Engineer of All Trades
A person who is not a real engineer, not a Professional Engineer, not licensed, not registered, not certified, not ringed, not stamp-bearing, not entitled to approve so much as a napkin sketch, and recognized by no guild presently operating under the laws of known, shared reality.
Despite these impressive non-qualifications, the Engineer of All Trades is afflicted with a persistent need to understand how things work. Machines, arguments, workflows, websites, jokes, institutions, plumbing, dinner plans, social norms, Lego structures: all become systems with load, tolerance, failure modes, maintenance costs, hidden assumptions, and some poorly inspected little bracket everyone else is trusting with their lives… or their bathroom towels.
Engineer of All Trades
noun phrase — but I’m not going to waste your time pointing out something as useless as that - you can see what it is. You can read. You know how to use it.
The term is not a credential claim.
It’s a temperament claim.
An Engineer of All Trades is someone who, upon encountering nearly anything, immediately begins asking what it is doing, what it is bearing, what it is hiding, what will break first, and whether the whole arrangement can survive contact with the universe as currently configured.
Used in a sentence: “I invented the term ‘Engineer of All Trades’ because when I call myself one, it really annoys the real ring-bearers.”
😂 that really pokes some where it hurts you know…I think you know.