The 5 Stages of Engineering Grief

Engineers have a different perspective on life in general and when it comes to a technical problem, engineers are like wild rabid dogs.  They lock their jaws onto something and keep shaking until it comes apart.

Engineer Face

This can cause no end of concern to the people around them.   During the problem-solving process the engineer can encounter all of  Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’ stages of grieving:

• Denial
  • This project is going to be a breeze!
  • It’ll be on time and under budget!
  • It’s even almost finished, I just need to comment the code.
• Anger
  • This documentation is terrible!!
  • Who wrote this code!!
  • Why won’t that #*!@ pin toggle!
• Bargaining
  • If I press my finger against this filtering cap, the code compiles… maybe I could just keep my finger there forever?
  • I just need two more weeks to finish this up and to comment the code.
• Depression
  • I hate this project.
  • I hate this job.
  • I hate my life.
• Acceptance
  • The code really explains itself… comments would only be overkill.
  • Just ship it.

My advice is to respect the engineer’s grieving process and provide him or her plenty of space.  I don’t want to sound too critical of my species, but engineers have a blast radius and sometimes it is best to stand at a minimum safe distance.  I’m not being entirely figurative here either… Sometimes we literally blow things up.

"Am I missing an eyebrow?" ~ Adam Savage

The good news is that when things work, we either giggle or laugh like evil geniuses.

The "Bwa-Ha-ha-ha" moment