We know very little about how CS1 students perceive professional programmers. Studies show that CS1 students sometimes negatively self-assess their ability to program at moments that are natural parts of professional programming. By understanding how CS1 students perceive professionals, we may be able to prevent students from negatively self-assessing at those moments. We used vignette-style questions to describe programming moments that professionals encounter. Some students believed that professionals rarely make simple errors, while other misconceptions were more nuanced, such as that professionals use resources, but are discouraged from doing so. Our findings also suggest that students’ sources of information about professional programmers vary greatly, ranging from deductive reasoning to the Internet. By reducing CS1 students’ misconceptions about professional programmers, we may be able to improve self-assessments for CS1 students.