Hi! I had pretty good luck in this thread last time I participated. I was able
to connect with a few great people and work on interesting projects for them.
The world has changed quite a bit since then, so we'll see how this goes.
Last October, after ~4 years, I left an Engineering Lead role at a small
podcasting software company. Previously I've founded/sold a solo startup in the
web accessibility space, worked in digital agencies for ~7 years, and built
software for TV/Radio operations.
Since October, I've been working on building a suite of desktop software with
Tauri and am just now at a stage where I have some flexibility to take on client
work again.
To be clear - I do not sling slop or sub-contract work. If you are looking for
+100,000 line PRs daily, I'm not the person you are looking for. If, however,
you are interested in well considered, resilient code and thoughtful advice
informed by a wealth of experience in a lot of different industries and
technologies feel free to reach out.
Some of the areas and technologies I can help with:
Laravel, JavaScript (Svelte, React, Vue, NodeJS), Rust, Tauri, DevOps (AWS,
Containerization, CI/CD), improving legacy codebases, human processes / team
culture (particularly where they intersect/conflict with LLM usage), and more.
I'm open to ad hoc feature work or greenfield projects. Both discounted rates
based on the client's ability to pay and flat rates are possible for the right
client. Agencies are fine, and I'm open to retainers.
I'm booking projects now to start in mid-August. Reach out via email to schedule
a call.
I'm a bit late to this thread, but also wanted to express my thanks to Jeff for mise. I have a lot of different projects in my ~ directory in various languages and with various task runners. Migrating dependency management and wrapping tasks in mise's task runner has removed so much cognitive overhead getting spun back up on projects I haven't touched in a while. Great work!
I've had good luck with Keepgo (no affiliation) for low-cost backup eSIMs. Once you add the initial data, it's good "forever" as long as you add something to it once every year. I bought 10GB just over a year ago to have a backup on a different network than my primary plan. Recently added $3 to keep it alive for another year.
I left my job (Senior Developer at an Agency) a little over a year ago. I did have a plan in that I've always wanted to build a SAAS product, but I knew going in that it was very unlikely to be successful enough to make a living at.
It's been overwhelmingly positive experience for me. Caveat is that I have no children, no debt outside of student loans, and had several years of living expenses saved if I needed it.
The peaks:
- I built a SAAS product I'm proud of that a few companies are using and paying for. This has been on my bucket list for a decade or more.
- I have total control over how I spend my day, which has mostly (see valleys) been a tremendous boon for my mental health.
- I've had a healthy amount of time to spend with my partner and loved ones (although Covid obviously complicated this pre-vaccine).
- I've had more time to focus on my hobbies, and have made more progress on music in the last year than ever before.
- I've managed to contract with some great companies and individuals to cobble together a meager living while still having a lot of control over my time.
The valleys:
- Some days can feel directionless. Sometimes I can turn this into a positive and take a meandering walk and think about things, sometimes it makes me feel unproductive and down on myself.
- Even though I've barely tapped into my savings, I'm frequently concerned about money / unplanned expenses.
Definitely a possibility, as it not a route I've tried. As I mentioned I'm terrible at marketing and sales ;).
My own experience working in a digital agency was pretty much the same though. If a client was sued or received a demand letter, they came to us asking about accessibility. When we brought it to the client, they often just saw it as us trying to upsell them.
In the end, we just shot for WCAG AA on everything whether the client asked for it or not and built the additional testing into our costs.
I run a SAAS product that helps digital agencies scan/monitor/remediate sites for accessibility issues, and unless one of their clients was recently sued I have a pretty low success rate getting them to start a trial.
There could be a lot of other factors at play (I'm terrible at sales, my landing page isn't good enough, etc), but my sense is that it's not something that is on the radar for most small/medium agencies and freelancers.
These are the folks that are building a whole lot of the web, including the local businesses that people using assistive technologies would really like to be able to access easily.
I'm a senior developer with over a decade of professional experience building things for the web.
