Ask HN: How do you know when you are an expert?

When my karma got to 10, I knew I was an HN expert.

Four stages of competence[1]:

* 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.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_stages_of_competence

  * 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.

I think being able to disagree with a point most other experts in the field agree upon, with reason, while being able to explain the more common POV, is sufficient but not necessary evidence of expertise.

An expert is someone who is sought out by others for their skill and paid well for it.

I'm not an expert at anything but I do follow my University's motto 'Ancora Imparo' (I'm learning). I personally think it's difficult for you to know when you're an expert at anything but other people will start labeling you as an expert. They'll ask for your opinions, help, etc and wouldn't mind paying for it. Just do whatever interests you. Share what you've learned. But always know you're just a student of the field, let other worry about how they perceive you.

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.

You know you are an expert when you start saying "it depends" to questions you are asked.

When people in your field cannot answer your questions, but you can.

"I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand." -- Confucius

Ah, I think it would be a mistake for anyone to assume they are an expert unless they are in a field that has nothing left to be discovered (rare!). If you are in tech, then I think "Ancora Imparo" (I'm learning) - as referenced in an earlier comment - is the way to go. If you have anything to do with startups, then I think you should be ready for your knowledge and expertise to be disrupted everyday.

You'll know you're an expert when you don't care about being labeled as such. You know your stuff really well, so well that it's a matter of intuition. If you care about being an expert, you're not one.

This seems relevant: http://norvig.com/21-days.html "Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years"

"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."

I think it's relative. Anybody who claims to be an expert is selling you something.

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.

I suppose you don't.

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.

when you know you'll never pretend becoming one

When respected people in the field value your opinion and perceive you as their peer.

I would say it could be when you have to search really hard to find an article/book/course/conference/etc. in your area of expertise that actually teaches you something. It is when the only way to perfect your skills is by yourself, by pushing the limits on your own without relying on others. It is when the only way to get better is not to buy the book but to write it. Anyone agrees?

I don't think I've ever been an expert in anything where being an expert is somehow worthwhile.

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.

According to my experience: never. I'm always surprised when I know something other people don't, but I always seem to know ~10x more every passing year than I did before. Going through theoretical CS papers always reminds me how much I have to learn.

"Expert" is a tricky word, and I only know how to measure this in relative terms. For a given area, I know I have a high degree of expertise when colleagues who are working in similar areas begin to regularly ask for my help. That doesn't necessarily say anything about my abilities relative to a different population: I know a hell of a lot about image analysis relative to the other engineers in my group, but I know there are plenty of people who can kick my ass in this.

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.

Most experienced technologists know the real danger in ever claiming to be an expert in anything.

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.

You will never really be able to tell that you're an expert, if you are an expert. One of the reasons for this is because of the Dunning-Kruger effect in cognitive psychology whereby "the highly skilled underrate their abilities, suffering from illusory inferiority". (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect)