Anyone else lost their freelancing gig recently? How are you coping?
Posted by bluebanana987@reddit | ExperiencedDevs | View on Reddit | 93 comments
I lost my 170k euro/year remote gig couple of months ago. I worked with this client for a total of 3 years. Both me and my client were based in Europe.
I'm having trouble with the crushing IT job market right now + AI hype + Hybrid first trend and not remote + ageism (I'm 41).
Anyone else can relate? Any advice on how to cope?. I feel like my worth and identity went to 0 overnight. Now I can't even get an interview for a employee, hybrid position that pays less than half of what I was making.
CraZy_TiGreX@reddit
Similar situation to you, took a 40% paycut. Still a lot of money but far from what I was before.
There are good daily rates out there but they require to go to the office, so, I moved to permanent.
You probably didn't had holidays in 3 years, now it is a good time to have them.
bluebanana987@reddit (OP)
Thanks a lot
Friendly_Novel_9082@reddit
Just recently went through something similar, client didn't renew a contract and most other clients wanted hybrid or fully on site devs. Took me almost 2 months to find something new and had to take a 30% paycut. Felt like crap especially when it first happened, and took me till finding a replacement for me to feel good again, but now even though I earn less I feel a lot better, the project is way more interesting and the client itself is also much better in other ways
bluebanana987@reddit (OP)
Two months to find a new project is very good. I'm overrunning that already
One_Economist_3761@reddit
I can relate. Especially to the ageism thing. I’m 54. The market is flooded with AI job postings and AI applicants. Robots talking to robots. I hope it blows over. I’m losing motivation to continue.
Innovator-X@reddit
Damn someone with your experience should be hired instantly
One_Economist_3761@reddit
Yeah, I thought that too. It’s been 8 months of looking and still nothing.
bluebanana987@reddit (OP)
We are rooting for you man! Thanks for sharing your situation.
swamy7799@reddit
A lot of people underestimate how emotionally destabilizing it feels when work has been tightly connected to identity, routine, confidence, and future planning for years.
circalight@reddit
I can imagine every company is being told to see if they can replace their freelancers with AI.
doofuzzle@reddit
Ageism usually seems to hit harder around 55+. If you’re financially okay for a bit, maybe consider taking a trip somewhere authentic before jumping back in. I’ve been finding side gigs lately by doing what this developer did and reaching out directly to recruitment firms. You may not land the same kind of money right away, but with your background I’d be surprised if nobody gets back to you. Don’t lose hope; people who live with hope can dance even without music.
fsk@reddit
There are two walls for ageism, 40+ and 50-55+. If you're 40+, you have the problem that things you learned early in your career are now obsolete. You might have 5 years of relevant experience and 10-15 years of now-obsolete experience. In the eyes of a hiring manager, this makes you less attractive than someone who has just 5 years of relevant experience with no "baggage" of obsolete experience.
There also will be people who say "most pro athletes are washed up at age 40" and assume the same applies to tech workers.
bluebanana987@reddit (OP)
Thanks a lot
thecrius@reddit
170k/year was an outlier and I'm being kind with the wording.
Count yourself lucky they didn't realise how much they were spending earlier.
punkpang@reddit
I'll give you a quote from movie you watched.
AmericanEyes@reddit
That's true and a good way to look at it. However I think most of us are trying to make money to provide security for our families. I have a job currently that's a bit shaky, and I'm struggling with my identity already. Because if I can't provide for my family then I view myself as a failure.
punkpang@reddit
Then you'll either fail or you will stop thinking about yourself as failure, remove that thought from the equation and go all out to provide for your family.
The thing is - if you look at the situation through a simple binary prism - you either do something or you don't. If you choose to DO something, yes - you have to manage those feelings, but they're just feelings. Perseverance is what matters, through those feelings.
I have no idea how to make the feelings of low self worth go away, but I know that world keeps spinning despite how we feel. So, if that's the case - shove the feelings under the carpet and power through it. All we can do is move forward, and no one is remotely interested how we feel - especially not the world.
Disastrous_Truck6856@reddit
Regardless of right or wrong, it feels like you just didn’t read their comment. They don’t necessarily give a shit about the job. It’s about their ability to provide for their family.
punkpang@reddit
I read it alright, did you?
