To be a good engineer you had to be stubborn in the early days of your career, you had to have tenacity and persistence to understand and solve the problems you saw. Unfortunately that filter selects for people who are prone to going too far into the detail, who get a satisfaction from conquering complexity rather than avoiding it. Given the lack of big picture thinking, they readily fall into herd-like behavior. Given the ego payoff for the complexity, it is very difficult for them to accept criticisms about their process or lack of perception.