jtolj

SEEKING WORK | Richmond, VA | Remote Contact: [email protected]

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

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 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.

Was just about to post this. I've been using it from the beginning for all of my "pre-launch" domains and it has been flawless.

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.

#1.

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.

A cost effective API into whois data that doesn't come across as sketchy or fragile.

I'm in Richmond VA as well and in my late 30s.

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'll third the Asus RT series.

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.