Part time programming work in Silicon Valley is hard to come by even when the economy is good. I'm not sure why exactly, but people here treat employment as an

Part time programming work in Silicon Valley is hard to come by even when the economy is good. I'm not sure why exactly, but people here treat employment as an all or nothing proposition. I found it much easier to do random short-term and part-time contracts in Boston. However, there are some niches where companies are more likely to hire part-time contractors: systems administration, "creatives" (i.e. flash) and recently, iPhone programmers. Thus, if you can stomach doing systems-y Rails stuff, I would could check in with the Rails hosting places. EngineYard & Heroku come to mind. I know people in both crews and they seem like they might be amenable to a part time thing if you're good. Also, Twitter contacted me about a systems position last week and the guy on the phone hinted that they may also be looking for full or part time Rails contractors. Good luck!