Ego and Engineers

Excerpts from The Dilbert Principle by Scott Adams

Ego-wise, two things are important to engineers: a) how smart they are, b) how many cool devices they own.

The fastest way to get an engineer to solve a problem is to declare that the problem is unsolvable. No engineer can walk away from an unsolvable problem until it’s solved. These types of challenges quickly become personal – a battle between the engineer and the laws of nature.

Engineers will go without food and hygiene for days to solve a problem. (Other times just because they forgot.) And when they succeed in solving the problem they will experience an ego rush that is better than sex – and I’m including the kind of sex where other people are involved. Not only is it better at the moment, but it lasts longer.

When an engineer says that something can’t be done (a code phrase that means it’s not fun to do), some clever normal people have learned to glance at the engineer with a look of compassion and pity and say something like: “I’ll ask Bob to figure out. He knows how to solve difficult technical problems.”

At that point, it is a good idea for the normal person to not stand between the engineer and the problem.

Engineers can actually hear machines talk to them. The computer hums an approving tune when the engineer writes an especially brilliant piece of computer code. An engineer who is surrounded by machines is never lonely and never judged by appearance. These are friends. So it should be no surprise that engineers invest much of their ego in what kind of “friends” they have.