Ask HN: Is 1 year of programming enough to work for a startup?

> My question is, would 1 year of web development experience be enough to work at a startup?

Why are you restricting yourself to web development work?

> I'm working on a personal project right now...It's not any groundbreaking technology, just trying to automate a process for an industry that has, for the most part, not embraced the internet for their operations.

Why isn't that your startup?

Well it is my startup, I guess I didn't say it directly. My partner and I have been throwing around the idea for a few weeks and i've started coding it recently. He's not technical at all so I've been building out the app by myself and he's going to deal with marketing and business dev.

To me, attitude/personality is a huge factor when start ups are hiring. I've been on both sides. When I was first hired, I had about 2 years part time work experience. When I was hiring, we often looked for recent graduates that would be our next rock stars.

If you can show that you learn fast and have the right attitude that should be enough. You mention you have worked on several personal projects. This is a huge plus to me, as it shows that you like to learn, that you like to code and that you have initiative. I'd make sure to point this out and allow them to see/review your projects.

All that said, it sounds like you are in the process of creating your own startup right now. If you left your current 8-5 job for a start up, you most likely would have to put your own project on hold. The description of your market is the exact type of market to go after. Perhaps you should give yourself a bit more time on your own project before looking for a job at a start up.

You don't need to be a guru in programming to start a startup. You learn (a whole lot more than reading programming books) while working on your startup or projects.

Learning is part of startup and that drives you forward to be better.

It sounds like you could do front-end work, maybe a bit more than that but you would most likely still be working with someone that has a bit more experience when the going gets tough. Otoh, who knows...

The best way to find out is to try. One way to hone your skills quickly and mercilessly is to join some open source project that does something interesting and eat your way in to an existing codebase. That'll teach you quicker than any other course. Be prepared for a very steep ascent and fairly ruthless critique by other coders on the project, but that's how you learn fastest if you're open for it.

Please lurk a little bit before starting if you go this route. I started by hanging out in the support and development irc channels to learn the common problems people had. This gave me a good idea where to jump in.

I got very lucky to get involved with some very nice people who were willing to play along and review my code.

Distributed version control systems tend to make this even easier. ( We were stuck with CVS)

PS: don't make them teach you how to use the version control system :)

Do you have enough experience to do a startup?

Really the only way to find out is to actually go do it yourself. See, you're thinking about it the wrong way, because skills are not a function of time, necessarily. In my opinion, tenacity and drive matter a lot more. You could start by building a project (that's what I'd do), but you could also contribute to OSS. You have all the tools, and (I assume)no compelling reason not to. Even if you don't, at the end of it all, you just might.

Reading my original post I did make it sound like i'm looking at it the wrong way. I do work on a lot of personal projects and have learned a lot more than just by reading the books. I can actually write a decent app, I've written RSS parsers, a threaded comment system, an online ticketing system for my roomate's entrepreneurship project (no payment processing though), and right now i'm working on a CRM system.

We're planning to launch the CRM system soon and market it to our specific industry and i've actually learned a lot over the time i've been coding in my free time, I just feel like I don't have the skills the be hired on as a programmer at startup.

I'm leaning more towards finding a personal project that has big potential and build a prototype using my PHP skills. If it catches on I figured I could then find a more experienced programmer that could optimize the code and make it scale as the user base grows. I feel like I could use my skills as a founder and then bring in some awesome programmers to refine and enhance my app rather than getting hired as a programmer.