Not sure why we're even discussing it, I'm against going into another meaningless war, I can tell where the guy is at and what troubles him. I've been there, it's not just one thing hitting one's psyche, it's all of it - the instability, the self worth, the actual loss of income, the uncertainty.. let's not go into the shenanigans, I don't think either of us wants to go there.
punkpang@reddit
Btw. I don't know who downvoted you, certainly wasn't me, have the upvote. I'm not an actor here who puts people down, but you know what they say.. when it rains, it pours. Cheer up, Reddit is just imaginary silly numbers that mean nothing.
randomInterest92@reddit
Tbh everyone who thinks that industries that are by nature evolving fast will stay the same for 30y+ are delusional.
I am a software engineer and from the very start I focused on building skills that go beyond software engineering. After 5-10 yoe you should be able to do a wide variety of jobs and especially with 10y+ I expect at least some kind of leadership experience. Whether it's purely technical leadership or disciplinary leadership doesn't matter.
You can't scale your own work by writing the code yourself and just fulfilling customer requests.
There are only 1 way: through leadership/management of others. Basically, if you enable 10 people each to be 10% more efficient, then you've scaled yourself by 100%. Any % extra is now beyond what you'd be capable of. That's true scale and it gets paid a ton of money
Achieving this is possible through multiple means
Become a manager director architect whatever inside a company, own your own company or build products that enable others
bluebanana987@reddit (OP)
I have been architect for 10 years, and I do own my own company, not sure I get your point
randomInterest92@reddit
Hm ok interesting that's pretty low revenue then 🤔
rcls0053@reddit
I've worked for consultancies for five years now, and saw the decline starting to happen as interest rates went up, and the customer decided not to continue with the contract that the company had for five years already. Then came the slump, no projects, nothing. Had to look for a job elsewhere because I wasn't gonna sit and wait until I got the boot, because there was no work there. Went to work for another consultancy, public sector projects this time, and even there contracts are starting to dwindle.
After covid I also quit my freelancing job that I had on the side for 20 years. It was nice pocket change, nothing major, really, but customers just stopped contacting me. I was really busy with life back then, so didn't really matter.
It's tough out there right now.
bluebanana987@reddit (OP)
Thanks a lot for the insight
PopularBroccoli@reddit
You got savings? Should have a hefty bank balance from that income. Go live for a while. Enjoy the summer. Learn something new. Ai will collapse soon and the old skill people will suddenly be even more valuable
nonFungibleHuman@reddit
There will be no collapse sadly.
inthiseeconomy@reddit
do you see token prize coming down to cheaper than humans once the subsidy is removed and the AI companies cannot afford to burn any more cash?
obelix_dogmatix@reddit
Right. So that’s not called a collapse. Probably a pullback of some kind where only the richer companies can afford it.
KarmaCop213@reddit
People will just use cheaper models.
HK-65@reddit
I think that you're both right and wrong. The current AI hype will collapse, we'll continue working with local LLMs as they are getting "good enough".
But the economy will definitely collapse as too much is predicated on OpenAI and Anthropic earning more money than humanly possible.
I can def see a tech office in 10 years looking like a fucking Adeptus Mechanicus church with developers mumbling at AI as voice is faster than typing (especially with new people who will never learn to touch-type).
This shit will keep getting more ridiculous.
anonyuser415@reddit
I had an interview recently that used AI and I nearly began prompting with voice. I had to implement an entire web app in 20 minutes. I almost wasn't fast enough in prompting the AI, even despite being a rapid typer. We're really scraping the upper limit of human productivity here.
inthiseeconomy@reddit
The quality of the output isn't anywhere close.
KarmaCop213@reddit
As always, people will learn how to use them effectively. Going back to search on Google won't be an option.
inthiseeconomy@reddit
I wasn't saying it's going away. I'm pretty sure everyone here means collapse in the sense of replacing you at work.
KarmaCop213@reddit
No, that's not what everyone here meant. "collapse" was used as in the collapse of AI, read the thread again and you'll understand what I'm saying.
PopularBroccoli@reddit
Yeah it will. When no one is training new models sure the old ones will exist, they won’t know anything new from that point. Pretty quickly they will be useless for software engineering specifically as they won’t know about latest changes
KarmaCop213@reddit
Unless it becomes too expensive to train models, that won't happen in the near future. There is a huge demand right now for capable models and I don't see it going away.
