Early in your career, there is a lot to learn. Being naturally curious and autodidactic seems like a necessary requirement, but having a good mentor can really

Early in your career, there is a lot to learn. Being naturally curious and autodidactic seems like a necessary requirement, but having a good mentor can really supercharge how quickly you progress. A good mentor is someone very knowledgeable, hopefully 10x better than you at the things you want to learn, and also has a knack for teaching. I am pretty early in my development career too, but I'd say that the most important thing is making sure you surround yourself with the smartest people that give you the best chance to get to your end goal. If you're interested in learning about TDD, go to a place that does TDD, and connect with people that do TDD. If you're interested in ember, hang out in the ember irc's, ping ember people, and try to build some small ember things out to the point where people can help you. You need to decide your end game first, and then work backwards. As you interview and talk to people, you'll develop a set of deal breakers that conflict with your end game. Interviews are a two way street; you're filtering and interviewing them as much as they are you. If you want to see how current an employer's tech stack is, ask them what they're currently on, and the last things they've upgraded, how painful it was to upgrade. If you think you know more than their lead developer, then it's probably not a good place. Ask them about how their decisions get made, how projects get prioritized. Ask them questions to see how developer happiness plays into their priorities (e.g. I'd like to do some things in X which you guys don't use right now. How could we go about using X in a new project?). There are a few beliefs you have that might be problematic. Programming and tech are tools at the end of the day, and are only one ingredient of many that end up creating a successful company. If you are looking for a tech focused company, look at the headcount breakdown (e.g. 10 people, 1 developer and 9 sales people vs 9 developers and 1 sales person). Even more troubling, you seem to think your liberal arts degree is a disadvantage, and that a bad interview means you might not have the chops to make it. First and foremost, interviewing is most definitely a skill that improves over time, and bad interviewers ask a lot of things unrelated to the job. Even really bright technical people botch interviews all the time. (http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/03/get-that-job-at-google.html http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/03/get-that-job-at-goog...). Secondly, life is long, and you are hardly defined by some subject you chose to study for 4 years. You live in a time where top notch classes and books and online learning material are readily accessible and cheap or free. From what you've written, sounds like you're looking for a full stack developer position. Apply to a bunch of places, and try to interview at places you don't care about first. Reach out to companies and people that may or may not be hiring to chat with you. Work through CLRS, work through a CS curriculum, pair with people, and put all your assignments up publicly. Then when people question you about your liberal arts degree, you can show them evidence that you have covered a lot of CS topics and have a lot of CS knowledge.