A Useful Hint to Young Engineers

When I visited Thomas Edison's lab in Orange, NJ last winter, I spotted a clipping in one of the displays:

"A Useful Hint to Young Engineers -- 'The man for whom every employer of men is searching, everywhere and always is the man who will accept the responsibility for the work he has to do -- who will not lean at every point upon his superior for additional instructions, advice or encouragement.

There is no more valuable subordinate than the man to whom you can give a piece of work and then forget about it, in the confident expectation that the next time it is brought to your attention it will come in the form of a report that the thing has been done. When this master quality is joined to the executive power, loyalty and common sense, the result is a man whom you can trust. On the other hand, there is no greater nuisance to a man heavily burdened with the direction of affairs than the weak-backed assistant who is continually trying to get his chief to do his work for him, on the feeble idea that he thought the chief would like to decide this or [that]."

Gender bias aside, a useful hint indeed.