My theory is that engineers are too honest, take new initiatives too literally or simply not politically savvy. Everybody complains about title inflation but the engineering department is the only department that actually does something about it. We have the same with travel expenses. My department does often not even do necessary travel while everybody else goes to "offsite" meetings and "kickoffs" and a ton of other stuff all the time.
Engineering is a discipline that requires and rewards rigour. It isn't just travel budgets. Just compare how you do hiring vs those other departments, or how work is reviewed, or assigned, or performance measured. I bet you anything the engineering teams will be vastly more systematic, frugal and rigorous than marketing, HR, PM, account managers etc.
