It took me more than four months after college to find my first job as an intern. Six months later, I got offered a better job so I quit. However during the transition I was offered some well paid freelance gigs so I didn't end up taking the second job. After 4 years of freelancing and moving out of a big city, I got tired of working alone so I joined a small team in a non-tech company. Six month later, I was getting bored so I looked for work in a major city. I found one startup that did something that sounded interesting, so I sent them an email even though they weren't advertising opened positions. An hour later I got a response, and two weeks later I was working for them. The past 3 months, I got offered 2 jobs and Facebook contacted me for the second time.

This isn't even the Silicon Valley -- I live in Europe. Sometimes I wonder if I'm smart or not. I know I probably wouldn't be able to answer all of these trick questions I hear about. I think I'm much better at abstracting concepts and seeing the whole picture. I love programming, but so far I haven't found a place where I can have as much fun as when I am creating software on my own, free of constraints and in control of everything. When I work on my own, every now and then I stop coding, sometimes for days, thinking, sketching, until I know exactly what I'm going to do and can explain why in plain English.

Anyways, I think younger programmers might enjoy taking time answering these kinds of question, but I'm the kind of person that wishes he didn't have to sleep so he could spend more time working on his own projects, so I don't bother. If you want me to be interested, you'd have to find a way to convince me that I would be working in an environment that feels like I'm working on my own project. I want to work with motivated people that care more about their product than getting funded. I don't want to work in an environment where the number of closed tickets is a metric for productivity.