Ask HN: How do you know you're good enough to apply somewhere?

Being hired in software has nothing to do with "good". Here is the list of success criteria:

* Compatibility - If a given company is full of sucky developers they are going to look for new developers who perform at the same level in roughly the same technology. If you are too good, original, or whatever you aren't compatible. Consider whether the job is looking for super elite developers who engineer the best solutions ever just to put text on screen. If you don't drink that kool-aid you probably aren't a good fit for that team/employer.

* Surviving resume death - Many companies have been getting so many resumes this year they have started ignoring resumes submitted to their own job portals. You have to bypass this by knowing somebody on the inside, having a recruiter with a strong internal relationship, or something else like this.

* Tools - Some employers over invest in external third party tools. In this case you also need to be a tool loving monkey if you wish to be hired. Your resume should scream about this and you should be able to speak to your passion of using external solutions during an interview. All of this tool over compensation must be explicit and not some implicit hints. If instead your first inclination is to write code and solve the problem with code you may not be compatible with a tool obsessed employer.

After being laid for several months this year I got tired of the hiring game. As a long time JavaScript developer everything now feels like an industry focused on entertaining over paid entitled beginners who need massively huge applications to do the most trivial things. I gave up for awhile before doubling down on my strengths and ignoring the trend nonsense of open positions and recruiters trying to fill those positions. I dropped so much of this trend stupidity from my online resume and job portal profiles like frameworks, fullstack, and whatever. Instead I did a 180 and focused on my military background with my security clearance and security certifications. I went from no resume responses over several months to quickly receiving multiple interviews and several competing job offers.

> Instead I did a 180 and focused on my military background with my security clearance and security certifications.

How would this for those with no military background?

My suggestion is to target areas of software where the demand greatly exceeds the available candidates. JavaScript and Java are not that. There are sub-areas of those language that are in demand and the available candidates are rare, but the problem is that such specific areas are niche and get lost in the noise of the more common scenarios of using enormous tools with too much unnecessary engineering just to put text on screen.

"Can't interview for a whole year" is the exception - six months is more common.

Unless you're a specialist in a narrow technical area, there's an essentially infinite number of potential employers. Not applying often enough is a more common mistake than "applying too often / applying too early."

"Market forces" and "below the standards" are not independent. Market forces influence supply, and demand (the interview standard) has to respond.

By far the best way to get a job at any company is by having a recommendation from someone who works there. (Specifically, this trumps meeting the written job requirements.) I'm not saying it's easy, but ... use your network.

You're "good enough" to apply everywhere. Never know, they may need an apprentice or broom pusher and be looking for the exact weakness you have.

You can't know if you'll succeed by trying, but you can be certain you'll always fail when you never try. This applies to far more than the job market.

Consider the second paragraph of my post. There are places that prohibit reapplying for an arbitrarily long period of time. It would be wiser to know one's weaknesses before locking themselves out for a period longer than it would take to rectify those weaknesses. Even at places that aren't explicit in this restriction, there probably still is a soft barrier on reapplying.

I think that's not the right question to ask, you're good enough to apply wherever you want.

As for working on yourself, I'd say do that constantly, improve continuously and keep applying. Your idea to do a comparison with people who work there is a good one, you might also message them, might find more answers that way

My personal test is:

- how good am I in my current team/company? How good was I in my former teams/companies? I can then extrapolate to: how good I think I am for company X

It’s not an objective metric, but it works for me.

With so many job openings with specifically for experienced folks, how a fresher supposed to apply?

I mean if a fresher has a good profile and understanding, do companies consider giving a chance?

> how do you know if your failure to get an interview is due to market forces or due to you being genuinely below the standards they're looking for?

What’s the difference?

The main difference is

"this person would be a good fit in a better market but our circumstances now make it hard to hire someone new if they're not going to be a huge value add day 1"

vs

"this person would never make it at this company, they're mildly delusional for even applying and not getting the implicit standard of excellence we market in our recruiting"

You apply and see if they say yes

Yeah, this is the answer.

If you want to see if you can do X, you do X and see what happens.