[barrkel]

I'll make it concrete too. First up though, I'm not particularly unhappy with my career.

I live in London, and work remotely for a US company, but I'm not from London, and haven't worked for any other companies in London. (I'm here because of my girlfriend.) I have no colleagues in London. Most of my contacts are on the west coast of the US, where it's somewhat awkward to get a job as a non-US citizen, and doubly awkward if one wants to work remotely.

Now, if I wanted to get a different job, what would I do? The best solution would probably be a job right here in London, but I have no "in" here. But I don't see that that lack has any obvious connection to my abilities as a developer.

[plinkplonk]

"The best solution would probably be a job right here in London, but I have no "in" here."

But this is exactly what I said. SO is targeted at people who don't have an "in". "Elite " programmers generally get an "in" by their reputation and contacts, not by paying to list a cv on some website(I don't believe SO can overcome that lack of "in" any more than any other job site, but that is a separate point. And anyway, if I am popular on SO I can just add the url to my cv. Why pay SO?).

If I were in your position (US citizen looking for an "in" in London ) I would make contacts in the local sw industry asap. Attend local ruby/c++/whatever-tech-you-are-interested-in interest groups, attend major conferences and so on and make friends with talented people.

Writing /contributing to open source software buys you quite a bit of "in" with competent people anywhere.

People you know are the ultimate "in", followed closely (for devs) by shipping products/open source software you wrote.

Anything SO can provide (in addition to a url to your contrinuctions which you have anyway)is a weak/nonexistent imitation. And you certainly shouldn't (imo) have to pay for it and (again imo) won't be getting value for money if you did.

All that said, I do await SO career success stories. I'd love to be proven wrong. I still maintain that "elite of elite" programmers (to use Joels' words) won't pay SO (or anyone else) to host their cv.

[barrkel]

I'm not a US citizen; but I've attended various interest groups, but to be frank, most of the folks I've met aren't up to much. Far better are the contacts I've made while I've been speaking at conferences, and in that case, it's the speakers who are the contacts, not the plebs who attend.

But like I said, I'm fairly happy with my current job, so I feel no big pressure to integrate with the local scene.