[ghaff]

I think that highlights though that a steady stream of decent paying gigs isn't a few hours "after the kids are in bed" sort of thing for the most part. Every now and then I'll do a little (non-coding) consulting for someone I know but my observation--not having looked very hard, mind you--is that anything between having a serious go at it and picking up low-paying scraps is hard to do on a regular basis.

[bmitc]

That's a very good point. But at the same time, I do wonder why there aren't more temporary things that are carved out. I think it speaks somewhat to the design of software, because surely people have little pieces, components, libraries, etc. developed that just need some time and eyes on them and don't require onboarding to the full system or long-term commitments or even full-time commitments. But I suppose there's effort in doing that carving out and the way that systems are sort of organically designed and developed doesn't lend itself to that.

[ghaff]

I'd think there would be so much coordination and onboarding overhead that it wouldn't be worthwhile unless it was so specialized/unique that your own staff doesn't understand it--and then why are you using software you don't understand and can't maintain.

Where I've had the most experience with using consultants and agencies for short-term/part-time are things like the following: -- You have a specific problem related to, say, ball bearing design and you really need to consult with an expert specialist. -- You need a speaker for an event and want a name of some sort -- You need a discrete project that you could probably do in-house but an agency specializes in that sort of thing -- You need a fractional share of some specialty (e.g. public relations)