Do you have a company in mind that you would love to work for? Have you contacted them and did they reject you for any particular reason? Start with the end in

Do you have a company in mind that you would love to work for? Have you contacted them and did they reject you for any particular reason? Start with the end in mind. "I want to have X job" is a decent start but you should narrow that down to "I want to have X job, in Y industry and here are N example companies I would love to work for." Investigate these companies and look at the developers they hire. Do they all have github accounts? Chances are you'll see a lot of blank profiles and the occasional blog last updated in 2008. If you do see many people with very impressive online personas then start working with these people. Start working on the same OSS projects they are working on. You might find you don't like these people as much as you think you do. On the other hand after a few months they might say "Hey this notarockstar guy is pretty good, maybe we should hire him". Oh and don't cash out your 401k