My job hunt is over. A lot of people in my network passed along good leads, and I had a couple of opportunities to do cool stuff with smaller companies, but the timing turned out not to be right (they couldn’t hire me right away and I needed to be hired right away). So, I accepted a contract position that I found via Dice.com. As far as I’m concerned, if you’re looking for an IT job, Dice is the best site out there. Flipdog.com is also pretty good, but for me, Dice has been the most reliable for a long time. I don’t even bother with Monster.com or Hotjobs.com. I’ve never received a reply from any job I’ve applied to through those sites.

I was pretty surprised not to get a job through the “network.” I made contact with a lot of people that I know in the course of the job search, but nothing happened fast enough there.

One general observation I have is that it seems like nobody (at least around here) is doing anything ambitious. I didn’t see any job listings for big projects that are getting under way. The project I’m joining is a security review for code produced by contractors for a large government agency. I have a lot of experience reviewing code, and I’m looking forward to focusing on security. I’ve been interested in security in general and in computer security in particular for a long time, and if this turned out to be the first step in focusing on security as a career direction, that would be fine with me. Mostly I’m just glad not to be looking for a job right now.