Thanks for the advice. If you mean doing contract/consulting work, I'm not interesting in that at this point. As for close interaction with customers, I can

Thanks for the advice. If you mean doing contract/consulting work, I'm not interesting in that at this point. As for close interaction with customers, I can't agree more. I learned that lesson the hard way as an user interface programmer for a persistent online game. We got most of our feedback on the game forums, and game players are very opinionated customers. It was so much better to talk directly to them rather than being mediated by game designers. And definitely better than implementing in a vacuum only to find out later that what you did is not what they wanted.