“Am I ready to interview for a software engineering job?”

This is a question that’s asked all the time by people trying to break into the software engineering industry. I’m here to give you the answer to this question… and a bit of tough love.

The real answer

Okay, here it is: if you’re asking the question, you’re ready. Think about it: asking the question means you’re probably in the ballpark, which is certainly good enough to sit an interview.

So what are you really saying when you ask this question?

The tough love part

When I hear this question, what I really hear is:

“I’m scared I’m going to fail an interview and embarrass myself.”

All I can say to this is: yeah, it might happen. It has happened to me and countless other engineers. But guess what? We’re happily employed as software engineers. We took the risk and failed some interviews, but now we’re employed in the field.

My recommendation is to get over this fear or you’ll be in “am I ready” purgatory forever. Do some interviews, fail them, take notes on what you got wrong so you can study them, and take more interviews. Eventually, you will land a role and that will be the only thing that matters in the end.

“Am I ready” purgatory is really unhelpful

One thing I wish I knew when I was fretting over whether to interview is that self-study is really unproductive relative to learning on the job. One hour of learning employed as a junior engineer is probably worth 10 hours of self study—learning on the job is immersive and you typically have so many more resources (e.g., senior engineers) at your disposal.

I’d strongly encourage you to try to get a junior role as soon as you start asking the “Am I ready” question. You might have a few unsuccessful interviews, but eventually you’ll get that job and then you’ll really start to learn quickly.

Happy interviewing!