A few weeks back I was asked a seemingly innocuous question by an friend:
In the context of engineering, what do you think people who become genuinely exceptional are usually good at?
This friend is still a student, and the vast majority of the engineers he has worked alongside with are also students, at most a few years more advanced than him. He and his colleagues are still in there initial competency ramp. And, although he might already get the vague sense that some of his acquaintances are progressing at a much faster rate than others, capturing the conditions in which some would follow this competency ramp to becoming excellent engineers is still unclear.
This question truly gave me pause. Although the essence of what is truly an exceptional engineer seemed graspable in my mind, the proper terms needed to convey it seemed to flee from being put down on the page. Then came the matter of identifying the precursor conditions. What elevates these engineers above the rest? What were their defining characteristics? Why them and not the others ?
So I pondered: a day, a week, two weeks. And although the current analysis still feels lacking, this is what I have so far been able to grasp.
Before we start I must take the time to define what I mean by “exceptional engineer”.
In my mind an exceptional engineer is measured by his ability to create highly complex systems using his own power. If we define power as : “the ability to modify reality by making things happen in the real world through his own acts, and without needing to rely on the ability of others”, then exceptional engineers are by essence powerful.
For a truly exceptional engineer, within his field of work, the question isn’t one of potential ability but of time and resources. He has the ability to envision, design and maintain the architecture of a highly complex system as well as the technical ability to bring it to life. If an expertise is slightly outside of his current circle of competence, he can identify and acquire the necessary knowledge needed to complete his current endeavour.
By definition, the harsh truth is, most engineers are not exceptional and likely never will be. These exceptional individuals are the outlier events, the fringe minority. Most organizations, independently of their best desires, are unable to cultivate a large talent pool of exceptional engineers, though, some organizations through the nature of their work do attract them like flies. But, what actually makes one an exceptional engineer, what differentiates them from the merely very competent or very experienced?
In truth, I have both only, and already, met 4 engineers I could qualify as truly exceptional.
These are people with inherently higher intellectual capabilities. Yet, calling them “very smart” would be too imprecise, rather, they had a much higher than average processing speed and ability to easily manipulate highly abstract and complex concepts. They have a fundamental speed advantage when reasoning about complex systems: everything takes less time.
For all people there exists a limit to how complex a system they can envision and keep track of in there mind can get. As a system grows in complexity this eventually becomes a bottleneck. To deal with this the brain simplifies systems through abstractions: rather than needing to envision all the detailed internal interactions a black box model is created, roughly replicating the high level behavior. Most of us reason using these black boxes, but few are able to open them across a large system. Exceptional engineers are part of these few.
Making the former possible: they tended to have much better than average long term memory, allowing them to recall specifics of concepts and system details they had encountered. Do you remember why that second early valid signal was included on this interface from 2 years ago? Most probably forgot, they have it filed as a nuance of the system needed to handle that one specific corner case that happens once every blue moon. They can also tell you why we cannot get rid of it and what would need to change in the overall system’s architecture for it to disappear. As well as the drawbacks to the re architecture explaining why it hasn’t been done.
We could call these people “gifted”, but having also met a large pool of people equally if not much more gifted, that I cannot qualify as exceptional engineers and that seemingly would never attain the label, I can confidently say there is more than raw processing speed and memory. Do not misunderstand me, most of these gifted individuals sat comfortably as solid contributors that will grow with experience, but they were visibly not following the trajectory of becoming exceptional engineers. There is a deeply different trajectory followed that has elevated these individuals above the merely gifted individuals.
Saying they “put in the work” is much too simple of a statement and doesn’t do justice to the distinction. To them their field isn’t simply a job, it is a part of their identity and self worth. Being good at their “work” is akin to becoming a better individual. Common consensus might qualify this relationship as unhealthy given, from the perspective of external observers, the quantity of time and effort sacrificed towards this end. Ironically these same social edicts consider artists pouring their life into improving their art a worthwhile endeavour worthy of praise. And just like to the artist, to these engineers the quality of their work is a matter of craft.
The last and most central pillar upholding their excellence is that these engineers have independently built up a conceptual model of the systems they interact with. Most engineers are content using a model that is given to them, initially through their education, with the details filled in through their work. They are not looking to re-build their own internal representations from first principles, and the holes and logical incompatibilities in their model are not a problem but a feature of its construction. This is not a matter of laziness, rather I would argue, it is actually the most rational approach. The model is a tool used towards their work and they will fill it in with details as their work requires. If their work doesn’t require it there is no incentive to spend the time and energy to build it up any further.
Exceptional engineers build their own model from first principles, because of this their models are much more nuanced, detailed and logically coherent. This might come at the cost of a slower initial ramp: it is faster to memorise concepts than to be able to understand them from first principles. Because of this, initially, these exceptional engineers might seem slower due to the much higher upfront investment needed. But, given that their model is built independently, unlike other engineers, it is also capable of growing much further and encompassing new concepts for which there is no readily available mentor or source of information. This allows them to build truly novel ideas and form unique insights.
Now for the second harsh truth: most organisations cannot make use of exceptional engineers. The average organizations are designed for the average engineer not the exceptional one, this isn’t a bug, this is the natural adaptation to reflect what the available talent pool is. Organizations cannot hope to scale and be resilient if they are designed to fit outlier events. Because of this, most of these exceptional engineers best work was done outside of their jobs, and most organizations will struggle to tell the difference between a “very good” engineer and a truly exceptional one.
So, for those to which this is simply a matter of career, maybe aiming to be exceptional isn’t the optimal strategy.
But for those for which this is a matter of art …