Ves lacked many advantages that could shore up his position.
First, he wasn't a genuine Journeyman, so he wouldn't be able to command respect by virtue of his status. Even if he had the biggest fist at the moment, many mech designers subconsciously believed that this would be a temporary state.
It was much like how older advanced mech pilots all considered themselves as equals in skill. They all ran into the bottleneck that barred their way towards metamorphosing into an expert pilot. Even if they excelled in different skills, all of them were the same in the eyes of an expert pilot.
Second, Ves was an outsider. He didn't know anyone from before the Mech Corps drafted him and even his fellow alumni from the Rittersberg University of Technology didn't know him. To be honest, back then he was so mediocre that no one bothered to pay attention to him. He wasn't like Patricia Schneider, who stood out as a genius out of place from the start.