This can be hit and miss so needs some persistence. For me, not living in SF or even the USA, there is not really a tech culture to the point where the Pizza delivery person wants to talk about Monads (a story I read somewhere...).

However if you are not in a tech city, and don't want to move to one, then online is great. Here is what you can do.

1. Find stuff on Show HN or HN (or Reddit etc.) generally that you are super excited about. Genuinely. For example with me: I probably should be excited about self driving cars, but I am actually way more excited about that self-hosted wiki in a single HTML file, for example.

2. See how to connect to the people. You could send a cold email, but it is a bit sucky and desperate. It is better if you "do" something fun online with them. Maybe help them on the Github, submit or review PRs, join the chat server and talk, build something and let them know about it, use it for free (maybe using their thing, or complementary) etc. This should be effortless because remember you are super excited.

3. That's it. Be a human, see where it goes. You may or may not find out about jobs. You might get bored. But doing 1 and 2 enough a great job or opportunity will be found out.

This is more like: build and connect with people for their coolness, and let the occasional job opportunity present itself. You still need to do interviews, and come across like a good worker and will add a lot of value and all that jazz. But this is about finding stuff that may not even be advertised. And also most advertised jobs are a bit shit. So it acts as a filter.

> However if you are not in a tech city, and don't want to move to one, then online is great. Here is what you can do.

I live 40 miles north of Wichita Kansas USA. There's no tech - there's no city even.

Here's what I did: I got to know a recruiter in Wichita. Turns out she's a rock star - one of the leaders in the region at recruting tech. Met a guy on an flight from Atlanta to Wichita. We got together and talked geek a few times. The three of us started a Meetup in Wichita where we talk geek every other month or so. We generally get 15-50 folks depending on the time of year and topic. Last meeting I got two off handed job offers (I'm not looking). I've gotten a previous position the same way.

Tech is everywhere. The typical attendee to our Meetup is a developer or analyst at a regional bank, an airplane manufacturer, or farm credit agency. Nothing fancy, but great jobs for this area.

I'm not a very social person, but I do like to talk geek. There are lots of folks like me everywhere. Folks want to learn. Get together and teach each other.

You wouldn't happen to live in Stubbville where the people train leaves from?

But seriously, that's awesome what you did. You did the hard work so those other 20 people could benefit.

>This is more like: build and connect with people for their coolness, and let the occasional job opportunity present itself.

This is an excellent summary. I'll add: people like helping people. They like getting people jobs, they like seeing other people succeed, and they like mentoring people, even casually. Use that to your advantage, and don't forget to lend a hand to the next person on your way up the ladder.

All but one of the jobs I've had in my 4+ decades of mucking with computers have been through networking. (Even the gig I had as a dishwasher in high school was a referral through a friend).

That one job that I got at a generic Silly Valley job fair? It was the place where I learned the term "Train Wreck".

Network, network, network. Oh yeah.

It’s hard to say if your experience is isolated to a single job. No?

Unclear what you're asking. Generally I've stayed 5-8 years at any one company (the most so far was 11). My time at a few startups were far shorter than that, for pretty guessable reasons.