To be a true engineer, you must have a passion for it. You must supply the inspiration. I recall those days in undergraduate school where the EEs would get engineering problems that would take a week to solve. That requires passion. That is where they would weed out the ones who did not truly want to be engineers. Even afterwords, when you get into your career, a true engineer pursues his interest outside of work hours. For us software engineers, reading Code Project, MSDN Magazine (if you are Microsoft inclined), Dr Dobbs Journal, as well as journals from the IEEE and ACM. You need to take it beyond your daily job to look for improvement. And, many jobs require you to put in more than 8 hours (salaried). I work with (software) engineers that go to conferences when they can and keep up with new technologies. And there are others who work the 9-5 shift and shut off at the end of the day not caring about the next big thing, until their careers change. As a software engineer, I find that I must be at the top of my game. I cannot know everything every library, or every piece of technology. But, I do make an effort to learn and keep knowledgeable about technologies and changes that may affect me. And I do agree that is easier to learn and spend time when it is toward what I am interested in.