Engineering Rewards Negative Thinking

I wonder if there are any professions that reward Positive thinking.

The health profession? Where you have to help the patient visualize their own healing...

The finance sector where you day dream of making lots of money...

Not the day-trading world. I see how obsessive and negative that environment has become (or maybe always was) since everyone there operates either out of fear or greed. Tsk tsk.

The tourism industry perhaps, where you help people have a good time. I know that under staffing and the resulting frustration is an issue in that industry too.

The fitness industry is definitely powered on positive thinking and all sorts of positive pop-psychology. Of course, human nature intervenes and we do have the over-competitive people. But I can see this industry benefiting from positive thinking.

All this to say that the Engineering world directly benefits from negative thinking. The more doomsday scenarios one can cover for, the better the Engineer.

It is fucking draining. Constantly thinking of how something is going to break or fail, is hardly an objective exercise. I have spent several (meaning thousands of) imagining scenarios of 'operator fault', 'manufacturer's defect resulting in catastrophe', 'possible major and minor failure', 'past catastrophes and how they could have been avoided', etc.

After 13 years, it's not fun. Actually, it started getting painful after year 4. It's one thing to build a model toy car or to build a bridge from spaghetti. It's another thing to make a living incorporating solutions to a myriad of failures that may happen, day after day after day after day...

At first it was gratifying to see, at the end of a project, that no catastrophe had actually taken place - as a result of my work. But the novelty wears off. Then I started looking for recognition from my peers and managers. Tumbleweeds rolling in an abandoned dusty wild west town there.

It's tiring. It's not for everyone.

The older engineers I've worked with get accustomed to the finite number of scenarios they have encountered in their career. Their designs were not the best. They did what they had done for the past 25 years. The covered for some scenarios. And they turned a blind eye to the new scenarios. It was as if the new scenarios were in their blind spot. They had become complacent. The field technologists were different. They thought on their feet and did a really good job even after being on the job for 30+ years. But that was probably because they did not bear the direct responsibility of any failure - which is what the engineer bears - direct responsibility for failure.

High paying professionals like Doctors, Lawyers, Engineers, Accountants don't get payed high salaries because their task is complex. They get paid to take the blame. They get paid to hang by the noose one day. And maybe that is why there is a pandemic of disillusionment among those that practice these professions.

40% doctors leave their profession in the first 10 years. There is a whole industry dedicated to help lawyers transition out of their practice. Engineers... no statistics there... because they keep bloody getting laid off and being made redundant. Not sure how accountants fare, but I have a couple of accountant friends that are well on their way to being professionally burnt out. I should include professors and researchers in this ocean of disillusioned people. They don't bear legal blame for catastrophes, but they are so over-burdened with work that many of them look (and act) broken.

What is wrong with this scenario?