always give the engineer a cookie

Originally posted on Facebook October 19, 2026

A typical engineer, upon receiving an unsolicited improvement suggestion from a civilian — especially one that arrives without the required ceremonial praise for his existing work, as if you just handed him a used tissue instead of a medal — will immediately scowl. This is not a regular scowl. This is the specialized Engineering Scowl, the one that says, “I have just been personally attacked by ignorance itself.”

He will then, with the solemnity of a Supreme Court justice delivering a dissenting opinion, provide you with a detailed list of reasons why your idea is not merely difficult, but practically a violation of the laws of physics, project timelines, and possibly several international treaties. There will be back-and-forth. You will explain. He will explain harder. You will eventually walk away feeling as though you have just spent forty-five minutes trying to convince a very stubborn mule that carrots exist.

Then, weeks later, something mysterious happens inside the engineer’s skull. The idea, which had been bouncing around in there like a loose bolt in a washing machine, suddenly clicks. First he fully appreciates *why* it was hard (this is always Step One for engineers; the “why it’s hard” part is their spiritual home). Then, after carefully re-weighing the difficulty against the newfound understanding that AI can now write most of the boring parts while he supervises with a coffee, he realizes: “Huh. That’s actually only about seventeen minutes of actual work.”

So he quietly slips it into the next build.

And then — this is the important part — he returns to you with the eager, slightly damp enthusiasm of a golden retriever who has just learned to fetch the newspaper without eating it first. He will present the improvement as though he invented fire. At this moment, your sole responsibility is to give him a treat. A sincere “Wow, that was really clever” will do. Fail to provide the treat, and the entire evolutionary cycle of human-engineer relations may collapse.