I think it's more a mindset than possession of technical knowledge. I needed to buy some new cutlery. I knew nothing about cutlery, so I went and learned about

I think it's more a mindset than possession of technical knowledge. I needed to buy some new cutlery. I knew nothing about cutlery, so I went and learned about steel grades, serration types, food service industry standards, etc. In the end, after a few weeks of on-and-off research, I ended up with an excellent WMF set. I told this story to a friend and she laughed, remarking that she would have just gone to the store to get some. Our needs were the same, but I took a detail-oriented approach focusing on the product, whereas she focused on the solution. Both approaches are valid for our respective priorities, but I'd hazard that the types of people who become engineers (be it software or something else) are more likely to relate to stories like mine.