Funny, I know a guy doing just that, former roommate He was mostly writing code for things that handle municipal water supplies and other water monitoring stuf

Funny, I know a guy doing just that, former roommate He was mostly writing code for things that handle municipal water supplies and other water monitoring stuff. He worked for a code shop that built the original system and after he left he kept doing maintenance work on the side until he went (mostly) full time at it. OTOH, he's basically a one-man show, and has implied that if he had to scale -- e.g. add 3+ people -- then the $$$ wouldn't go as far. By himself it's a decent paycheck, though. The problem is municipalities are all different, with different state/local requirements, and they often don't have the money or operational depth to support deeply customized software. I grew up near a park that had to shutdown for several months because they couldn't get enough funds together to have people mow the lawns; where would they find the money for custom code?