0. Go to lots and lots of meetups and related tech conferences/community meetings.
1. Hang out in coffee shops around after lunch and after normal work business hours in Silicon Valley including Red Rock and ones in SF. This is when people are most likely to be hustling on side projects.
2. Talk to strangers with laptops.
Notes:
i. Whenever you meet people, exchange first/last name + phone + email. The easiest way post-Bump shutdown is to create a QR barcode in VCF encoding containing your name, email, and phone number. This is even better than a business card because it works with every smartphone without an app. I taped one to the back of my slim magsafe wallet.
ii. Write a personalized (not ChatGPT) greeting/thank you email to everyone you make contact with the day of or the day after.
If jobs oppy's don't find you, launch a consulting business. A US LLC is cheap and getting a business bank account is easy, and makes it so megacorps can hire you and pay your company in a manner that looks official.
Moreover, one of the best paths forward for stable happiness would be a company in the form of a worker-owned co-op who do consultingish things, have subscribers, and sell/license products. Megacorps will always let you down just as soon as the market softens. A very small but talented band of creatives, coders, business, and sales people can create opportunities by delivering excellent value for their customers.