engineer's disease

noun

A bias of technical professionals who think that their expertise allows them to solve problems in unrelated fields.

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Meanings

nounengineer's disease (uncountable)
  1. uncountableA bias of technical professionals who think that their expertise allows them to solve problems in unrelated fields.

    The idea of “engineer’s disease” developed while I (Graham) was talking with a crew of project managers. I was talking about Legionnaires’ disease, and they thought I said “engineer’s disease.”

    [2019 October 29, Randall Englund, Robert J. Graham, “Selecting and Developing Project Managers”, in Creating an Environment for Successful Projects, 3rd edition, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, →ISBN, page 181
    1 more example

    Humanities denial is enabled—and enables—another affliction that’s endemic within the tech industry: “engineer’s disease,” the belief that expertise in one field (usually in STEM) makes you an expert on everything else too.

    [2025 April 22, Adam Becker, More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley's Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity, Basic Books, →ISBN
  2. uncountableA tendency for engineers to be protective and perfectionist about their work.

    Revealing the workings of a machine, without disclosing what the machine does, is a classic symptom of engineer’s disease.

    1992, Dr. Dobb's Journal: Software Tools for the Professional Programmer, volume 17, numbers 190–195, Redwood City, California, United States: M&T Pub., →ISSN, page 158
    1 more example

    After that, I started working on a debugger and a Fortran compiler, but got bogged down with engineer’s disease (kept designing to get it perfect, but never actually finishing) so never finished.

    2005 February 17, Tom Oward, “1 · The History of Apple I”, in Apple I Replica Creation: Back to the Garage, Syngress, page 22
Cite this entry
APA

engineer's disease. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/engineer's%20disease

MLA

“engineer's disease.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/engineer's%20disease. Accessed November 4, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “engineer's disease,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/engineer's%20disease.

Source: engineer's disease on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.