There is one thing nobody is going to tell you about the software industry: nobody knows what they're doing at first.

Not the junior developer. Not the senior developer. Not the startup founder. Not the CTO.

Everyone is figuring things out as they go. The difference is that some people are willing to start before they feel ready.

I see a lot of developers putting their lives on hold while they wait for some magical moment when they finally feel qualified. They want to finish one more course, build one more project, earn one more certification, or spend another month preparing before they start applying.

Meanwhile, someone with half their experience is already shipping code, launching projects, making mistakes, and learning from them.

That's how most careers are built.

Not through certainty. Through action.

One of the hardest lessons I've learned is that confidence almost never comes before doing something.…