IMO, best way to start, as a programmer? Regional conferences. Start speaking. My first talk was just a presentation about how we used Akka at a small Scala conference in Portland. Last year I presented our use of Kafka at a much larger conference in Austin and now I'm prepping a submission for ScalaDays 2018, the largest conference in the field.

The point isn't even making it to the larger conferences, just keep getting your name out there. Learning to speak in venues like these doesn't just market yourself, you'll learn how to effectively present your ideas to an audience—a critical skill itself.

Then link it all on yourname.com or whatever and off you go. I'm at http://ryantanner.xyz.

The result? When I left a job a few years ago I just tweeted out that I was looking for some short-term consulting work and people I'd never met came out of the woodwork looking to hire me.