Here are a few more.

* The (brilliant) infrastructure engineer who described his modus operandi as 'I read stuff on Reddit and then try it out.' This engineer is now worth, as a conservative estimate, in the neighborhood of $50 million. So maybe more of us should be doing that.

* Another infrastructure engineer, also very effective, who made a habit of booking an external training session (sometimes a series, weekly) for how to set up and integrate every piece of technology we used.

* An engineer (this one is quite famous, and we have only interacted professionally a few times) who simply wrote the best comments in the world. Every method was adorned with a miniature essay exploring the problem to be solved, the tradeoffs, the performance, the bits left undone. I think about those comments quite often.

As an addendum, though, I will say that the best engineers overall all shared a trait - they kept trying things until they got something working. That alone will take you pretty far.

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malux85 2 hours ago | parent [-]

“The most successful people have failed more times than you have tried”

	▲	tibbar an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Yes. I like to think that all of the people above could have solved most of the same problems, albeit in wonderfully different styles, but what really guaranteed success was a commitment to just keep at it. Edit to add: Still, the styles matter a lot! For one thing, they greatly influence which problems each person is interested in. Also, the style you solve problems with colors what your final output looks like, which is perhaps more obvious in engineering than in mathematics.