All of them in the last decade.

But I guess we misunderstand each-other. None of them cared that I knew "a lot of stuff that isn't appropriate here".

For example, a recent gig, hired me because I'm not just another Rails "expert", but a Rails expert with Typescript experience, who built large CI/CD pipelines with containers and has built complex (is there another way?) AWS infrastructures etc.

Sometimes they need someone with that exact skill-set. In this case, they needed someone to help them move from yet another "upwork-delivered-rails-spagetti" to something that could actually be maintained.

I convinced them to drop the react/typescript frontend for now (it was terribly bolted on) and to forego building their own PaaS nightmare on AWS but instead just push to Heroku - for now.

My experience helped them make tough decisions.

Sometimes gigs hire me because I have a weird combination of experiences. But more often because my experience allows me to help them make decisions on architecture and such. Granted, I am often hired as "senior architect" or some such. And one of the first things I do, is convince them they should never again hire an "externalm interim architect", lol.

I envy that position.

Feels like because I didn’t work in go or python at my most recent job, I’m having trouble landing anything. (I have 5 years of golang prior to my most recent job)

My experience working in devops doesn’t seem to matter for SE positions either.

I do freelance gigs. And I charge what's "enough" for me, so price may play a role. And so I have several gigs a year. I'm on my third for 2024.

I give talks on meetups and conferences, so my insights are seen.

I prefer to work in start- or scale ups, so there's a real need for some "know it all".

How did you get started doing that?

It might just be the area I live in, but I wouldn’t even know how to start looking for freelance roles that aren’t just poorly paid 3mo junior contracts.