The Expert Beginner has nowhere to go because progression requires an understanding that he has a lot of work to do, and that is not a readily available conclusion. You’ll notice that the Expert Beginner is positioned slightly above Advanced Beginner but not on the level of Competence. This is because he is not competent enough to grasp the big

They come to the conclusion that they’ve quickly reached Expert status and there’s nowhere left to go. They’ve officially become Expert Beginners, and they’re ready to entrench themselves into some niche in an organization and collect a huge paycheck because no one around them, including them, realizes that they can do a lot better.

As an industry, we get away with this because people have a substantially lower expectation of software than they do of rockets.

The iconic example might be the “tech guy” at a small, non-technical firm. He “knows computers,” so as the company grew and evolved to have some mild IT needs, he became a programming dilettante out of necessity. In going from being a power user to being a developer, his skills exceeded his expectations, so he became confident in his limited,

The term “Expert Beginner” describes someone who has capped out in their learning at a local maximum, convinced that the local is global. Expert Beginners are developers who do not understand enough of the big picture to understand that they aren’t actually experts. What I mean by this is that they have a narrow enough perspective to think that

That’s all well and good for bowling and bowling alleys, but how is this comparable to real software development practices? Well, it’s relatively simple. Perhaps it’s a lack of automated testing. Giant methods/classes. Lots of copy-and-paste coding. Use of outdated or poor tooling. Process.

The Expect Beginner has, through his actions and example, created additional Expert Beginners and has, in fact, created a culture of Expert Beginnerism.

As the Expert-Beginner-in-Chief, I’ve learned a pointed lesson. Since I don’t like being shown up by ambitious young upstarts, I begin to alter my recruitment process to look for mediocre “team players” that won’t threaten my position with their pie-in-the-sky “fingers in the ball” ideas.

If the solution different from hers is presented by someone that also has a master’s, she will pivot to another subject.