In my experience these people are usually in the types of environments that most engineers hate to work in. Environments completely void of the creature comforts we're used to for solving the task at hand because they are working in a new domain that likely needs new abstractions. Tools and libraries such as testing, build, automation, data structures, concurrency, fundamental primitives etc. that are suitable and at the right level of abstraction for the task at hand.
Really bad engineers see these environments and complain without doing anything about it, ultimately leaving the project. Slightly better engineers complain about the tools and blaze ahead anyway leaving a mess in their wake. The great ones I've been so lucky to work with pave the way on those fronts at the same time as solving the problem at hand and make it easier for their successors. It's quite beautiful when you see it.
Really bad engineers see these environments and complain without doing anything about it, ultimately leaving the project. Slightly better engineers complain about the tools and blaze ahead anyway leaving a mess in their wake. The great ones I've been so lucky to work with pave the way on those fronts at the same time as solving the problem at hand and make it easier for their successors. It's quite beautiful when you see it.