I have been living in Germany for almost 10 years now and despite good command of both written and spoken German I have a noticeable accent and my texts are not absolutely perfect. I have noticed many times that an average German often judges you by your accent.
By "average" I mean "having an average education level", somebody who has just finished a professional training in Germany and hasn't been exposed to a multi-language community common now for university campus or big international companies.
In most cases this judgement is somewhat deprecatory unless you have an american accent (I don't). This does not necessarily reflect in mistreatment or mocking, not at all, but just a transient indulging smile is enough to feel it.
On the other side when I started to work as a developer for a small company producing software for accounting (FiBu) and sales (WaWi) I noticed that my boss used to take me to important meetings with potential customers and made me speak during those, even when I didn't have any clear idea of my role during the meeting. My idea was that he is using my Russian accent and the known reputation of Russian hackers for a sort of advertisement: look, we have Russian developers in the team! (I am still not sure if this is true, but this is the only explanation I have).
So, my question is not directly bound to the language, but rather to the social aspects of speaking German with accent: what is the best practice here? Is it true about accent what I see or I am being paranoid here?