2001 - Post college I got a job working for a company that did federal contracting. They had recently started a commercial contract and I was put on the team w

2001 - Post college I got a job working for a company that did federal contracting. They had recently started a commercial contract and I was put on the team with 6 other guys in their 20s. We worked like crazy and had a great time for 14+ months. I was moved around to a few other contracts after that and none was every as good, but they weren't bad, until the last one which was soul sucking, and I left. 2004 - Got a new job at another federal contractor and it was a good job for what it was. 9-5ish, no dress code (big deal for east coast .gov contractor), good benefits, vacation, salary, etc. The work was moderately interesting, but the people were good and while the environment wasn't conducive to shipping a lot of product quickly we did get to do some interesting work. Moved to SF in 2008, saw what I was missing, and in 2011 - Joined a small startup that was great for most of 2 years. There were ups and downs, but the work was fun, the team was small and mostly in sync, I got to learn a whole lot and was responsible for basically everything. At the end it kind of went bad, but it was 20ish months of a good place to work. And with the exception of about 3 months in the middle it was a pretty reasonable work/life balance. 2013 - Got a job at another startup. Good people, interesting space, good work environment, decent benefits. I like getting up and coming into the office. I generally work 9-630ish and things look good for the foreseeable future. TLDR - Yeah, there are plenty of good jobs out there. You aren't guaranteed to find them, so some due diligence will be required, but they are definitely out there.