Well, it's all individual. I'm a degreed engineer (BSEE) and (modestly) a darned good circuit designer, but before that I fixed TV sets for a living. That's back when TV sets had tubes in them. There are good techs and bad ones; and there are good engineers and bad ones. The good ones need each other, but no one needs the duds.
Worst tech I ever worked with? Don't remember. Worst engineer I ever worked with? A new hire at Coulter Electronics in 1968, who had a master's in EE. He was "helping" a really good tech when he broke a glass diode in two and -- I kid you not --
glued it back together and soldered it into the circuit. When the tech told me this -- it cost him an hour or two of troubleshooting -- I made sure the guy was gone ASAP.
Later, as a hiring manager, I found out that this guy was not unique.
Techs and engineers don't know the same things. Individual techs don't know the same things as each other either, and neither do different engineers. Thus the old saw,
two heads are better than one. Unless, of course, the one is mine.
