This seems to assume that engineers have no agency in the work they do—they are merely “assigned” tasks and they mindlessly carry them out. I don’t know what the authors experience has been but it doesn’t match mine in any of the places I’ve worked. Engineers typically have a lot of input about what they work on and if they are motivated can take on bigger projects right away. They can also extend the scope of assigned work to be much bigger than it was initially. All the best engineers I’ve worked with do this type of thing regularly.