The Lazy Developer's Guide to a 6-figure Paycheck
F**k it's easy.
The Call
Every executive makes the same first call. I’ve heard it 50 times:
“Hey, uh, I got your name from [mutual contact]. We have a... situation. Our [system] is [broken] and we have [important event] in [absurdly short timeframe]. Our team says it’s impossible to fix quickly. But [mutual contact] said you might be able to help?”
They’re asking a stranger to save them from their own organization.
“I can take a look right now. Send me access.”
The relief is immediate. Not because you’ve fixed anything - you haven’t even seen the code yet. They’re just happy someone said yes without a 6-week discovery phase.
What Executives Actually Want
You think executives care about your technical decisions. They don’t.
Here’s what’s actually happening: The board meeting is next week. Their “platform” is Brad’s laptop running cron jobs. Due diligence starts Monday. Their CTO keeps saying “it’s complex” which everyone knows means “we have no idea.”
They don’t need perfect code. They need plausible deniability.
When they hire a dev team, they’re buying blame diffusion - “We have 50 engineers on this.” When they hire you, they’re buying speed - “It’ll be fixed by tomorrow.”
One makes them look responsible. The other makes the problem go away.
The Speed Game
Here’s the consulting secret nobody talks about: AI turned every decent developer into a 10x developer overnight. Not in quality - in speed. The executive doesn’t know the difference.
Get access to their codebase. Feed it to Claude/GPT/whatever. Build context in 2 hours that used to take 2 weeks. Find the obvious issues their team has been “investigating” for months. Fix something - anything - by end of day.
You’re not a genius. You just have better tools and no organizational dysfunction slowing you down.
Example: Client hired me for API optimization. While they were explaining the problem, I found their auth tokens were stored in plaintext. Fixed it during the call. Suddenly I’m their security expert too.
That’s not expertise. That’s just grep and common sense. But to them? Magic.
The Fear Economy
Real call from last month:
“The enterprise client is asking about timeout errors. I have to pretend I understand our infrastructure. My CTO will make it sound complicated. The client will hear ‘we don’t know.’ That’s 30% of our revenue gone.”
They’re not really hiring you to fix timeouts. They’re hiring you to protect them from looking incompetent in front of people who matter.
Every technical executive knows their team is lying to them. The offshore contractors billing 40 hours for 4 hours of work. The “senior” engineers who don’t understand the product. The CTO who’s three years out of date.
They know. They’ve always known.
You’re not there to fix the technology. You’re there to fix the politics without anyone admitting the politics need fixing.
The Dependency Trap
Around month three, they always ask: “What would it take to bring you in full-time?”
They’re not recruiting. They’re panicking. They’ve realized their entire technical operation depends on someone they don’t control.
Say no. Always say no.
The moment you’re full-time, you become part of the dysfunction. You’ll sit in meetings. You’ll write documentation. You’ll get pulled into politics. Your velocity drops 90%. You become what you replaced.
Stay external. Stay fast. Stay expensive.
The $500/Hour Reality Check
Yes, I charge $500/hour to be a human API wrapper. Yes, it’s absurd. Yes, they pay it happily.
Why? Because their lawyer charges $800/hour to also Google things. Because their McKinsey team charges $2M to produce PowerPoints saying “digitally transform your infrastructure.” Because spending $50K to save a $5M contract is elementary math.
You’re not charging for code. You’re charging for speed, availability, and the psychological comfort of having someone competent on speed dial.
The Uncomfortable Truth
Most of my fixes are ChatGPT solutions with 10 years of context about what actually matters in production. Their team could do the same thing if they:
Had no meetings
Had no process
Had no fear of being fired
Had permission to use AI
Actually understood the business problem
But they can’t. So you can.
The client doesn’t want to hear “I had AI analyze your codebase.” They want to hear “I’ve seen this pattern before.” Fine. Both are technically true.
What This Actually Is
You’re not a revolutionary. You’re not disrupting anything. You’re a pressure release valve for organizational dysfunction.
Companies are spinning apart from their own complexity. Their teams are paralyzed by process. Their executives are drowning in problems they don’t understand. You’re just someone who shows up without baggage and fixes things before they explode.
It’s not noble. It’s not innovative. It’s just arbitrage - the gap between what AI can do and what organizations are allowed to admit AI can do.
The corporations are putting on AI theater, pretending to transform while accomplishing nothing. You’re selling them actual results while they figure out their narrative. Eventually they’ll catch up. Until then, you’re running a very profitable race against organizational inertia.
Stop pretending you’re special. Start admitting you’re just fast. The invoice amount stays the same either way.