How to get hired at a startup

It depends on the development environment of the company. I did a lot of systems programming and eventually earned the attention of a company that did hire me. They use mostly C++ on Linux for an enterprise application now SaaS situation.

Just practice and do stuff on your own, I guess.

Whatever remains for you to learn, you'll get it from experience and interactions with other developers, not by sitting on the fence.

I used to think this way as well. You know what changed? I started doing freelance work and a lot of the first jobs I did was taking over from a crappy programmer. I fixed bugs in their code and had to work with horrible designs.

It's a great confidence boost once you start seeing real code being used and think "I can do this much better."

how did you finally know you were good enough?

I agree with mattm, but want to understand a little bit more about ''why'' you think you are not good enough to start applying, so I and others can comment better on if you have a legitimate concern or if you are underestimating your own abilities.

FWIW, it is a pretty common trend for especially good programmers to underestimate how good they are. Borrowing from pg, to echo my own observations: "I've found that people who are great at something are not so much convinced of their own greatness as mystified at why everyone else seems so incompetent." It's anecdotal, but it is what I've found as well; the people I respect don't project the attitude that I owe them my respect. The more

But I will state a sentiment that hasn't been mentioned on here yet; your first derivative of ability is way more important most of the time. What you need to be able to do is almost never constant, especially at the places this article is discussing. You need to be sufficiently motivated and curious to be continuously finding better ways, better libraries, better frameworks that help you do a good job faster. The best way to develop a good ability differential is to give a damn; it sounds like you are already there.

As far as being objectively good enough, that is an extremely tough call for anyone to make about themselves, because you have biases; if you're really good, you can account some for those, but true objectivity is nigh-impossible. It's even hard for other people to know, for the same reason, and because they have incomplete information.

The way I deal with this is to err on assuming I'm not good enough yet. Not in the sense that I get down on myself, and assume I never can be, but in the sense that I shouldn't try to drown out my curiosity because whatever effort I will expend is futile. If I'm right, then I'll be doing what I need to do to become good enough; if I'm wrong, then I've still learned something, and haven't just settled with good enough being enough. Wherever I am, there is always better, and approaching that regardless of whatever arbitrary finish-line others might lay in my path is way more important to me.

Anyway, enough rambling. :-) Given your thoughts in this post, I'd say you have the right attitude; don't lose that, it's really what will get you the respect and attention of those you respect and look up to.

At least 50% of the time, a programmer does not know how to perform a task until the moment they perform it. We approach each task with the confidence of one who has learnt how to do new things each day, who knows how long it takes to learn something completely new.

Since you have tought yourself everything you know, it is clear that you have mastered learning new things. Trust me, you will have no more difficulty learning the things you require in the workplace than you have had learning them at home. As you gain experience, you will get better at estimating how much needs to be learnt and learning it quickly (while staying focused), but learning is always a constant.

The moment you stop learning in your job, that is a sign that you need to build an abstraction layer and put your current knowledge into a library so you can focus on more complex problems.

Believe in yourself. The only difference between you and your enlightened peers is that they have confidence in their ability to learn on demand. You should too, since you have proven it already.