Therefore, they assume that any network manager who pays it has to be stupid. It hasn't occurred to them that the manager simply hasn't had the time to attend a two-week training class, or doesn't have uninterrupted hours to sift through thousands of IP addresses to design an optimal subnet schema. Many of them have never managed a network. Often, they've never even been regular employees anywhere. Hired guns since entering the working world, they are unfamiliar with the overarching concerns of running a network and the distractions of daily operations.
Arrogant specialists are nothing new, of course.
Like geologists in the '70s and C programmers in the '80s, router specialists in the '90s are the dernier cri . Demand is so great that anyone with even a smidgen of knowledge commands a mind-boggling amount of esteem and money. That's what a free market is all about. Of course, as customers in that free market, we should be demanding routers that don't need so much expensive attention. The truth is that it does not have to be this tough.