I'm 54 y.o.

I think I'm completely outdated in my skill, as in the last 14 years, I worked on a specific business problem, with an old technology: a JSP application + javascript + postgres.

I do understand software development, agile, web application development, linux server, basic/moderate AWS skills, etc.

Now they laid me off instead of including me in the evolution of version 2 of the software. Maybe covid, company had almost no cash-flow. Well they have now...So basically they fired me to find money to rewrite the application.

I feel without hope at my age.
I'm a generalist.
I can understand fairly well everything you'll throw at me, reactnative, angular, nosql, python, but I have little first-hand experience.

I don't have a lot of management skills, even if I've given frequent presentations to C-roles and board, and I implemented a whole agile methodology in my team.

I don't know what to do.
The amount of technology to study is huge nowadays. When I was younger I could get away with some php and java.

Full-stack developer is a big word for me. Maybe I could handle a full stack web application, but not from scratch.

I feel at my age, I'll compete with 20-something guys with better skills and lower salary requests.
I don't think I can pull a night anymore.

I'm trying to shoot high to management positions with no much success.
I'd like to go on developing, I know that there are 50-something developer out there, but who managed to find a new position at 55? at 60?

As soon as I finish the few money I spared, I'll be on the street, I'l be the "website for food" guy.

That feeling when you finally get confirmation that you got the position you've been waiting for at work, AND get a higher salary than you actually asked for. By quite a lot.

Semi rant/ opinion
I have been wondering a bit about what my fellow devs think about adblockers

I have been using an adblocker for years.
I am guessing we got a good mix of both people who are pro and against them

I do get the site's owner point of view wanting to get a little bit of cash out of their site buts its the ad publisher that come in and royally screw things up with their garish flashy shit.

I wouldn't really mind 2-3 small static adverts on a page, little ones that don't disrupt the flow of the page or clash with the page colour scheme (i know that one is a bit far fetched but anyone who loaded up a dark page in the comfort of a darkened room only to have a big bright ad turn up in the middle of the page force them to squint ). Sadly publishers don't give a damn, their only concern is to
GRAB YOUR ATTENTION...

FLASHY FLASH FLASH MOFO!

OH AND HERE IS AN AUDIO ENABLED ONE FOR YA, GOOD LUCK MUTING IT YOU POOR SHMUCK , ONE CLICK ON THE DAMN THING WILL TAKE YOU TO THE LAND OF POP-UPS

AH YOU WANNA DOWNLOAD SOMETHING BUDDY ? AH WELL I HOPE YOU LIKE INDIANA JONES' SCENE WITH HOLY GRAIL
CUZ HERE ARE 10 DOWNLOAD BUTTONS, ONE IS THE REAL THING THE REST WILL ARE TOOLBARS

They are the biggest culprit here yet moan the loudest about adblockers.
Sort yourselves out then complain to us about ad blocking

I'm still in denial that Dropbox did 1.1b$ in 2017, cash flow positive. Do they actually even get big clients? It has to be all enterprise, because I highly doubt any consumer actually purchases a Dropbox plan.

Just lost two clients who were on retainer. Startup suddenly with cash flow problems.
I'm not sure what to do to fix this.
☹️

In my country there is a huge economy deflation.
Like 1 year ago 1USD used to be 1500 pounds.
Nowadays 1USD is more like 7800 pounds.

Wait a second let me explain more into details the whole flow.

There are 3 to 4 prices we are being dealing with:
* Official Bank price that refuse to change the base price: 1500 pounds
* Bank ATM machines that exchange your dollars on a 3900 pounds per usd
* Black market: 7800 pounds managed by random mobile apps that spread rumors
* Foreigners currency: the only way to grab your reach dollars.

Long story short:
Whenever you want to win extra cash, you ask any of your relatives to lend you money from any bank in the world ( foreigners currency), try to ask in black market who is willing to exchange, you meet, you check on any mobile app what's the current price and you do the exchange.

So in order buy USD dollars on a low price, devs build 2 mobile apps one that send a POST request to change the amount in DB and a second one fo retrieve this value.
So whenever he want to buy dollars he change the value to the lowest. And whenever you want to sell the dev raise the amount slowly. So far the government has no regulations over developers why? Because the one behind the forensic are at least 60 to 70 years old more like their informations are dead.

So we struggle.

Running a small company. All of us work from home. I am a designer and coder in one person, but now mostly taking care of cash flow, work done etc., while I have my dear girlfriend as only designer and an old friend as only front/backend developer. We are doing mainly small presentation websites on drupal, and a lot of webdesign.

Now I want to ask more experienced devs here. As the "main guy" I am responsible for everything running smooth with clients, money flow etc. But I am constantly running in a serious problem with my developer.
He most of the time gets the job done. But it is as fucked as possible. It looks good at the first view, but when you check the code... Oh god. Not only once he wrote me he did the job and when I checked it, it was like 50 percent done and rest was let untouched. He is using the oldest approaches in css as possible. Most of the time setting fixed widths even when I told him not to do so. Thing is, he knows how to do it properly, but he rather set the fixed width for all the devices than write something more scalable (imagine fixed width buttons, now imagine a website with 5 translations and now imagine how it behaves on mobile phones).

I want to be in a state where my dev writes me he did the job and I can INSTANTLY pass the changes to client with a trust of good done work. Without checking constantly all the work after him. Or it is normal and it works like that everywhere?

As to mention, I think he is pretty good paid and this is not money problem. It even does not look like he is demotivated or anything. When I speak to him it looks more like he is lazy to learn new things and lazy to do a good work. What would you suggest? Thanks

I just finished posting this but think it deserves its own post.
If you're creating a business or "startup" (as people like to call it these days) don't assume the idea is novel or investors will just jump on board. Focus on the business fundementals, money and cash flow, even before launch, unless you can afford not to. But really you can't afford not to. Selling before launch means that you're effectively doing two things 1 you're collecting new customers and income for the business and 2 you're. raising awareness at the same time. Obscurity is death and failure.

Get you a good sales team and marketer when the time is right.

Have a year of runway.

Identify the sites and groups your target audience and investors frequent. Start conversations now, buzz is the hardest thing to generate.

Start building relations with customers and potential clients now. Discuss launch, ask them if they'd be willing to pay up front before launch, in order to secure a "lifetime membership", offer it as an early opportunity and charge extra. Giving a discount out of the gate is a mistake B/c it says to potential investors that you don't think it's ready or worth it yet. Of course if it's between making 1. Some money or 2. No money, don't let it be a deal breaker, offer a discount. Going from no clients to any clients is a BIG deal. If you can do 1 you can make it to 10, if 10, you can reach 100, we etc.

No one likes asking for money and yet it is as important if not more important than development.

Suffering from the cash flow blues.

Remote contracting roles are far and few between, and so far I’ve only found the one client, the problem is that because they’ve been burned in the past by contractors, they only operate on an order by order basis.

So we’re stuck in this perpetual cycle of issues > estimates > order > development > test > tweak > pay and repeat.

The problem is that there is always significant delay between the stages from both sides, either because they’re busy on stuff, or I’ve burnt myself out rushing to meet an estimate and having to take a bit of breathing room.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s great working in blocks of a few days to a week and then having some time to myself (and the money is nice too), but the cash flow inconsistency is super scary when you’re having to manage corporation tax, accountancy fees and a salary.

Anyone else have these issues / know good places to find remote contract work?