That's a good point, although if you are willing to relocate to a hot spot, you won't have too much trouble picking up a next job when the first fails. I get as

That's a good point, although if you are willing to relocate to a hot spot, you won't have too much trouble picking up a next job when the first fails. I get asked multiple times per week if I know any developers looking for work here in San Francisco. It's also much easier to get into a company if you can talk to the people working there in person regularly rather than doing remote interviews and phone conferences. A couple pair programming sessions, hackathons, or fun projects together and you might be in the door without any of the usual suffering. Although lack of process like that is part of smaller startups as well.