Sensei (先生)

Sensei (先生) is a Japanese title used to refer to or address teachers, professors, professionals such as lawyers and doctors, politicians, clergymen, and other figures of authority. The word is also used to show respect to someone who has achieved a certain level of mastery in an art form or some other skill.

Nope, I’m not a sensei.

In actuality I am an apprentice, and you wouldn’t believe how long it took me to realise this. It must have been 1 part ignorance and 2 parts pride that was blinding me from the truth; that I wasn’t as good at my job as I thought I was. It hurt to say it to myself and I’m glad that at the time of my realisation there were enough talented people around me to inspire me to get better.

In hindsight I can see that the majority of my colleagues were also in the same boat. We didn’t know that a level of ability much greater than our own could even exist. We were Web Developers, we knew C#, T-SQL, we’d been hacking HTML since we were at school and we were earning £30k salaries. It was great! We were the elite and at the top of our game. But, for some reason, the business was crumbling around us. It couldn’t have been our fault, we were the only good thing going for it, it must’ve been bad management…

These days I have a greater sense of humility. I also have a much greater appreciation for my craft.

It is inherently difficult for a professional to actually acknowledge that he or she is an apprentice. I’ve met and worked with developers who are much better versed in the profession than I, themselves self-confessed apprentices. Admitting that I am an apprentice is no longer a problem for me because it only inspires me to learn more. And with a decade or more of learning and growing I doubt I will still be satisfied about how “good” I am at what I do. Sometimes the amount of knowledge I feel I need to accumulate can be overwhelming, but I cannot see this line of work ever becoming stale and this is what makes me want to keep doing what I’m doing.

This blog is for the apprentice web developers out there.