I ran my own business for a while. It was difficult and while it only had one year out of five that it actually lost money, it barely made enough to pay me enou

I ran my own business for a while. It was difficult and while it only had one year out of five that it actually lost money, it barely made enough to pay me enough to live. It was very stressful. However, during that time I sold products (and programming services) related to my field (video and image processing). I did my best to help other developers (some who could even be considered competitors). I posted to email lists of users, mostly with knowledge about the field in general and being very careful not to try to push them towards my company’s products because I didn’t want to come off as a shill. Eventually, I decided that it wasn’t fair to me or my family to keep working so hard for so little return. I started looking for jobs with other companies and by luck there was a position that opened up on a team that was directly related to my skill set. (I had written some plugins for their product, in fact.) I had interacted with a few of their engineers on the various email lists I was on, and had even interacted with their QA once or twice when dealing with some issues with my plugins. I was able to get one of the engineers to pass my resume on to the hiring manager and eventually got the job. While it’s hard to know for sure what the deciding factors were for them, I believe these things helped: 1. Being knowledgeable in the field 2. Posting helpful content for users and other developers and not worrying about whether I’m helping a competitor or going to make a sale 3. Getting to know an engineer or two on the team