I feel like a lot of people here are missing the point of the article.
I've worked with several 'expert beginners' over my career. They think they're near the skill ceiling, but they're actually much closer to the bottom. They rose through the ranks despite not being particularly great at their jobs, and now find themselves having to indoctrinate others into their way of doing things. Any suggestion on how to improve the process is usually met with some form of "that's not how we do things around here", since the expert beginner feels threatened.
Preventing yourself from becoming an expert beginner doesn't mean you have to dedicate all your spare time to learning 200 different technologies, as some here have suggested. It's more about accepting that learning is a life-long practice. Knowing that less experienced coworkers still have things they can teach you. Understanding that there is still so much out there for you to learn, and being humble about that fact.
Indeed. For every new job, new project, and new professional relationship, you have to be willing to ask yourself "what can I learn from this experience?" Learning is often best done when you are working on problems you don't yet know how to solve.
But there is a countervailing force, which is the pressure to appear confident and that you know what you are doing. Being transparent about your ignorance, but confident in you're ability to learn is a difficult balance to pull off.
I've worked with several 'expert beginners' over my career. They think they're near the skill ceiling, but they're actually much closer to the bottom. They rose through the ranks despite not being particularly great at their jobs, and now find themselves having to indoctrinate others into their way of doing things. Any suggestion on how to improve the process is usually met with some form of "that's not how we do things around here", since the expert beginner feels threatened.
Preventing yourself from becoming an expert beginner doesn't mean you have to dedicate all your spare time to learning 200 different technologies, as some here have suggested. It's more about accepting that learning is a life-long practice. Knowing that less experienced coworkers still have things they can teach you. Understanding that there is still so much out there for you to learn, and being humble about that fact.