1. Make cool stuff. Examples of truly cool stuff include http://www.anybots.com http://www.anybots.com and http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~adamwb/ http://www.cs.cmu.edu/

1. Make cool stuff. Examples of truly cool stuff include http://www.anybots.com http://www.anybots.com and http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~adamwb/ http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~adamwb/ (although stuff vastly less cool that that still counts as cool for purposes of finding a job) 2. Post it on your website in such a way that it is obvious that a) it is cool, and b) you are therefore the shit. 3. Cold-email (as opposed to cold-call) people you want to work for. If you have done 1 and 2 correctly, and the people you want to work for are in fact good people to work for, they will hire you. It worked for me, and the stuff I made was hardly cool, and it was hardly well-posted on my website. I now have basically exactly the work situation I would define given complete freedom.