How Developers Stop Learning: Rise of the Expert Beginner

In the previous post I mentioned, I linked to Bruce Webster’s “Dead Sea Effect” post, which describes a trend whereby the most talented developers tend to be the most marketable and thus the ones most likely to leave for greener pastures when things go a little sour. The model lists five phases of skill acquisition: Novice, Advanced Beginner, Competent, Proficient and Expert. For the remainder of this post and this series, let’s discard the first possibility (since most professional programmers wouldn’t max out at or before bare minimum competence) and consider an interesting, specific instance of the second: voluntarily ceasing to improve because of a belief that expert status has been reached and thus further improvement is not possible.

Source: daedtech.com