If you know me at all, or read enough of my blogs, you’ll see that I have a core set of sayings and memes that I tend to reuse over and over. I’ve realized that not all of them are fully explained, so I wanted to start sharing some of them with you. Today’s post is what I call “engineer syndrome”. It used to be named after an individual I worked with that displayed this trait a lot, but I’ll be kind and genericize it.

What I found very early in my professional career is, especially in an industry surrounded by highly-educated persons (such as tech), is that there’s people who invariably take up an opposing position to whatever idea is being proposed. They either find ways to tear the idea down, nay-say every design decision, and nitpick every flaw and risk no matter how minor or irrelevant.

Eventually, I’ve learned that this is called contrarianism, or “playing devil’s advocate”. But there’s definitely a difference in helping improve ideas or efforts via healthy Socratic debate, and taking personal pleasure such that this becomes your default position.

So my advice is, don’t fall into engineer syndrome. Certainly you should help point out risks and flaws, and help to improve ideas and decisions. But in the long run, engaging in this behavior just for your own ego gratification will not work out, because you will build a negative reputation, and you will not be part of successful efforts. You want to be known as someone who helps projects succeed, not someone who just frustrates everyone else.