If a programmer would like to work overseas for a while, how does one go about finding jobs?<p>Do any of you have past experience with this (particularly relocating from the US to another country)?
It honestly depends where you are and where you are going. I'm from Canada originally. When I moved to England I had to go to the embassy and fill out a form and show some birth certificates(I was claiming ancestry). I'm now in Australia on a working holiday visa. To get that I filled out a form on a web page and got an email a few hours later with my visa number.<p>In both cases I found a job when I got there.
It's not all that easy - you need to find a job before you go. One way might be to just go to your target country and look for a job. If you find one, they can help you do the paperwork. You'll probably have to go back to the US at that point to get a real working visa. It's a bunch of bureaucratic BS, but c'est la vie of the average immigrant (the US treats its own immigrants in a similarly shoddy way).
I've worked in Japan. It is easy if you already have a job offer. It's probably impossible if you don't. Getting an apartment there is painful because Japanese won't rent to foreigners without a Japanese person signing the lease. I think it might even be a law? So you either need a Japanese co-signer or you have to rent a place owned by the mob.