Recently I read a post by Sasha Isakov about the role of an expert in a team and decided to share my reflection.

A good expert is often inconvenient: he asks questions when you already want to start, asks for numbers when everything seems obvious, and reminds about risks when the team is enthusiastic about an idea. From the outside, it looks like he is deliberately slowing down the process.

Over time, I noticed: it is much more dangerous when there is no such person in the team. Decisions are made quickly, meetings end earlier, tasks go into work, and after a few months it turns out that the team was very effectively moving in the wrong direction.

An expert is needed not only for knowledge. He creates resistance where speed begins to displace quality, and thanks to his experience, he notices earlier than others what a raw solution can lead to. In his post, Sasha gave an excellent football analogy: a tech lead is a playing coach, and an expert is a striker who is not asked to train others, because his job is to score goals that no one else can.

Such freedom from processes allows him to notice what escapes a busy tech lead: for example, that a junior has long been stuck in the architecture and is building crutches, although tickets are being closed.

Especially an Individual Contributor is needed not by a weak team, but by a strong one. A weak team may not know what to do. A strong team usually knows too many ways and can convincingly justify each one. In such a situation, the expert does not show the only right path, but notices in time that there is no bridge on the chosen route.

Sometimes one such stop saves months of development.