[pitaa]

> Perhaps for people who don't have a "hack the world!" mindset, it does appear as genius I suppose.

I think this is it. I've realized that as an engineer, I look at the local environment around me as a construct. If I don't like something or think it can be improved, I can redesign it better. Hell, I once got the traffic markings on an entire street changed by sending a single email to the right person pointing out something that annoyed me whenever I drove through that area.

I've realized that not everyone has this mindset though. So many people write things off as "just the way it is" without considering that they can be changed. Sure, YMMV. As an average Joe, I really don't have much power to change the tax code. But I do have a lot of control over my local environment.

I'm reminded of When I was teaching, I would occasionally hear students grumbling about the way their homework was being graded. But with enough time, you'll hear students grumbling about nearly everything, so I never paid it too much attention. I'd just check that the grader had followed the rubric, and then either make a grade correction if needed, or just tell the student that it had been graded accurately. After several years, I got a long-winded email from a student expressing their dissatisfaction with the way their assignments were being graded. But instead of solely complaining, this student explained _why_ they were upset and politely requested that I consider changing my rubric. After some discussion, I did just that. I didn't concede all their "demands", but I did make changes that made the students happy.

This was a student that understood that the class policies were a construct, and that a sincere discussion can be sufficient to incite change.

[FarhadG]

(Author here) I absolutely love this story and your student's approach. Thank you for sharing.

[delif]

When I've learned some things in my time is that most engineers don't have this mindset because they are not allowed to have it. If you mean software engineer you might be right but not in the general regulated engineering jobs.

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

The way you get a lot of "this is the right way to do it" talk on Stack Overflow from people who don't actually answer the poster's question and know nothing of their constraints suggests that software engineers aren't inherently more likely to think this way.