Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has a great line on his Twitter bio: "engineers first!"

Note: not sales first; not biz dev first; engineers first.

In most traditional organizations, unfortunately, engineers are not anywhere near first. Often, once you've cut through the extensive political hierarchies, layers of management, "ideas" people, and various other stakeholders, engineers come out pretty much dead last.

Of course, in technology, if your engineers are at the bottom of the heap, you will always lose.

There are a few different prongs to this problem as it arises in more traditional organizations. Not least of these is a fundamental misunderstanding of what a software engineer actually is: they're not IT support technicians, nor paint-by-numbers factory workers. They're creative knowledge workers; people whose skills allow them to create something from nothing, and who need an environment that allows those skills to be nurtured.

Related is the problem of "ideas" people, who want to claim ownership of the genesis of the product, without actually being able to do anything to create it. There are, of course, lots of different skillsets that go into making a software product, not all of which are engineering-related. However, it's undeniable that there are people in many traditional organizations who wish to claim credit for the creation of these products, to the expense of the people who actually do make them.

Finally, there are often business structures that exist solely for tradition's sake - they're there because that's how they've always be done. Because the engineering mindset is to analyze a structure and try and make something better, engineers may be less willing to play along with the politics within an organization. While I think this is an admirable quality, depending on the organization, it may be to the engineer's detriment.

Because engineers are academically-minded, smart people, they're less willing to navigate these hierarchies. It's also true that many of them may be, unfortunately, less able to navigate attempts to subjugate them, should anyone wish to. The result is terrible working environments for them, and as a direct result, sub-optimal products. Think of it this way: would you make a better product if you're constantly insecure about what you should be doing, or if you have the ability to make it your own?

The nice thing about Silicon Valley style companies is that they're often run by engineers, or people deeply understand the needs of engineers. They put the people who create the products first, and understand that the people who are actively making are the people who truly matter in the product process. Okay, so I'm biased, but this is something I really believe: fundamentally, a company boils down to its products; the products boil down to the people who make them, and the people who use them.

That's one of the reasons why engineers flock to Silicon Valley. It's not just about the gold rush, although there is the small chance you'll strike it lucky. But for everyone else, there are adequate salaries, comfortable working environments, and new kinds of companies that are reinventing the internal structures of work, and respecting the people who are building products.

There are still questions about aspects of Silicon Valley culture; I'm certainly uncomfortable with the bigotry and some of the libertarianism. Nonetheless, it's a safe space for geeks to use their creativity, intelligence and skills to create amazing things - and create incredibly high-value companies in the process. That's something you won't find as often in traditional organizations today - something they will doubtless be scrabbling to catch up with over time.