after leaving college, williams worked at various technology jobs and start-up firms in florida, at key west, and in texas, at dallas and austin, before returning to his family farm in nebraska. in 1996 williams moved to sebastopol, california in sonoma county to work for the technology publishing company o'reilly media. he started at o'reilly in a marketing position, later becoming an independent contractor writing computer code, which led to freelance opportunities with companies including intel and hewlett-packard. while he was working at o'reilly, he also started a website called evhead.com, where he first began blogging about his personal thoughts.