Yeah, I did that. In the 2001 recession, after having mad money thrown at me in the 90's, reality hit and I realized I'm really bad at time and scope managemen

Yeah, I did that. In the 2001 recession, after having mad money thrown at me in the 90's, reality hit and I realized I'm really bad at time and scope management. I spent a couple of years realizing this; in 2003 I decided to focus on one of my clients, do all the programming I could on a particular project to make it interesting to myself, and ended up qualifying for EIC. In 2004 I got into technical translation, and by 2008 I'd built up the clientele to make considerably more money at it than I ever did with contract programming - plus no scope questions, no need to codify specifications and requirements, no temptation to "drill down and do it right", no debugging, no nothing - just give me a document, I count the words, I translate it, I bill you, you pay me. Done. I still code - there aren't many translators who can code their way out of a paper bag, of course, so scripting skills come in handy. And I'm slowly developing my own language/programming platform the way I want to. But when I think of getting back into programming for pay, and realize that I suck at programming management and thus would fail again? I stick with translation. I wouldn't mind working with a technical startup as the coder. But at this stage in my life I'm too risk-averse (kids, orthodontia, college coming up) to risk much on a roll of the startup dice, so I wouldn't be able to devote the focus to it that it would require. But there's no way I'd go back to just slinging code for hourly wages.