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I’m an individual contractor. I design and implement cloud architectures that replace entire teams of developers and charge way above the average. Yet the thing

I’m an individual contractor. I design and implement cloud architectures that replace entire teams of developers and charge way above the average. Yet the things I do seem so obvious to me that I can’t help but wonder why they didn’t see that obvious solution I’ve implemented. This idea continuously make me doubt if my experience is valuable enough for other engineers.

onion2k 5y ago
Yet the things I do seem so obvious to me that I can’t help but wonder why they didn’t see that obvious solution I’ve implemented. Practically everyone who has a decent amount of experience delivering something feels that way. Usually it's a combination of the original team not having as much experience, or that the situation at the time didn't allow it (lack of resources, incompatible acceptance criteria that no longer apply, etc), or that you've missed something important that actually means the solution you're going for is the wrong approach. Understanding which it is is hard.
- kulikalov 5y ago
  Not that hard if the solution is about gathering and transforming data. The benchmarks are quite definitive: servers cost, performance, correct output.
WA 5y ago
> I design and implement cloud architectures that replace entire teams of developers I'm curious: How do you replace entire teams of devs by choosing cloud architectures? Is it because cloud architectures bring so much stuff out of the box that is otherwise implemented in a custom way by individual developers? What would be an example? Edit: Found your blog post about it: https://kulikalov.com/how-to-make-sense-of-cloud-architectures https://kulikalov.com/how-to-make-sense-of-cloud-architectur...
- kulikalov 5y ago
  Yep, stuff out of the box, correctly wired and monitored
atmosx 5y ago
> why they didn’t see that obvious solution I’ve implemented. Not trying to be bring you down or anything, but the most likely answer is that every senior engineer in the company knows what needs to be done but lacks the political capital/will/etc to implement the change.

onion2k 5y ago

Yet the things I do seem so obvious to me that I can’t help but wonder why they didn’t see that obvious solution I’ve implemented. Practically everyone who has a decent amount of experience delivering something feels that way. Usually it's a combination of the original team not having as much experience, or that the situation at the time didn't allow it (lack of resources, incompatible acceptance criteria that no longer apply, etc), or that you've missed something important that actually means the solution you're going for is the wrong approach. Understanding which it is is hard.

kulikalov 5y ago
Not that hard if the solution is about gathering and transforming data. The benchmarks are quite definitive: servers cost, performance, correct output.

WA 5y ago

> I design and implement cloud architectures that replace entire teams of developers I'm curious: How do you replace entire teams of devs by choosing cloud architectures? Is it because cloud architectures bring so much stuff out of the box that is otherwise implemented in a custom way by individual developers? What would be an example? Edit: Found your blog post about it: https://kulikalov.com/how-to-make-sense-of-cloud-architectures https://kulikalov.com/how-to-make-sense-of-cloud-architectur...

kulikalov 5y ago
Yep, stuff out of the box, correctly wired and monitored

atmosx 5y ago

> why they didn’t see that obvious solution I’ve implemented. Not trying to be bring you down or anything, but the most likely answer is that every senior engineer in the company knows what needs to be done but lacks the political capital/will/etc to implement the change.