replicant

I am referring to his technical works like "Statistical Consequences of Fat Tails" or his journal publications (the question is not about his books for the general public like Black Swan). Is his work relevant in any way to your daily work or to your field of research?

I am a 27 years old PhD in computational mechanics (finite element method, elasticity ...) who should be graduating in around 6 months. I have been tempted for quite some time by the idea of trying to get a job in the US and work as a programmer. A personal dream, I really would like to experience the life in the west coast for a few years. What are my odds of achieving that? Any advices on what I should try to learn or do in the next 6 months? During my PhD, I have been coding in Matlab, Python and mostly in C++ (I have read Effective C++, Modern Effective C++). I have learned OpenMP, MPI and Cuda (though, I don't consider myself very experienced in them) and I have taken an introduction course in algorithms.

Edit: Since some people have asked, right now I am in UK and I have an EU passport. Thanks for the very encouraging answers.