No I strongly disagree. The better engineer should take a complex problem and create layers of abstraction such that any idiot can manage the problem. It isn't

No I strongly disagree. The better engineer should take a complex problem and create layers of abstraction such that any idiot can manage the problem. It isn't sufficient to just solve harder problems, they need to rotate the basis such that it becomes a simpler problem, or change the problem so that it is simple, or comprised of simple components.