After 4 years with Oracle, I find myself free for new work. I met a lot of good people there, but am excited about the possibility of a new path. I’m scared in the short term, but optimistic for the long term.
I could really use your support right now. Here are the ways to support me:
First off, I’d really appreciate your direct support in this scary time. If you care about what I do — use my utilities and apps, listen to my podcasts, or have just enjoyed my writing over the last 15 years — I’d love it if you could contribute what you can afford. Sign up for monthly support, or make a one-time donation to help defray my costs. I promise to keep making cool stuff. Any support is great.
I’ll have some extra time for the next however long, so between sending out resumes I’ll be working on some personal projects. I’ll probably focus most on the ones that actually pay, so if you have any feature requests for Marked, just want to see nvUltra out the door, or think I should make something like Bunch a paid app, please let me know!
Left to my own devices, I tend to make stuff I want but which is ostensibly silly. I enjoy making stupid things, some of which turn out to be useful to others. But if you have a need for a tool you think would also be commercially viable, I’d love to hear about it.
I stopped regularly selling sponsorship spots on this blog because I had a good-paying job and I didn’t need/have time for sales.
Despite a decline in traffic in the age of social media, I still have a healthy number of visitors to my single-developer site, I have decent social media reach, and my Google ranking is high for almost all of the topics I talk about.
During this period where I have more time for sales, I’m planning to start actively offering sponsorships again. If you have a product or service you think my tech-and-Apple-related audience would appreciate, please reach out. I have reduced rates for indie developers! See here for more information.
If you know of a job opening at your company you’d be willing to recommend me for, please contact me. I have romantic visions of being an independent developer/writer again, but I know full well it doesn’t really pay the bills, and I don’t need to drain what savings and retirement funds I have when I’m almost 50. So gainful employment would be my preference right now.
I’m looking for an employer who values efficiency, creativity, and curiosity, in addition to my seasoned skillset. I’m most interested in opportunities in product/service documentation and content creation, Ruby/JavaScript coding1, and, especially, developer relations/advocacy. I could be a great voice for your product in the developer community!
My general resume is up at brettterpstra.info, but I have a wide enough skillset that it needs to be customized for different job opportunities. If you have any questions, let me know.
Making it as a consultant is a dream I have. To be able to swoop in, improve a company, get paid well for it, and then move on to the next company sounds ideal to me. And a lot of the things I can do for a business are things that don’t need a full-time position, just a nomadic expert.
If you or your business need efficiency consulting, especially around Mac/Unix automation, I’d gladly take on work while I figure out my next step. I can make dreary duties a thing of the past. I’m especially good at improving publishing-type workflows, whether you need to convert a Confluence wiki into Markdown or improve your CMS, I have decades of experience. But I can speed up just about any task, and eliminate wasted hours. I’d love to be helping people and companies eradicate redundant work, speed up processes, and improve workflows.
I’m also an accomplished web developer, so if you know of anyone who needs a website or a website refresh, I’m open to that work as well. I’ll be polishing up a page on consulting/web development soon.
I think I’d be a great consultant within my field of expertise, but I don’t really know how to break into consulting. If you currently make a living as a consultant, I’d love to, well, consult with you on this. And if you’ve hired similar consultants in the past, I’d love to interview you about how you found them, what they charged, and whether the consulation was worthwhile. Hit me up.
Thank you to all the people who’ve supported me over the years. My total income right now from Memberful and PayPal subscriptions amounts to enough to turn around and support multiple other developers, plus eat out once or twice a month. It doesn’t currently pay my bills — and likely never will — but any support you offer, monetary or otherwise, will be greatly appreciated.
This is a scary time for me, but you all make it a little less so. I appreciate you reading my blog and using my tools! You can chat with me on the forum (assuming I can continue to afford to run it), email me at b@trpstr.me, or hit me up on Mastodon.
Email me at b@trpstr.me, or find my full VCard on the contact page. I’m also on LinkedIn, should that be a thing you enjoy.
I’m willing to brush up skills on other languages, but I don’t really want to start in a Junior position. ↩
Brett is a writer and developer living in Minnesota, USA. You can follow him as ttscoff on GitHub, Mastodon, and elsewhere.
Sign up for the email newsletter, and keep up with this blog by adding it to your favorite news reader, or following it on Bluesky or Mastodon at @brettterpstra.com@web.brid.gy.