Most engineers have been in that meeting. Someone proposes an architecture, a migration plan, a new tool - and something in your gut tightens. You don't agree. You're not bought in. But instead of saying that, you do what engineers do best: you intellectualise it. You poke holes in the proposal. You counter with your own alternative. You debate the technical merits. And somehow, despite all that effort, nothing changes. The decision rolls forward and you leave the room frustrated, wondering why nobody listened.

The problem isn't that your concerns were wrong. It's that you never actually stated them.

The intellectual dodge

Engineers and engineering leaders are trained to influence through logic. We build arguments. We present evidence. We construct counter-proposals. And when we disagree with something but can't quite articulate a clean logical objection, we default to one of two patterns.

The first is passive-aggressive deconstruction. Rather than saying "I don't think this is the right call," we nitpick the proposal to death. We ask leading questions we already know the answer to. We highlight edge cases not because they matter, but because we're trying to manufacture doubt without ever stating our own position. Everyone in the room can feel what's happening, and it rarely changes anyone's mind. It just makes the conversation exhausting.

The second is competitive solutioning. Instead of engaging with why we're uncomfortable, we skip straight to pitching our own alternative. Now you have two proposals on the table and a debate about the merits of each, but the actual underlying concern - the reason you felt compelled to offer a different path - never gets discussed.

Both approaches share the same flaw. They avoid the vulnerable part: telling people how you actually feel about something.

The courage to just say it

There is something engineers and critical thinkers chronically underuse, and it's remarkably simple. State whether you're bought in or not. State whether you agree. And then pause.

"I'm not comfortable with this direction." That's it. You don't need to immediately justify it with a bullet-proof argument. You don't need to have a counter-proposal ready. Just say it, and let others be curious about why.

This feels deeply unnatural for people who've built careers on rigour and reasoning. It feels like showing up without your homework done. But what actually happens when you say "I'm worried about this" is far more productive than what happens when you spend twenty minutes trying to logic someone out of their position. People lean in. They ask why. They engage with your actual concern rather than defending against your attack on their proposal.

Emotion is often logic in disguise

Here's the thing engineers miss about their own emotional reactions: they're usually not irrational. That tightening in your gut when someone proposes a particular approach? It's often your experience pattern-matching against something you've seen go wrong before. You might not be able to articulate the full logical argument in the moment, but the signal is real.

When you say "I'm worried about this migration timeline," you're giving the room a chance to explore what's behind that worry. Maybe you've seen a similar migration blow out before and can't quite pinpoint why yet. By naming the feeling, you create space for the reasoning to surface - both from yourself and from others. Someone might ask the right question that helps you crystallise what's bothering you. Or they might call out something you've missed that actually resolves the concern. Either outcome is better than spending the meeting in an intellectual sparring match.

Emotion and logic aren't opposites here. Your emotional reaction is often the fastest path to surfacing the logic that matters.

For leaders, this is literally your job

If you're in a senior engineering leadership role, your gut reaction isn't a weakness to be suppressed - it's a core part of what you were hired for. Your experience and judgement are the reason you're in the room. If you ignore your instincts and stay silent because you can't yet construct a perfectly reasoned argument, you're not doing your job.

This doesn't mean flying off the handle or making every decision based on vibes. It means having the professional courage to say "something about this doesn't sit right with me" and trusting that your track record has earned you the space to explore why. The leaders I've seen have the most influence aren't the ones with the sharpest technical arguments. They're the ones willing to be honest about where they stand, even before they can fully explain it.

Feelings aren't the opposite of professionalism

The tech industry has spent decades treating emotional expression as something to be engineered out of decision-making. But the most effective engineers and leaders I've worked with are the ones who've learned to listen to their reactions and name them plainly. Not dramatically. Not aggressively. Just honestly.

"I'm not bought in on this yet." "This approach makes me nervous and I want to talk about why." "I don't think I agree, but I'm still working out my reasoning."

These statements do something no amount of technical counter-argument can do: they invite genuine dialogue. They shift the conversation from adversarial debate to collaborative exploration. And more often than not, they surface the real concerns that were hiding behind all that intellectualising.

So next time you're in a meeting and your gut is telling you something, resist the urge to construct the perfect logical takedown. Just say what you feel. You might be surprised how much more people listen.