

Ask HN: Moving from the UK to Silicon Valley - notreallymeuk

Can anyone help explain to me how someone from the UK can move out to Silicon Valley 
(or share their experiences)?  I'm currently working managing J2EE "turn-the-handle" projects for enterprise software but it's not where my heart is.  I want to be solving web-scale problems for millions of users and making my mark.<p>Silicon Valley seems like the place to be to achieve that.<p>What are my options for going out there?  So far, I'm considering applying to the big companies such as Google/Facebook  - are there other options I'm missing?<p>My risk level has to be fairly low as I have a supportive wife and children to bring with me!  (note this obviously isn't my real account, but I will be eagerly looking for responses).
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notreallymeuk
I realised I should probably sell myself a little here, just in case someone
is reading who can make this happen!

I've got a Comp Sci PhD and have been working in software development for the
last eight years or so. I've working on machine vision projects from digital
ophthalmoscopes to sateliite imaging. I spent a couple of years at an awesome
startup in the UK trying to reinvent integrated development environments; neat
ideas that didn't make a commercial success, but did enable me to learn a lot
and introduced me to the wonderful world of Lisp.

For the past four years I've been at a large software company, but I've
drifted up the management ladder as the technical ladder just doesn't exist. I
have, however, managed to get some cool stuff in place (code-generation for
writing new components, fuzz-testing security tools and much faster core
component). Unfortunately, now I'm mostly an email proxy by day and a Haskell
hacker by night...

Now I'm looking for a technical role where I can work on tough problems,
hopefully succeed, and work my way up from there.

If there is opportunity out there, reply on here and I will contact you and
give you more information about me. Thanks for reading this comment (and more
generally, thanks HN for reminding me there is a world of fun problems that I
should be solving).

