one thing i've noticed working on enterprise software is that experts rarely look like experts.
when i first started, i assumed the smartest people in the room would have immediate answers to everything.
they usually didn't.
what they had instead were better questions.
they'd spend twenty minutes discussing edge cases nobody else had considered.
they'd challenge assumptions that everyone else accepted.
they'd say things like:
“what happens if this fails halfway through?”
“how would someone know they made a mistake here?”
“are we sure that's actually the problem?”
sometimes it was frustrating because it felt like they were slowing things down.
later i realized they were usually the reason things didn't break.
i think a lot of us grow up associating expertise with certainty.
but most of the genuinely experienced people i've worked with seem surprisingly comfortable saying:
“i don't know.”
“let's verify that.”
“it depends.”
which is probably why they're good.
the more complicated the problem, the less useful confidence becomes on its own.
these days when someone has an answer for everything, i trust them a little less.
the people i learn the most from are usually the ones still asking questions.