If you're in the Bay area (or any major city), go to the meetups, talk to people, and eventually you'll find someone able to help you as long as you're personab

If you're in the Bay area (or any major city), go to the meetups, talk to people, and eventually you'll find someone able to help you as long as you're personable. Most of all though, you need to teach yourself the programming used in practice though - web development is probably the fastest ticket to a job. This means some Git, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and a backend language (PHP, Ruby, Python, Java/Scala are good choices) & framework (WordPress, Symfony, Ruby on Rails, Django, Node.js, Play framework are examples) or few. Try going through courses offered on sites like Code School or Treehouse. Scour the web for online tutorials, and try to veer from them to get yourself more comfortable with working with the technologies. An aside, if you live in the Bay area, I've run into plenty of fellow Illini here - I am one myself. I am a math PhD dropout from U of I ('06 - '10). Good luck - I started my career 2 years ago after 2 1/2 years of searching, so I understand the pain of the first search. A recruiter I met at a meetup helped me land my first job in 2 months - I spent a half a year attending several meetups a week before I ran into him.