I spent roughly half of my career at Boeing 'between' major programs, but there was seldom a shortage of things for me to do. There was a seemingly endless list of proposed (and occasionally mandatory) changes from the engine manufactures that needed to be certified and implemented, along with customer issues/questions that needed to be addressed. One of the toughest things was when I was responsible for the 747-8 development, I was also prime for engine control related in-service difficulties for every single 747 and 767 ever built. Long work-weeks were the norm...
I'll always remember, in the early days of the 747-8, they'd called all the propulsion types involved in the 747-8 development in for a mandatory Saturday scheduling meeting. At the end of the meeting, they ask us if we could properly flesh out the schedule outline we'd developed during the Saturday meeting - and I spoke up and said something like 'can you promise we won't have any in-service emergencies for the next week?'
Everyone laughed, but I was being dead serious - and as chance would have it, almost to the minute when I made that comment, a 767/CF6 was experiencing a dual engine flameout while on decent in (IIRC) Mexico. I didn't meet the desired deadline for completing my 747-8 schedule...
BTW, while rare, I knew a guy that was working as an engineer at Boeing that didn't have a college engineering degree. He'd been working as a engineering tech for ages (he was a long timer when I hired in), and somewhere along the line he was granted an 'engineer equivalent' designation based on his years of experience and was considered an engineer from then on. The guy was super sharp - and I never heard anything negative about his being considered an engineer.