Ask HN: How to Move to SF as a British Engineer?

[mulholio]

I'm currently working in London as a frontend engineer and am interested in moving to SF/Bay Area.

I would like to know whether anyone has experience of doing this successfully, particularly if they have secured a startup job as opposed to working at a big company, and what their advice for someone else trying to make a similar move might be.

Options as I see them atm: - Work for a big tech company in UK and then transfer to SF - Start my own company and use that as an entry point

From online research, it doesn't look like a startup job hire would give me much chance of success due to visa issues and time scales but I would love to be corrected on this.