[malyk]

That sounds crazy to me. Are you able to get a clearance of any kind? If you are eligible then there should be thousands of jobs in the DC area to choose from.

Of course, those aren't super exciting startup-like jobs, but they are places where you'll get a bunch of experience.

[esonderegger]

I already have a clearance. I guess this means I've probably been talking to the wrong people.

For the contractors I've been talking to, when I tell them that I write python when I can, PHP when I'm patching stuff I wrote a few years ago, and javascript when it needs to run client-side, and that I spend my days maintaining systems running Ubuntu server I get a response something like "yeah... that's not really what we're looking for.

And maybe I've been too quick to dismiss working in a Windows/ASP/VB shop. Those folks have challenging problems to solve too, and reasons for using the tools they use. Thanks for reminding me of that.