In my observation, most software companies are not technology/engineering companies in the sense you've used above. They have an application that provides value to an industry, or to a group of civilians, but which didn't require any particularly deep insights into new algorithms or into low-level code.
This. Most problem domains (and the software written to solve them) are not particularly 'sexy'. Most programmers aren't elite hackers either, but of those there are a lot who just get the job done.
What I've found is that it's difficult for solid, but not sexy, programmers to get noticed.
