Great followup, thanks. Getting a home loan is one time when it pays to be on board with a big company. Good point about networking. My best networking came

Great followup, thanks. Getting a home loan is one time when it pays to be on board with a big company. Good point about networking. My best networking came from mid-size companies (~100 people - for me that's a big company), because there was a good flow of new people coming through regularly from elsewhere in industry and I actually got to meet most of them. In general, it seems to me that the best results came when a small, motivated group of people with money had an opportunity to make a lot more money by solving some hard problem before someone else did. In those cases, the payoff was very clear to them and they were ready to pay accordingly. Big companies do this, but they usually seem to do it by partnering with smaller companies or by doing a skunkworks project, often relying on outsiders. I agree that not enough developers plan for a short career. One of the nice things about being independent is you don't get to fool yourself into thinking you'll have a job in a month.