It's 5 months until I'm done with my Masters, and 5 1/2 months until I'd like to be working somewhere awesome. I've been getting a phone call or email every other week or so from someone interested in if I'd be interested in working for them. Some numbers on that for you other job seekers out there:

• Facebook (from my education/working background): 1 invite which led to 2 rounds of interviews from a startup in Silicon Valley. Waiting on the final word from them
• LinkedIn: 1 invite for interviews later this year
• Georgia Tech Computer Science Networking related things: 2 invites for future interviews
• This website and my resume on here: 6 (!) invites for future interviews. (And 2 others a while back from companies that I did a lot of part time work for including CollegeMedium)
• Monster.com: nothing recent, but 1 company found me that I worked at for a few months (WebConnect) and 1 that I worked at for a bit longer (The Fulcrum Group). Maybe I should update my profile on there.. It's been years.

I also have interviews with Google lined up for "upgrading" me from intern to full time. However, while all of these companies sound like a great fit for my skills where they'd get a lot out of me and I'd have a good time, none of them currently meet all of my desires for working somewhere and if something came along that met all of them, they'd definitely have the advantage when it comes to comparing offers. All of the e-mails/phone calls I've gotten so far from above would be absolutely great if they met my non-work-related desires. Some things I'm looking for:

• Atlanta is great. Being able to stay in Atlanta would be super awesome. Next on (but quite far down) the list are the Boston/Route 128 area and the San Francisco/Silicon Valley area, and I'd be open to other places.
• Easy access to work and a major metropolitan area without needing a car is a requirement. Caltrain in Silicon Valley is great, but I'd prefer being able to bike to work and the city. 10 miles sounds like an arbitrary reasonable number so work should be no further than 15 miles from the city and there should be somewhere reasonable to live somewhere between the two. I'd rather not have to take the train every day, but it's an option. I'll likely end up with a car but I do not want to drive it every day.
• Working with open technologies is important, and I'd like to be in a situation where I can talk about at least some part of what I do. Google is very confidential, as are lots of the companies that have gotten in touch with me, and while certainly not a deal breaker, something like working on high performance and scalability with Python and Apache and being able to give back to the community and give talks on my work would be better.
• My job needs to let me use my skills AND be competitive on the pay scale for this sort of thing. Some basic metrics I'm looking for at least one of, either currently or realistically potentially:
  • Several thousand (or more) users
  • 10GBs of throughput locally or in a product they provide
  • A number of mesasges/requests/emails/queries/etc that is recognized in the industry as high, either locally or in a product that they provide
  • Backend scalability such as that is needed for viral social software (Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, etc)
  • Very unique networking needs such as (but not limited to): mobile partial mesh delay tolerant networks, IP over cellular communication, distributed switching fabrics, large scale network monitoring, network attack responsiveness (DDoS mitigating, etc)

My only decision I still need to make (before the final one) is if I want to work for a big company (likely Google would be the only choice there), a smaller but well established company, or a start-up. I guess I should start looking myself sometime, but if you're hiring and the things above sound about right, get in touch with me! Contact information is on my resume.