[notapenny]

Totally agree with this. If you see someone who's better at something than you are, go up to them and ask if they are willing to spend some time with you working on a topic. You'd be surprised how many people would love to help out. Depending on the company they may even have decent learning/pairing programs for this.

Can share that experience as well, my first job there were 2 devs who were great programmers, highly educated. At every chance I tried to get as much knowledge from them as possible. They were happy to share and equally happy when they saw me improving.