Reading the Tao te Ching makes it clear why the best engineers are the soft-spoken individuals who refrain from talking until the end of the meeting.

That’s because good engineering is mostly listening to the system.

If you talk too early, you end up arguing abstractions. If you listen long enough, the constraints introduce themselves.

By the end of the meeting, the quiet person isn’t trying to win the room — they’re just reporting what reality already said.