Know-it-all engineer asks machinist to fabricate a technically impossible part: 'The machinist was to machine a 12-inch part down to just over 13 inches shorter than it started'

Time, in a sense, is a resource that we spend doing different things, which is why when we talk about "spending time" on something, there's a literal sense to it. Through the sheer course of its slow march, the way we utilize our time through the things we do, the things we think about, and the way we prioritize our responsibilities and personal interests goes on to shape who we become, what we know, and what skills we possess.

It might be a facile generalization, but I like to make a comparison here to building your own character in an RPG tabletop game like Dungeons and Dragons or a video game that works off the same structure, like Skyrim. Essentially, in these games, you get to give your character a certain limited number of points and put them into specific categories or skills. If you really want to specialize a character into one specific category, you need to make sacrifices in another. So, while your elven archer might be particularly lethal and persuasive, they might also be tragically weak or barbarically stupid.

In short, what I'm getting at here is that just because someone is particularly accomplished, knowledgable, or successful in one area of their lives doesn't mean they're going to be ahead of the curve in others. In fact, since they've spent there so much time thinking about or working on that one particular thing, you might often find that they're less well-rounded overall. The thing that makes this completely intolerable is when someone refuses to acknowledge that there are times when they had best defer to other people's experience or judgment—particularly when this person is a boss who thinks that they have all the answers.

In this case, this engineer thought that because of their education, they knew better than anyone else in the room, disregarding a veteran machinist's experience advising them against an illogical conclusion.

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Posted by Brad Dickson