Egregoros

@coolboymew @rees Well, i hired the helpers last month, and we still hit profit even though it was like 4-6 hour days and I was meh about running them hard.

So if i tighten up the ship the business works.

But i'm on the fence because the next step is getting a work vehicle and once I do that I can't just decide in 6 months "fuck this" you know? because now I have a loan and like fixed costs that don't just go away...but yah thats where I'm at.

I get enough work right now to keep me occupied but next would be bring on a helper, train them slowly until we get overwhelmed, then a second, third, etc...

@Tony @subnetter the market was oversaturated back when I was last looking for one and that was before gpt 3 came out and the models are only getting more powerful (imo amplifying the output of skilled programmers who leverage them but that's neither here nor there), further reducing the number of asses in seats you need, on top of the preexisting glut of cs grads with a few years' experience (hi mom).
I almost got back in ~a year ago but that didn't work out (my fault) and I may never be able to get back in except by extreme and unfair amounts of good luck because of what happened and my long period of being out of the game except as basically a hobby, which, while not worthless, doesn't look as good as if I spent the last half a decade plus bouncing around the startup scene.
I'm finally making enough to make a decent living despite all that but I'd rather go back if I could. I have spent too long on the outside looking in atp to not even blink at retarded work cultures and environments. Working on your ass instead of busting it is worth it (to a point anyway).

@pwm @subnetter I get that. Thats kinda where I am but contractor vs corporate world.

I had opportunities when I was right out of college to hop on the corporate 6 figure track pipeline but I blew it by fucking around and getting traffic tickets (i had like 3 outside sales job offers that paid like 70k back in 2014 but i couldn't take them because I had too many traffic tickets to drive the company cars) and then I went into contractor world and now, if i wanted to go back i'd have to start over...

But yah, i hear yah. There are so many things I wish career councilors would have told me when i was 18 that I found out when I was like 27...

Like if you "get in" don't fuck it up and be careful what you do for the first 5 years after college/highschool because you'll never get out.

@subnetter @Tony Thank you. I will hopefully wind up on the ops/sysadmin side after all the time with my nose to the kubernetes grindstone in my home lab (and generic Linux admin before that). It's where I'm focusing my showcaseable work, anyway so that when the time comes I can show up and razzle dazzle em.
I probably won't wind up in pure swe, but admin who can program and use the agentic stuff they're pushing is not an unmarketable marriage of skills. And databases because I have turbo sql autism but that's a little rusty because I spend most of my time there uttering profanity related to stuffing unadulterated json into the pleroma database.
I just want a w2 with insurance idc if it's dull.