I spent the last 7 years at digital agencies, where I had the opportunity to work with an extremely wide variety of technologies and companies. Late last year, I left to build a bootstrapped software company and have been filling out time with consulting engagements.
Strengths:
* Application architecture.
* Working in legacy codebases.
* Strong UX instincts.
* Bridging the communication gap between technical and non-technical people.
* Teaching and mentoring junior developers.
Most recently built/designed everything you see at https://tidydom.com/ (Laravel & Node). Additional examples of work I've done for clients is available upon request.
I have up to 20 hours a week available starting June 1 for either retainer or ad hoc work.
Hope this isn't considered spammy by anyone, I certainly have no incentive (financial or otherwise) to recommend it, but there's a company called "Life Extension" that allows you to order blood tests online.
They email you paperwork, you take that to a local lab and then get your results online. It looks like Vitamin D is $47.
I used it for a while when I was suffering from a health issue that required regular blood tests, since it ended up being cheaper than a doctors visit + co-insurance for the lab fees.
The biggest downside is there's nobody to explain the results to you, although the report they provide does show if you are outside the normal range of whatever they are testing.
I do worry about aging out of this industry and my long-term plan is pretty similar to the path you have taken. My hope is that I can participate in the agency/startup ecosystem for another 10 years before I have to find something else to do. Hopefully that will still be in technology, and will probably be in Higher Ed or at a Nonprofit for a less money but more intrinsic rewards.
I haven't observed specific instances of ageism towards me or others (people being passed over for promotions or treated differently than younger employees), but I also haven't worked with many people 50+ since I started in this sector. I'm not sure how much of that is that people in that age group are looking for a more balanced lifestyle and how much comes from the companies that do the hiring.
I just replace my FIOS router with an ASUS RT-AC66U running AsusWRT-Merlin (I understand the stock firmware is based on Tomato). It is very fast, stable, has great coverage and is extremely configurable/hackable. I think I paid $75 for it from Amazon Warehouse Deals.
Curious, what do you see as the major flaws of the Pebble Round? My brother bought me one for my birthday a few months ago, and it's been fantastic. For me it's the perfect size (no larger than a normal watch), amount of functionality (get/dismiss phone notifications, control music, track steps) and battery life (days).
They mention this in the article, but bears repeating - if you don't want to get a kidney stone (and believe me, you don't) 8 glasses a day is probably not a bad idea.
Seems like semantics, since MMS are synced by turning on "SMS Sync" in their app. I'm fairly technologically savvy, and I made the assumption anything going through the "SMS Sync" would be encrypted.
I got burnt by that and now all of the photos in my MMS, including some that the people who sent would prefer not ever be public, are unencrypted on a server somewhere... probably in perpetuity.
That's on me, I took the risk... just wanted to inform others.
Hi! I had pretty good luck in this thread last time I participated. I was able to connect with a few great people and work on interesting projects for them. The world has changed quite a bit since then, so we'll see how this goes.
Last October, after ~4 years, I left an Engineering Lead role at a small podcasting software company. Previously I've founded/sold a solo startup in the web accessibility space, worked in digital agencies for ~7 years, and built software for TV/Radio operations.
Since October, I've been working on building a suite of desktop software with Tauri and am just now at a stage where I have some flexibility to take on client work again.
To be clear - I do not sling slop or sub-contract work. If you are looking for +100,000 line PRs daily, I'm not the person you are looking for. If, however, you are interested in well considered, resilient code and thoughtful advice informed by a wealth of experience in a lot of different industries and technologies feel free to reach out.
Some of the areas and technologies I can help with:
Laravel, JavaScript (Svelte, React, Vue, NodeJS), Rust, Tauri, DevOps (AWS, Containerization, CI/CD), improving legacy codebases, human processes / team culture (particularly where they intersect/conflict with LLM usage), and more.
I'm open to ad hoc feature work or greenfield projects. Both discounted rates based on the client's ability to pay and flat rates are possible for the right client. Agencies are fine, and I'm open to retainers.
I'm booking projects now to start in mid-August. Reach out via email to schedule a call.
Thanks! Jesse Tolj / Object Factory, LLC