How long should you be going coding before you can say you’re ready for a job in this Industry?
As long as it takes. It is impossible to answer because there are too many unknowns - your skill level, the job market where you are, your aptitude, how hard you work, your connections, your interviewing skills, etc. And of course, just plain luck.
A very rare few people get extremely lucky and find something after a few months. Some land something after several months. I would guess that many hard workers are in the 1.5-2 year range. Some may take longer than that.
It really is impossible to say. It would be like asking, “How many woman do I need to ask out before I find my future wife?” The answer is that you keep looking until you find her. It may be the next woman you ask, or it may be the 1,372nd you ask. But the more you work at it and “hone your skills” the quicker it will be.
It’s the same with finding a dev job - hone your skills, put in your time, work hard, and things will (almost certainly) eventually work out. But it’s going to seem like it’s taking forever.
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Thank you @KevinSmith appreciates your honesty.
@Andre1 as Kevin said, there are variables that are out of our control with regards to this sort of thing.
If it helps, I’ll share that I spent about 6 months of daily dedication to the freeCodeCamp curriculum. I immersed myself in coding things – listened to podcasts, watched stories of other developers’ journeys on YouTube, and so on.
At around the 7 month mark or so, I started preparing for applying to jobs. I watched videos on advice for portfolios, I watched videos on preparing for interviews, I listened to stories of people who “broke into tech” and kept a positive, confident attitude that I was on a doable path.
In my case I was lucky to find employment at around the 8th month after starting freeCodeCamp. I will be approaching my 2nd year at the company that hired me.
I attribute my success to 3 things (aside from pure luck):
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I had a unique project that served as a talking point at my interview. I was honestly passionate about my coding journey and connected this with my passion for music and built an app related to music. I did this by thinking creatively about my portfolio projects. Instead of merely including tutorial projects in my portfolio, I used parts of these tutorial projects to make something that was unique to my personal interests.
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I was myself at the interview. I meditated in the car to calm my nerves before speaking to the interviewers (I spoke to maybe 5 people). During my interview, I let myself shine – not in a b.s. way but in a way that communicated that I was genuinely passionate about the subject matter that I’d just spent 7 months dedicating myself to.
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This relates to the 2nd listed above but I will just say that I think it helped to be passionate about the subject matter. Of course the promise of being able to make some money was motivating me to open freeCodeCamp daily but I was also passionate about the material. Heck, just last night I installed Ruby one of my computers and the process took about 3+ hours for various reasons. But you know what? It was oddly exhilarating as I slowly made my way towards getting Ruby on that machine. I honestly feel like that sorta excitement-from-staring-at-a-computer was a necessary component to my being able to land a job.
I wish you luck!
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Hi @jAardvark !
Welcome to the forum!
I think this part especially helped set you apart from the other candidates.
All of it was great advice though 
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Yeah, one of the things that they are looking for is people that are passionate about coding and exploring new things. That’s why I always advise getting beyond tutorials and class projects - show the initiative that you can come up with something on your own and have the discipline to see it through. That shows that you love coding and want to keep learning.
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This is rather subjective as the learning curve for people varies. Some may learn faster than others. A job does not mean the end of learning. So, you cannot become ‘perfect’ before getting a job. It is some kind of bootstrapping where you get a job based on what you know and what you are capable of and then resume your learning.
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