Nardelli has also toughened Chrysler's quality standards, making senior engineers responsible and hiring a "chief customer officer"--an industry first--to monitor quality assurance and be an advocate for the buyer.

FORBES: Companies, People, Ideas

And so a number of the senior engineers and I got together and we recommended that first we modernize the operating system, and then we try to get it to run on Intel, initially by developing our own in-house operating system which turned out to be one of these projects that just grew and grew and never finished.

FORBES: Apple Engineers Wanted To Switch To Intel Chips Even Before Steve Jobs Returned

It hasn't held her back - she is now one of IBM's few senior female engineers and recently won the Cisco Women In Technology award.

BBC: Women and tech: Why don't girls want to be geeks?

British industry is littered with hte ruins of engineering companies where they let the accountants and lawyers take over: excluding the actual engineers from senior management in many cases.

FORBES: Someone Should Write "The Google Management Method". But Would Anyone Follow It?

The engineer, whose name hasn't been disclosed, explained his plans to other engineers and at least one senior manager involved with the project, known as Street View, in 2008, the FCC report states.

WSJ: Google Engineer Told Others of Data Scoop

Mr. Clark, who is in his early 70s, started building Aviation Partners in 1991 by hiring veteran engineers like Louis "Bernie" Gratzer, his senior vice president of technology, who still goes to work daily at the age of 91.

WSJ: Air War: 'Winglet' vs. 'Sharklet'

The term "autonomic computing" was popularized by IBM (nyse: IBM - news - people ) following a 2001 speech by Senior Vice President of Research Paul Horn to the National Academy of Engineers.

FORBES: Computers That Fix Themselves

"Sony engineers have raised the bar once again" said Mike Abary, senior vice president of the VAIO business group at Sony.

ENGADGET: Sony bumps out Vaio Z, F, W and Y series laptops