PopularBroccoli@reddit
The demand is not nearly as large as the cost. Unless they can successfully remove developers from the process entirely the financials do not make sense
KarmaCop213@reddit
Training a model like sonnet will probably be half a billion. Chatgpt has 50 million subscribers. That's 10 dollars per user. A model like opus will be more expensive to train, so higher price to pay between subscribers. But honestly, the price to train a model doesn't seem to be the issue.
inthiseeconomy@reddit
bro, whatever.
Longjumping_Feed3270@reddit
yet
Possible-Pirate9097@reddit
Qwen3.6-27b and Qwen3-Coder-Next are both good enough for subagents right now lol
inthiseeconomy@reddit
depends on who you ask
Akrylicus@reddit
I bought RTX 5090 for 3K Euro last year, I can use it to easily leverage agentic coding with Qwen3.6-27B, If I have a harder task I can call SOTA model from time to time. So I pay very small API fee + my electricity bill.
Meanwhile my company is projecting that they should spend 80K Euro a year for Claude Code licenses for devs that use the service so mindlessly that they just burn through the tokens like crazy.
The issue is not price, it's approach.
EmotionalHalf@reddit
There will be for people who already gave up because they think there will be a collapse. It's really a self full-filling prophecy. Personally I'm in a better spot than ever and had the same thing happening to me as what happened to OP 2 years ago
bluebanana987@reddit (OP)
Not sure the collapse will be so soon. At the moment the situation is pretty bleak and the hypers are full on still. Plus I foresee it will take me a while to get a job once I start searching. As of today 120+ applications sent, 3 recruiter screenings, 0 interviews
PopularBroccoli@reddit
Yeah so take a break for your own sake, that sounds like a massive waste of your time
tango650@reddit
The cope in that post...
Ageism... What the fuck man ,at 41 ? You need therapy more than a job.
Not that therapies are helpful but maybe a trip to Nepal to meditate ?
You've been raking 170 a year for yø3 years you can literally retire mate. If you can't then you also need financial therapy.
The world we live in...
Adventurous_Stop_341@reddit
I’m so curious where you live that you can retire on what you’re able to save from 170k for three years, after paying taxes and living expenses.
tango650@reddit
Median income is about 40 to 50k in Europe.
Your living expenses are the same as those peoples unless they are not and that's on you.
I believe your can do the arithmetics for what savings should be available to a 41 year old with a prudent economy. But if it doesn't add up for you then please say where.
bluebanana987@reddit (OP)
Barcelona
tango650@reddit
Lol.
I kind of asked for where the calculation doesn't add up , not the geography :D
Spain has some of the cheapest and best food in Europe,wtf man ?
itix@reddit
With 170k eur/year you can certainly have a buffer for unemployment, but definitely not retire at 41.
tango650@reddit
Friend, I'm semi retired at 37 and never got up to that day rate am also living in top a expensive city on the continent. Half savings, half investments, half frugality. I don't even feel I'm living cheaply but that's the part most people get wrong.
Adventurous_Stop_341@reddit
So you’re not retired, and whatever savings you have, you didn’t get there off of earning 170k and saving for three years. So why are you wasting everyone’s time and being an asshole?
Wait, are you a bot!?
“That’s the part most people get wrong” lmao.
tango650@reddit
Because people who've never met an asshole have the indecency to say they've been making 170k and that now ageism is preventing them from getting a job.
Imagine being an a teacher, plumber, nurse or anybody making ends meet for a fraction of that income and seeing that post.
I don't want to tear into the op anymore, but if he fails to see how overprivilliged a position he's in, then then my original response stands. It's a mental problem not a society unfairness problem. Perhaps overprotective upbringing the kind most of this sub seems to be suffering from.
Adventurous_Stop_341@reddit
Run along home little bot, no one is buying your bullshit.
HelloSummer99@reddit
Theoretically if you save really hard, and an almost utopistic scenario - having 300k saved and invested into a REIT yielding 5% in dividends meanwhile keeping the capital. That gives a Spanish minimum wage. It's not investment advice but theoretically doable, in cheaper like Thailand, even more.
bluebanana987@reddit (OP)
Defintely not retirement money for me
mikelson_6@reddit
And your comment is helpful in what way? This is not twitter
tango650@reddit
It's also not the church of holy Mary Virgin. The guy came here for an opinion then why should I not share mine.
These emotional bubbles you seem to be expecting from everyone may be the reason he's in this situation in the first place.
chaitanyathengdi@reddit
Seek help
tango650@reddit
I sid and got the good advice to stop bitching and own my life.
