Monday Myth: “Engineering Must Know Everything in Advance”

The Cult of Certainty: Fragility in Disguise

A stubborn myth persists in tech: engineering must foresee everything before writing a single line of code. Perfect requirements. Perfect risk maps. Perfect predictability.

It is not professionalism.
It is fear.

This belief comforts fragile egos and hides superficial thinking behind documentation and rituals. It replaces curiosity with theatre and turns teams into hostages of their own insecurity.

Certainty is a fantasy sold by people who cannot handle reality.

Fragility Masquerading as Rigour

People who demand omniscience are not being rigorous. They are protecting themselves.

They fear being exposed, challenged, or proven wrong. They fear discovering that their understanding is thinner than they pretend.

So they bury teams under alignment, documents, and hypothetical scenarios, all to avoid taking a real step.

Process as psychological armour.

The Superficiality Problem

When someone insists on knowing “everything” up front, it usually means:

“I do not understand the problem well enough, so please give me all the answers so I do not have to think.”

They want checklists instead of competence.
Scripts instead of reasoning.
Guarantees instead of exploration.

And the loudest voices are usually the least equipped to navigate ambiguity. Uncertainty exposes their limits, so they hide behind artificial completeness.

Superficiality pretending to be diligence.

The Return of Waterfall: Regression Disguised as Maturity

The “know everything first” mindset is not rigour. It is waterfall dressed up as modern discipline.

Waterfall failed because reality moves. Users behave differently. Constraints emerge. Plans crack under real-world pressure.

Yet some leaders still cling to it, rebranding it as predictability or alignment.

It is not maturity.
It is regression.

When Engineering Creates a Void, Donkeys Rush In

Nature hates a void. Organisations do too.

When engineering hides behind certainty theatre, it creates an empty space where ownership and thinking should live. Others rush in to fill it.

Product starts writing pseudo-solutions.
Design dictates implementation.
Stakeholders issue execution orders.

And with AI, vibe-coding, and instant mock-ups, the illusion worsens: everyone believes they can instruct engineering like factory labour.

This is how donkey tasking takes over.

Engineers become hands instead of minds.
Product and design begin role-playing architecture.
The organisation gets lazy.

This is not collaboration.
It is structural decay.

Fear of Feedback

People who demand total upfront knowledge are not seeking clarity. They are avoiding feedback, the one force they cannot control.

Feedback forces adaptation.
Adaptation forces learning.
Learning forces humility.

For the fragile, all three are intolerable.

So they delay feedback until delivery, when it is too late to adjust. They do not want discovery. They want insulation.

It is not caution.
It is avoidance.

Cowardice Masquerading as Caution

Here is the uncomfortable truth:

Excessive upfront planning is often cowardice with a badge.

Cowardice to move without guarantees.
Cowardice to confront the unknown.
Cowardice to expose thinking early.
Cowardice to be wrong in public.

Organisations tolerate this because it looks like professionalism.
It is not.

It kills speed, ownership, accountability, and in the end, the company.

Real-World Lessons: When the Myth Kills

Knight Capital Meltdown (2012)

A change deployed without incremental rollout or safeguards. Leadership assumed the system would behave exactly as imagined. A dormant code path awakened and caused a cascade.

$440 million lost in 45 minutes.

The price of believing in certainty.

Google Wave (2009)

Built in secrecy with years of upfront planning. No feedback loops. Huge ambition, zero contact with reality. By the time it launched, the world had moved.

It did not fail from lack of intelligence.
It failed from lack of learning.

What Real Engineering Looks Like

Real engineers do not ask for perfect knowledge. They ask for:

• clear intent
• the few constraints that matter
• fast, frequent feedback
• reversible decisions
• room to explore and adjust

Certainty does not precede action. It emerges through action.

Real engineering is disciplined discovery, not omniscience.

The Myth Must Die

The belief that engineering must know everything in advance is not only wrong, it is corrosive. It paralyses organisations and empowers the most fragile voices.

Companies do not fail because they move quickly.
They fail because they cling to the illusion of certainty and call it professionalism.

If you want speed, depth, and competence, kill this myth decisively.

The future belongs to those who learn fast, not those who plan their fears.