In my experience, the #1 attitude is required for academia - you want a fully general theory of Roast Heating, not a practical answer right now. The #2 and #3

In my experience, the #1 attitude is required for academia - you want a fully general theory of Roast Heating, not a practical answer right now. The #2 and #3 attitudes make the best engineers - ideally you can switch between those two modes depending on the problem. If you can only get one, take someone with attitude #2: startups need the roast beef sandwiches[1]. The #4 attitude I've actually found to be anti-correlated with engineering talent in general; the people who are best at that tend to be in business development or sales. [1] Often the most important thing you get out of tackling a problem is the side product, not the thing you thought you wanted. PayPal thought they were working on secure transactions between PDAs; while solving it they made The Roast Beef Sandwich of Web Payments.