What makes a great Engineer?

Earning more money is an outcome of being a great engineer, not the defining factor.

Scientists generally have higher I.Q. than most people — that's one reason why there are fewer scientists than there are good engineers.

Do great engineers know every complex technology by heart? I don’t think so. No one can master Node.js, Hibernate, Spring — or any technology, really — in its entirety. The software engineering space is ever-changing, and it's nearly impossible to learn everything fully.

Do they build stuff? A big YES!
Great engineers build. They build software that solves real problems for real people. They may not know every technology inside-out, but they are willing to learn. They are willing to fail, again and again, until they make it work.

A great engineer has the courage to dive into the unknown. On this journey of building, they fail countless times. They explore different resources until they find the ones that click — that match their current skills and mindset.

A great engineer is adamant, persistent, and driven. They strive to be the best. They aim to write maintainable, evolvable, robust, and scalable code — code that might even outlive them.

— Vardhman