Maybe, but I have a very hard time buying the idea that there's engineers out there who don't want to do any engineering, and just want to take things apart and document them, and are also very talented engineers.

I do realize that not all engineers want to do development: that's why we have test engineers. I've dealt with test engineers before; they're a special breed, and have a real talent for finding weaknesses and enjoy that challenge a lot. That's rather different than just disassembling something and documenting it. There's no challenge there, like there is in testing something to its breaking point and finding its weaknesses so you can make it better.