In my current role, I mostly hire “senior” roles. So the applicants (which are pre screened before I see them) typically have 5+ years experience. I ask about the code they’ve written, and then I ask some questions about how they would extend the code (to meet some new requirements). What I’m looking for is not so much a specific answer, but more so “can we think through this problem together.”
That said, I’ve been the interviewer for “junior” roles…and there isn’t as much correlation between ability and experience as you might think. So no reason to feel imposter syndrome. I’ve worked with extremely smart/talented developers without any formal training.
I think all the stuff you’re doing sets a really good foundation for a career in software, if that’s where you want to go. One thing I might suggest is making a few contributions to open source or team projects. It can be useful to learn about how to read code, and present code to others (or to fit your idea into an existing code base).
I work in software (relatively high up), just not as a developer. Started to take development classes at night to pursue it as my own interest, and work on websites/games for myself. When I’m working, I guess my favorite thing to do is to approach work systematically, and my regular job keeps me pretty well-informed about the front-end aspects.
I really appreciate the suggestion. I’ve written some small contributions to public projects, but (I think I mentioned in the past here) not being a dev by trade I have held back some of it because it doesn’t work perfectly and I don’t have any interest in maintaining it/fixing it for others (as I’d like to be working on games, etc). Anyway this was very helpful, thanks (I got super busy yesterday and couldn’t respond).
In my current role, I mostly hire “senior” roles. So the applicants (which are pre screened before I see them) typically have 5+ years experience. I ask about the code they’ve written, and then I ask some questions about how they would extend the code (to meet some new requirements). What I’m looking for is not so much a specific answer, but more so “can we think through this problem together.”
That said, I’ve been the interviewer for “junior” roles…and there isn’t as much correlation between ability and experience as you might think. So no reason to feel imposter syndrome. I’ve worked with extremely smart/talented developers without any formal training.
I think all the stuff you’re doing sets a really good foundation for a career in software, if that’s where you want to go. One thing I might suggest is making a few contributions to open source or team projects. It can be useful to learn about how to read code, and present code to others (or to fit your idea into an existing code base).
I work in software (relatively high up), just not as a developer. Started to take development classes at night to pursue it as my own interest, and work on websites/games for myself. When I’m working, I guess my favorite thing to do is to approach work systematically, and my regular job keeps me pretty well-informed about the front-end aspects.
I really appreciate the suggestion. I’ve written some small contributions to public projects, but (I think I mentioned in the past here) not being a dev by trade I have held back some of it because it doesn’t work perfectly and I don’t have any interest in maintaining it/fixing it for others (as I’d like to be working on games, etc). Anyway this was very helpful, thanks (I got super busy yesterday and couldn’t respond).
Wow. It better be extremely deep and broad experience if they’re in a position to mentor others; and even then.