If you are seriously looking to go to SF you should have no problem. I was looking for positions last year and the east coast just kept calling. That said, you will be working for a start up given your requirements which lends itself to the very condition you are describing. You'll have a ton of fun, learn a lot, but eventually the mess will hit the fan and you'll have unrealistic timetables and a grab bag of management woes.
Building the future is an excellent goal and something to strive for, but if you want stability and dependable management I'd head for corporate America. They have the capital to hire decent managers, train you for free, and give you realistic deadlines. Couple that with realistic hours, and maybe you'll have more time to experiment.
Zed Shaw put it perfectly, "Fight your hardest not to be a corporate coder: your life as a geek or a coder should be all about exploring some new domain that no one else gets -- you can only go to conferences and talk to other geeks about what you do. A corporate coder works only on the stuff he's supposed to on one language, and never touches code otherwise. You should go home and do something fun with technology."
A disclaimer, I work for a giant corporation. I work on things that I think don't matter, but to the people on the ground building our products, the tools I help build and deploy mean a lot. They prevent accidents, environmental hazards, and close calls.
Then I go home and hack on Python, PHP, .NET, and Arduino. And play Rockband.
Building the future is an excellent goal and something to strive for, but if you want stability and dependable management I'd head for corporate America. They have the capital to hire decent managers, train you for free, and give you realistic deadlines. Couple that with realistic hours, and maybe you'll have more time to experiment.
Zed Shaw put it perfectly, "Fight your hardest not to be a corporate coder: your life as a geek or a coder should be all about exploring some new domain that no one else gets -- you can only go to conferences and talk to other geeks about what you do. A corporate coder works only on the stuff he's supposed to on one language, and never touches code otherwise. You should go home and do something fun with technology."
http://vimeo.com/2723800
A disclaimer, I work for a giant corporation. I work on things that I think don't matter, but to the people on the ground building our products, the tools I help build and deploy mean a lot. They prevent accidents, environmental hazards, and close calls.
Then I go home and hack on Python, PHP, .NET, and Arduino. And play Rockband.