I cannot at all speak for all government/big organizations, but there is a certain level of bureaucracy, inefficiency and tedium that I don't personally find en

I cannot at all speak for all government/big organizations, but there is a certain level of bureaucracy, inefficiency and tedium that I don't personally find enjoyable so I steer clear of those now. There's probably some really great teams within big orgs out there who have managed to carve themselves a comfortable niche but I bet those are even harder to find. I personally look for companies with less than 100 people, usually much less, in smaller cities. At least in Australia you can find lots of great bootstrapped small businesses doing project work for clients or product-owners of their own software products. But you have to go find the businesses rather than find the job offerings, then just check out their careers page. There's probably not many in SV, since VC sucks all the air out of the room in the tech industry.