That fortunately happened somewhere at the age of 10-15. I thank the people who did for me.
burtcopaint@reddit
170k in Europe was a find. Had 150 also 3 years ago. I'm be lucky to find stuff over 110 currently
EmotionalHalf@reddit
From the sounds of it OP is a sole proprietor and worked as a contractor. I would not compare those numbers to a normal employees salary, it's two different things that are associated with different risk and cost for the company as well
burtcopaint@reddit
Same as me. Not easy to find big contracts for me. Not saying my resume is as good as his, but in the ML side it was, at least, easier before...
HK-65@reddit
EU salaries (IDK about non-EU) are still all over the place, in Denmark we pay 95-105k EUR equivalent for mid-level IC with 3-5 YoE, not consulting, full employment. NL is similar if it's still the same. And IDK if we pay over market, because I still find people I can't hire because the pay would be a major step down. Just talked with someone making 120k in non-tech, again as an employee.
And then if you go to Germany or well, most other places, it's not even close.
I hope at least with the salary transparency law coming this year, it'll catch up a bit as people realize they're being fucked over.
HelloSummer99@reddit
Yeah, I just did. I have 10 yoe and leading a team on 65k. Just realized how massively underpaid I am
HK-65@reddit
I mean depends on the area. Sad reality is that a bunch of places just don't pay that well, so if you can move around in the EU it's easier to find good stuff, but then you lose your local network, and moving is hard by itself.
burtcopaint@reddit
Yeah. Thanks for the input.
bluebanana987@reddit (OP)
Thanks
Darkseid_Omega@reddit
Go with the new hotness and put all the agentic programming buzzwords on you resume and see what bites you get
tenthousandants44@reddit
Forward Deployed Engineer is the new hotness
sogo00@reddit
Fake it till you make it!
Or do a few PRs against Openclaw
Darkseid_Omega@reddit
Don’t make the mistake of conflating the hype around capability vs the tools staying power
AI is not going anywhere. Embracing it and learning to use it to productive ends will not be a mandatory skill if you want be competitive in tomorrows market
MoreHuman_ThanHuman@reddit
just get a law degree. the european tech industry is almost entirely centered on suing american tech companies these days.
MoreHuman_ThanHuman@reddit
AI hype?
If you mean you're an overpriced IC who hasn't embraced codegen your problems are.self-inflicted and can be self-mitigated.
Shox2711@reddit
170k a year fully remote is golden handcuffs. You may need to settle for something remote at a lower TC, unfortunately.
I wouldn’t worry about ageism at 41 at all. Guessing \~15+ YoE? The market isn’t great, but principle/staff/senior are luckily the positions that are still around the most.
Totally understand feeling the loss of worth and identity. But our work isn’t our identities, it’s just our means to an end.
bluebanana987@reddit (OP)
Thanks a lot
gemengelage@reddit
I've seen a lot of ridiculous claims from older people in the software industry, claiming that they aren't getting hired because of ageism when it's obvious they just currently have a very high salary in a niche position.
But hearing that from someone who is only 41 y.o. really takes the piss.
bluebanana987@reddit (OP)
My salary expectations went way down, still no luck
mmcnl@reddit
You need to emotionally prepare for a 50% paycut.
bluebanana987@reddit (OP)
Thanks, 5 stages of grief are happening, not in acceptance yet
HowIsEmuWarriorTaken@reddit
The only good thing about your situation is you’re not alone.
Honestly spend some time with your family until things get better
bluebanana987@reddit (OP)
Thanks
mikelson_6@reddit
41 is not old for senior and staff positions, don’t let that get in your head. Keep your head up and upskill, let someone review your CV. Rainy days always come but you can’t give up on yourself
bluebanana987@reddit (OP)
I did what I tought was the natural path for my age. Created a startup and apps that did not work, pivoted to freelancing. Used the LLC to avoid the middle man comission once I knew a client, then absorbed their comission to myself in further contracts. Now everything collapsed
mikelson_6@reddit
Way she goes man, way she goes. Keep fighting
bluebanana987@reddit (OP)
Thanks
CheetahChrome@reddit
If you verticalized your skills or what you've worked on is not in demand, you have to consider that angle. While searching now, expand your skills base to make you more amenable to other opportunities.
LaRamenNoodles@reddit
Didnt you saved anything?
bluebanana987@reddit (OP)
My selfworth, sorry. My worth is fine