[bityard]

This happened a couple decades later, but my first FOUR tech jobs came from attending a local Linux user group and networking with the people there.

I was talking to someone and explaining that I was taking classes at a local community college in preparation for computer science degree and mentioned off-hand that I might try to find some part-time Linux/BSD sysadmin work at some point. (I never fully attained the degree but also ended up not needing it.) The owner of a local IT consulting business overheard me and called me up the next day. I worked for him for a while and the next three jobs I moved to after that were all based on referrals and recommendations from people in that group.