I see what you did there, LOL
I also agree with the point about learning how to work under pressure and the value of working, sometimes ridiculously hard, to get to the end. Funny you say you barely use what you learned in Grad school. I have an engineering undergrad and a masters in business...I use my grad school knowledge ALL the time now, and barely do any engineering anymore. The stuff I do is mostly for my own purposes or troubleshooting controls problems.
I took up a new (for me) engineering role within the company that's more product centric last year. While you need to have had prior good technical experience, this job is more about managing/evaluating manufacturing expectations/what-ifs and clearly communicating technical things to people that aren't experts but still need to know so that they can make business (ie money) decisions. Before this role, I have only ever worked with other engineers and researchers (even managers are engineers) and communication was very different.
In the new role, the potential for chaos due to someone misunderstanding/misinterpreting what they hear is huge and if that happens, weeks get wasted to get things back on track. I'm learning firsthand that effective communication and diplomacy require as much learning and attention, if not more, than anything technical you can name.
My job still has a good technical component that I enjoy, but what's exciting for me is seeing my own evolution beyond being an engineer. I've seen some senior people that I work with for whom this is (or seems) more natural and I marvel their sense of negotiating for what's ahead.