A software developer, a hardware engineer, and a mid-level manager were on their way to a conference center located near the top of a mountain. After the conference they were driving down the steep mountain road and suddenly the brakes on their car failed.

The car careened almost out of control down the road, bouncing off the crash barriers, until it miraculously ground to a halt scraping along the mountainside. The car's occupants, shaken but unhurt, now had a problem: They were stuck halfway down a mountain in a car with no brakes. What were they to do?

"I know," said the manager, "Let's have a meeting, propose a vision, formulate a mission statement, define some goals, and by a process of continuous improvement find a solution to the critical problems, and we can be on our way.”

"No, no," said the hardware engineer. "That will take far too long, and besides, that method has never worked before. I've got my Swiss Army knife with me, and in no time at all I can strip down the car's braking system, isolate the fault, fix it, and we can be on our way."

"Well," said the software developer, "before we do anything, I think we should push the car back to the top of the mountain and see if it happens again."
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A man is flying in a hot air balloon and realizes he is lost. He reduces height and spots a man down below. He lowers the balloon further and shouts: "Excuse me, can you help me? I promised my friend I would meet him half an hour ago, but I don't know where I am."

The man below says: "Yes. You are in a hot air balloon, hovering approximately 30 feet above this field."

"You must be an engineer," says the balloonist.

"I am," replies the man. "How did you know?"

"Well," says the balloonist, "everything you have told me is technically correct, but I have no idea what to make of your information.”

The man below says, "You must be a manager."

"I am," replies the balloonist, "but how did you know?"

"Well," says the engineer, "you don't know where you are, or where you are going, and you have made a promise which you have no idea how to keep. The fact is you are in the exact same position you were in before we met, but now it is somehow my fault." 
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During the French Revolution, three men were condemned to the guillotine. One was a preacher, one was a doctor, and the third was an engineer.

When the preacher approached the deadly machine, he requested to be beheaded while lying on his back so that he could die while looking into heaven. The doctor and the engineer thought that to be a good idea and requested the same.

As the knife plunged down the track toward the preacher, it suddenly jammed just short of the man's neck. The executioner declared it an act of God and let the man go free. The same thing happened to the doctor.

As the engineer laid his head back in place he suddenly said, "Wait! I see the problem! Look up there where the rope has jumped out of the pulley groove!"