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.
Silicon Valley seems like the place to be to achieve that.
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?
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).
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).