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by MaKey
4 days ago
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> 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? |
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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.