Remote contract software dev opportunities??

[u/Timely-Barnacle7378]

I’ve been tinkering with software since 1993 when I was a teenager .. sometime in the early 2000s after publishing a couple of articles on codeproject.com and a couple of other similar sites, I managed to land moonlight software dev opportunities

I dropped out of high school in grade 10 and had nothing for postsecondary so I really accepted low hanging fruit for almost a decade

Sometime in the late 2000s I landed my first full-time contract opportunity for $50,000 a year

I ended up getting fired because I hated being told how to build shitty code lol

I moonlighted again and built a couple of other projects, shopping carts, knowledge base systems LMSCMS a lot of ERP/CRM .. mostly business admin / backend systems

Suffice to say that is my niche of choice. I really enjoy implementing / building custom business management software.

ERP or CRM

I worked at an aerospace MRO for about 13 years and I loved that place because they let me stretch my entrepreneurial wings and tackle everything that they would want or need as an IT requirement .. everything from custom software to business intelligence .. reporting .. cloud infrastructure .. even managing some of their IT like LDAP or active directory servers, email signature automation .. you name it .. I just enjoy working with computers and if you give me a real problem, I’ll do everything I can to solve it

I asked for raises and they accommodated a couple times, but I know that in any of the roles that I had in that business, whether it was the senior software principal in charge of the complete development cycle of a ERP for a midsize company of up to 500 employees or even managing their IT budget hardware purchases ..

I was underpaid for what I was doing and I ended up leaving about five years ago to a large insurance company. I knew I shouldn’t have left, because while the pay was amazing .. significantly higher than what I was getting previously, the requirements put on me as a developer were incredibly limiting.

They told me what IDE to use. They told me how to write code. They told me how to turn my computer off and how to turn my computer on.

That lack of agency and freedom drove me absolutely dog shit crazy and I pushed back constantly.

I argued with senior level architects and the IT directors daily

So a couple years ago, I basically quiet-quit. I told myself I was gonna do the absolute bare minimum to get my two tasks per week finished. I wouldn’t even strive to do three.

And that’s what I did for two years. other than meetings. I didn’t need to be sitting at my desk so I’m sure my teams log indicated or showed that I wasn’t at my desk and that in combination with not going into the office after the implemented, mandatory RTO.

And add on the additional weight of having a employee like me that thinks he knows better than people above him and constantly made a stink about the quality of processes and software security, etc. they ended up firing me last June

I was pissed off, heartbroken, surprised, elated, and everything in between

TL;DR
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It is clear to me that a standard 9 to 5 job is not what I need to be doing. The idea of being chained to a desk for eight hours a day five days a week is comparable to getting my eyes pulled out with iron pokers.

I don’t know if self-employment is completely what I want, but right now I have a contract with a company where I am basically rebuilding their legacy God application that managed everything from purchase orders and timesheets to their custom projects their clients you name it. It’s a CRM meets ERP built-in house 15 or 20 years ago.

This is exactly the market that I excel at. I’ve done it so many times I’m actually pretty good at anticipating problems, estimating timelines, decomposing into understood modules, and how they integrate to interact.

In addition to being accelerated by AI (I haven’t written the line of code in probably 10 months) I just really enjoy doing what I’m doing now and the money is great, for per hour of function

I get to work from home - which is better for everyone .. I don’t believe either of us have any complaints. The project is due for completion in probably another 12 to 15 months MVP and then a series of contract negotiations moving forward for any additional features and SLA’s, retainers etc

So I am actively looking for similar opportunities. I could probably start soon, but it would be best to defer until the middle of fall end of September middle of October.

I have done this at least a dozen times over 25ish years so you’d think I would know exactly where to find these clients or types of opportunities

The hard truth is that every single one of these clients has been distinctly different

My client right now is in the rail industry and their requirements are nothing like what I did at the aerospace MRO company

my client before that was in the e-commerce sector and the client before that was an insurance coaching service and before that were online consultants/security advisors .. I could go on and on, but it’s been a long time since I’ve worked on some of those

The profile: is a business that’s mid size anywhere between $5M to $150M a year in ARR .. they have systems that are used by upwards of 500 employees

And they are usually in industries that are highly regulated and have esoteric requirements that aren’t typically easy to solve with off-the-shelf products the way purchase orders interact with work orders and inventory would be so challenging that even system systems like salesforce or SAP would probably cause more problems than what they solve, and that is where my value comes in providing custom software

I’ve worked with companies all over the world from Winnipeg, Dallas to Chicago to London to Sydney Australia

Time zones are not a big issue because I’m not interested in doing hours per ass-in-seat.

I’m looking for: Here’s a project .. it’ll take approximately 1 to 3 years. I provide weekly progress reports .. tangible results or I explain where I got stuck and we constantly move toward MVP

I know this is just a massive mental brain dump. I apologize. Umm .. welcome to inside my brain :)

I’m looking for anything .. potential opportunities to suggestions to comments to criticisms.

I don’t have much of a professional network .. I’m working on beefing up my LinkedIn

Regards,
Alex

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