Ask HN: How do you know when you are an expert?
I know that I'm almost an expert in something when, given a task, I only see the annoying small details.
So, I'm curious about how you know you became or are an expert in something.
So, I'm curious about how you know you became or are an expert in something.
* Unconscious Incompetence: The individual neither understands nor knows how to do something, nor recognizes the deficit, nor has a desire to address it.
* Conscious Incompetence: Though the individual does not understand or know how to do something, he or she does recognize the deficit, without yet addressing it.
* Conscious Competence: The individual understands or knows how to do something. However, demonstrating the skill or knowledge requires a great deal of consciousness or concentration.
* Unconscious Competence: The individual has had so much practice with a skill that it becomes "second nature" and can be performed easily (often without concentrating too deeply). He or she may or may not be able teach it to others, depending upon how and when it was learned.
Examples are:
* Rand Fishkin and his love of SEO
* Jonny Ive and his passion for design
* Tony Hsieh and his love of fostering an awesome place to work.
If asked... I feel I can't answer. If interviewed I'll probably fail. Yet I also find that when put in front of a problem the solution just presents itself.
What's weird about this is that in feeling I know so little about things that I've 15 years experience in, I feel like I need to learn. So I expose myself to all opportunities to learn only to find that all tell me what I feel is evident and obvious.
This is close to what I take to be the meaning of "forgotten more than I've ever learned".
Whether this makes me an expert is debatable, I'd say no. I'd say that there was a re-learning stage after the last stage in which you acquire the means to understand deeply and to be able to communicate and pass on those skills. I'd say that an expert is someone who can pass on their skills, someone who can mentor others.
(I also find it uncomfortable writing a post implying I know anything)
I have gone back to unconscious incompetence in some subjects I haven't touched for a decade, that I used to know better than most anyone I worked with.
It is embarrassing sometimes. :-)
I am still happy that I reinvented myself as a script programmer instead of a system programmer; what is fun for me is sitting down and generating lots of functionality in a short time. I can go to work with a smile and low risk of burnout.
On the subject of expert or not: I guess that locally I am considered an expert on what I do, but I don't see me as one because I know how the real experts are.
How did PG become an expert at starting up? He did it himself. He wrote essays about it to share what he learnt. I'm sure he was never trying to be an expert. Even in his essays now, he never makes "expert claims". It's the people who found the advice helpful that labelled him so.
Incidentally, I'm currently doing some research on a problem and it pains me that I have to constantly come up with the justifications to the solutions I find proposed. There's a lot of cookbook math around.
By the time you know a shitload in details and depth of some subject, you also know another shitload of related things that you know you do not know yet, so you still keep considering yourself a half-newbie. And because you're interested in things you don't know, you rarely talk about the subject with people who know less than you, which distorts your field of vision.
Indirectly, perhaps you could consider it a sign of an "expert" to have been so alienated from what is generally considered normal that people label you as a geek.
But then again, you can never declare yourself an expert or you're just selling to be something you aren't.
I suppose I might also measure this based on my own need for assistance, i.e. I am an "expert" when I only rarely need to turn to colleagues or the literature for help. But this isn't a very functional definition for me, as I strongly prefer to be working at the edge of my knowledge; thus I am almost always in conversation with others who know more than me.
"Researchers (Bloom (1985), Bryan & Harter (1899), Hayes (1989), Simmon & Chase (1973)) have shown it takes about ten years to develop expertise in any of a wide variety of areas, including chess playing, music composition, telegraph operation, painting, piano playing, swimming, tennis, and research in neuropsychology and topology. The key is deliberative practice: not just doing it again and again, but challenging yourself with a task that is just beyond your current ability, trying it, analyzing your performance while and after doing it, and correcting any mistakes. Then repeat. And repeat again."
Rarely will two jobs be so similar that the expertise gained from a previous job can guarantee the same level of output in the new job. While its not impossible, its so rare that its not worth the risk in making the claim that you are an expert.
In general, those that ever claim to be experts are using the word to justify a high payrate or lock in an opportunity.
So as business owner, be wary of anyone claiming to be an expert. And as a technologist, be wary of ever claiming to be an expert and risk overselling yourself.
It's not a black and white thing; there are varying levels of expertise. The more people there are that think you're an expert, the more of an expert you are.
That said, I'd say you're an expert when you know what the bad parts are, why they're wrong, and why they're there anyway.
So experts are people that don't think about what they're doing?
Or 'sought out' and 'paid well' has a more restrictive meaning for you than for the thousands of big businesses that spend tons of money on IT Consultants.
A lot of people refuse to respect or give value to his opinion, much less see him as a peer.