No Good Engineer Is Arrogant

Fair observation.

I do use AI tools in my writing process — the ideas, stories, and opinions are mine (20+ years of them), but I use AI to help structure and polish the prose.

I think this is where most technical writing is heading, and I'm still finding the right balance between efficiency and keeping my natural voice. Appreciate the feedback.

I felt the same.

> This isn’t a sign of incompetence. It’s a sign that you’re actually doing real work.

> Your value as an engineer isn’t in executing the same playbook forever. It’s in expanding the domain of what’s possible.

> That experience doesn’t produce arrogance. It produces humility.

> They’re not confident that they already have all the answers. They’re confident that they’ll find them.

I did have this situation several times in the past. One thing that has worked well for me is to be a bit of a stubborn mofo in challenging people with arguments and not let go so easily.

I don't think you need to be arrogant, but you do need to know how to argue rationally. At least this works quite well with germanic-origin folks, maybe not so well in other contexts.

Another thing that helps is reputation, you do need to build that and that allows your arguments to be heard. No need really to be arrogant and loud IMO still.

This reputation thing, also brings other problems, because it's not good when people don't challenge you, then you need to find skeptics. This is very necessary when you do high end stuff.

> So a truly great engineer also needs to be arrogant/assertive/loud as that is the only way to fight other arrogant people. The "quiet confident" engineers opinion will be overruled by loud incomptent engineers.

What is the underlying cause here? Or is this just a product of group psychology...(?) I feel like it's typically weak and/or incompetent management but hesitating to jump right to that because it's largely out of most people's control beyond a job change.

there is also the case of Stephan Wolfram ...

physically large, loud, bossy, no doubt talented but relentlessly seeking to shout out others, "look at me" more than others, take control of budgets and company leadership at every opportunity.. and do some math. Build a system of slave-like labor from wanna-be's and then mercilessly and ruthlessly take their work as your own, demand that it is all yours, and take legal control with "investors" on your side.

source: direct contact with said jerk Wolfram

Fair point.

I kept this one intentional as a thesis statement, but the concrete examples live in the companion pieces — like a bug that took 7 years to find because I kept assuming my mental model was right (https://agilitza.com/blog/the-7-year-bug-that-took-3-minutes...).

That one's the humility and persistence lesson in action.

That's not vague at all? Emotions aren't easily indexed quantitatively because there's a large variance in affect and expression of affect in different people. I understood what he was saying as "If you don't remain a perpetual learner and show respect to projects and other people, then you're going to lose your edge in solving complex problems".