I didn’t really find anything I felt like specializing in for the first decade-ish of my career. I was working on games, I don’t think 3D math is that cool, and I wasn’t excited. I was tired of coding games over and over. I don’t think I was an expert beginner but I wasn’t an expert in anything I wanted to continue doing.

I took a break to be a manager for a while, which turned out to both be an incredible learning experience AND enough pressure relieved from the daily code grind that I was able to rekindle my passion for code.

Started writing a lot outside of work, realized I really like cryptography, studied that, became competent enough to even figure out what TYPE of beginner I want to be, etc. it’s very satisfying.

I’m around four years into that journey now, I’ve returned to a coding path where I get to actually learn while building, and I’m excited.

The expert beginner is a surprisingly easy trap to fall into. I also think we do this TO people when we trap them in a role and give them very little flexibility in execution.

They will begin to specialize in doing a bad thing well without understanding what they’re doing, especially if they aren’t given mentorship.