[ethagnawl]

> It's horrible to be a software dev right now, you've to deal with AI and lunatics.

Yes, yes, 1000x yes.

As a bit of an aside, I have been toying with the idea of adding some sort of second pass/security auditing/scaling offering to my consultancy for people vibe coding projects which wind up generating interest. (Not sure what the fuck else I'm going to do!) I have a few non-technical friends who have found themselves in this situation and there's a real need for it.

The aspects of it which I find daunting are the ones you've referenced, though. I imagine many people -- especially the ones who've built mobile apps for $300 in tokens -- are going to balk at the costs I'd have to charge for such a service. We're also now living in an era where everyone is an "expert" (lunatic) ... with just a little help from Claude/Gemini/Grok/whatever. I can already foresee people second guessing every suggestion, decision, line item, etc. I'd also be taking on a liability that'd be tricky to completely work around via legal language for any bugs or security issues which might/would inevitably slip through review. Ironic because nobody blinks when LLMs excrete those things.

But, anyways, circling back around. Yeah, trying to find work in this market has been a new exercise in frustration. AI is all anyone wants to talk about, it's driven hourly rates through the floor and most of the open gigs revolve around model training and carry an implicit expiration window for the trainer. It sucks and I really don't know what I'm going to do to keep my consultancy open going forward. (As signs of how desperate I'm getting, I recently signed up for Task Rabbit and am seriously considering applying for a job at Tractor Supply.)

[MaKey]

> As a bit of an aside, I have been toying with the idea of adding some sort of second pass/security auditing/scaling offering to my consultancy for people vibe coding projects which wind up generating interest. (Not sure what the fuck else I'm going to do!) I have a few non-technical friends who have found themselves in this situation and there's a real need for it.

There might be a need for it but as a consultant your daily rate should be way above what a small vibe coder is willing to pay.

> As signs of how desperate I'm getting, I recently signed up for Task Rabbit and am seriously considering applying for a job at Tractor Supply.

I hope you'll find a way to keep going. Signing up for gig work is a race to the bottom though and not something I'd recommend. May I ask how you've arrived at this point?

[ethagnawl]

> There might be a need for it but as a consultant your daily rate should be way above what a small vibe coder is willing to pay.

Yes, I agree and that's part of the tension. I called attention to projects which are actually generating interest because, no, not everybody needs that sort of treatment. People who have real (i.e. not friends/family) users, are storing PII, accepting payments, etc. probably do -- after some threshold has been crossed, though.

> I hope you'll find a way to keep going. Signing up for gig work is a race to the bottom though and not something I'd recommend. May I ask how you've arrived at this point?

Thank you. I sincerely appreciate that. I know Task Rabbit and co. are a race to the bottom but ... I've been burning through savings and need funds to start coming in. There's also an opportunity cost, as that's time I can't spend networking, applying for jobs, writing blog posts, etc. but, again, I can't sustain the burn and don't want to take on more debt. "Gig work" seems simpler than getting hired and put on a schedule somewhere and needing to quit when (hopefully!) I can land some more "real" work.

As for how I got here: Historically, my spouse has had the "safe" job, along with benefits, etc. and I've been the one to freelance/run the consultancy with the healthier rates. (I'm a bit ... neurospicy and can't handle traditional employment, anyways. This also complicates outreach, lead gen, marketing, etc.) For many years, I had a good mix of new/repeat clients through word-of-mouth and was turning down hours. My schedule was also flexible enough that I could be the one deal with getting the kids to/from where they needed to be. Fast-forward a few years and a lot of the work I was doing has either been halted (e.g. due to arts/science funding in the US), brought in-house (e.g. experiential/creative tech) or commoditized by Claude, ChatGPT, etc. (e.g. building CMSs, web services, IAC, AI/ML-ops supporting training/deployment of bespoke LLM/VLMs). I'm now stuck being the one with the flexible schedule, so 9-5 would be really challenging (on a few levels) and my resume isn't getting "through the front door" anywhere, anyways -- despite my experience being strong and varied. So, I've been burning savings while taking on what work I can drum up but it's slowed to basically nothing over the course of the last year.