Ask HN: Why are engineers taciturn?

3 points0xdeadbeefbabe3 comments

I know a guy who double majored in EE and manufacturing engineering. He's very taciturn, or I guess you would say unfriendly and not prone to discuss the weather. The engineer who did the gossamer albatross was also described that way[0] as are many other engineers, but usually not the software kind. Why is this so?

[0] https://youtu.be/ketusOFabb4

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I think taciturnity arises from a general "engineering" orientation. You don't want to change more than one variable at a time, so you're very sparing in your actions in general. Or perhaps engineers don't want to make a bad situation worse: if you mess about too much, you'll never figure out what went wrong.

Confirmation bias.

I'd like to believe that too, but I can't convince myself :).

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