A thinking engineer

I've worked with some great engineers in my time (and continue to work with many today), and as an aside, I like to think some people might count me in their list. But back to topic: over the years I've also met some people who would be considered great engineers by others, but I wouldn't rate that high. The reason for this is also one of the factors that I always cite when asked what constitute a great engineer. Of course I rate the usual things, such as ability to code, understand algorithms, and know a spin-lock from a semaphore. Now maybe it's my background (I really think not, but threw that out there just in case I'm wrong) but I also add the ability to say no, or ask why or what if? To me, it doesn't matter whether you're an engineer or an engineering manager, you've got to be confident enough to question things you are asked to do, unless of course you know them to be right from the start.

As a researcher, you're expected to question the work of others who may have been in the field for decades, published dozens of papers and be recognised experts in their fields. You don't take anything at face value. And I believe that that is also a quality really good engineers need to have too. You can be a kick-ass developer, producing the most efficient bubble-sort implementation available, but if it's a solution to the wrong problem it's really no good to me! I call this The Emperor's New Clothes syndrome: if he's naked then say so; don't just go with the flow because your peers do.

Now as I said, I've had the pleasure to work with many great engineers (and engineering managers) over the years, and this quality, let's call it "thinking and challenging" is common to them all. It's also something I try to foster in the teams that work for me directly or indirectly. And although I've implicitly been talking about software engineering, I suspect the same is true in other disciplines.