understand the technology and you have no clue as to what the technology will be used for. The division I observe is that some tech writers totally identify with capital/corporations (very few) and most don't. Some look on their jobs as sinecures, are in automatic mode, and do pretty poor work; others don't. Some are glorified editors; others can actually write a book from scratch. Creative, intelligent plagiarism is 50% of the job -- that's unavoidable.
The "low" status of the tech writer is more of a self-fullfilling prophecy than a given. In the companies for which I have worked, there are more engineering projects than there are documentation resources. If the engineers don't cooperate, smart doc managers tell them that they will not support their projects, therefore their products won't ship, therefore they better cooperate. Stupid managers don't understand this, don't do it, and tech writers suffer as a result. One thing tech writers don't understand is that if engineers are avoiding them, it's often because tech writers ask questions and engineers don't necessarily know what they're doing. Really.
Joanna