Geez, this is worse than actually having a job. Two days in, and I already feel like I’m spending all my time on the job search. It’s midnight, and I’m poking around at the current state of web development tools for a phone screen interview tomorrow, and I’ve got another phone screen with a startup tomorrow for which I should be doing other preparation. (Yes, it’s nice to have phone screens, but the fact that they want to talk with me does not mean I’ve got the skills they want.) There’s several other appointments on my calendar already. I’ve also got a bunch of friends I hoped to talk with about where I was looking, but I haven’t yet arranged to talk with them as the schedule fills up. Whoops.

I feel like I’ve gone from sitting out in the hammock to juggling firecrackers.

And it looks like Silicon Valley is desperate for good programmers, regardless of where the economy’s going. I had a conversation with a high school teacher last month where he said that his kids aren’t very interested in computers because they keep hearing about how all the jobs are being outsourced. There may be jobs getting outsourced, but there’s still a lot of work to be done…