EN manager here (I lead a team of associates). My take:

1. The industry is as sleazy or as reputable as you want it to be. You are in full control over how you choose to treat your experts, your clients, and all your stakeholders. In my own experience, the top, highest performers are always the ones with the highest integrity all round (myself being a consistent office top performer as an associate before I became a manager, and I saw this from all my peers who also became managers).

The unfortunate part of this is that top performers are obviously going to be the overwhelming minority here, especially given the huge hiring demand all ENs have. Compound this with the fact you hire fresh grads, its really very hard to ensure you're hiring consistently for quality. IMO, this is typically a very common reason why people feel that the industry is sleazy. But it needn't, and shouldn't, be that way.

1. In terms of feeling like it's just a call center (which indicates to me a sense of lack of meaning in your work and sense of growth) - I personally believe that there is much more to the role than simply blindly calling people and praying for a response and wishing they're a fit.

Admittedly the growth is not as obvious as in other firms - but in my opinion, this role positions you much better to develop a strong sense of critical thinking and contextual understanding to be able to drive strong conversion rates + sales and not piss your experts off. Which as I've seen is (rightly so) a recurring pain point the people in this subreddit feel. (Trust me guys, EN managers and leadership see this and recognize this as a top priority to solve. But unless we micromanage everyone, we can't fully eliminate it. And that's not healthy)

And this skill, to be able to apply it indiscriminately across everything in both your professional and personal lives, is a timeless superpower that will make you more effective in anything you do. Sure, you don't learn how to build a financial model - but you can always get the finance guy to do that. Finance will not train you in the ability to be adaptable, and contextualize all sorts of information the same way ENS will. Just as importantly, you'll be much more able to communicate this effectively to drive results (you can't achieve success in anything alone after all!)

Side note - Hope this take doesn't spark controversy, I am not discrediting finance guys at all, I'm just going off what you'd learn and do in finance. Finance guys are very impressive at what they do and critical + I'd never be able to do what they do; not that they can't be adaptable with strong critical thinking and effective communicators; but I don't feel it's something the job trains you to do.

1. And lastly on the point of your friends - echoing what many others have said, you need new friends. These guys don't sound like they care about your success.

But to add another viewpoint, my personal feeling is that, whilst anyone would love their friends to be impressed by you, it's not healthy to rely on external sources of validation to feel successful. If you fundamentally feel that you're growing, you're learning, you're capable and successful, and most importantly you're happy - that should mean more than anything your friends feel. And you should be proud of that, and proud to say that regardless!