Crazy Engineers

Close your eyes for a moment. Now open them again and look around. Everything you see that was not placed there by mother nature exists because of the creativity and knowledge of engineers, scientists, and technicians. Yes, EVERYTHING.

The clothes you are wearing, the chair you are sitting on, the device you are reading this from, the building sheltering you, the food on your table, the transportation that brought you here. All of it. To a lesser or larger extent, every manufactured item requires machines that need to be engineered, power systems that need to be engineered, equipment that need to be engineered.

Mathematical theorems, physical principles, and chemistry fundamentals. Perhaps all of them, or just part of them, but everything that has not been given for granted to humans goes through at least one of those three sciences. Like it or not, the rest are inventions with more or less foundation, better or worse marketed by their creators and followers, more or less widely story-told and evangelized. We can talk flowery and colourfully about all the topics we want, but mathematics, physics, and chemistry are just not negotiable. 

Yet there is a persistent stereotype about engineers being "too rigid", "too structured", "too methodical". People often perceive us as inflexible, gridded, and overly picky about different aspects. This perception is not entirely baseless; we do obsess over details that might seem trivial to others. Why? Because precision matters. Actually, one degree Celsius and the chemical reaction does not take place. One millimetre and the rotor experiences wear and tear. One Newton less and the mechanism is not triggered. These are not arbitrary preferences or perfectionist tendencies; they are the hard boundaries within which reality operates.

This is where the madness begins. Engineers are people who have chosen to work within constraints that do not bend, do not negotiate, and do not care about feelings or good intentions. We operate in a world where 99% accuracy might mean complete failure, where "close enough" can result in catastrophic consequences, and where assumptions must be validated, not just believed.

The irony is striking. The very characteristics that make engineers seem crazy, inflexible and obsessive, are precisely what enable the flexibility and freedom that everyone else enjoys. While others can afford to be spontaneous, approximate, and intuitive in their daily lives, engineers must be meticulous and systematic so that bridges do not collapse, airplanes do not fall from the sky, and medications work as intended.

This duality creates a fascinating paradox. Engineers are simultaneously the most constrained professionals, bound by the laws of physics and mathematics, and the most creative ones, finding innovative solutions within those immovable constraints. We are the people who look at impossible challenges and ask not "can it be done?" but rather "how can it be done?".

So yes, engineers are crazy. Crazy enough to care about precision when approximation seems sufficient. Crazy enough to question assumptions when everyone else has moved on. Crazy enough to take responsibility for decisions where failure could mean lives lost or resources wasted.

But consider the alternative. A world where engineers were not crazy, where they did not obsess over details, where they compromised on fundamentals would be a world that simply would not work. Literally.

The next time you flip a switch and light floods your room, drive your car to work, or enjoy a hot meal, remember that these everyday miracles exist because somewhere, some crazy engineer refused to compromise on the details that everyone else thought did not matter.

Engineers… crazy people indeed. And thank goodness for that.

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Ignacio Vilas Eguileta

ZenoTalent Owner & Founder