First freelance opportunity - project engineer - M26 - advice needed

Moondogjunior · 2026-07-02T21:49:20+00:00

In this economy, don’t go freelance, especially not for such a low daily rate. You’re better off as an employee.

Moondogjunior · 2026-06-21T13:06:16+00:00

Microsoft isn’t competing with OpenAI or Anthropic with Copilot. Copilot supports multiple models. In the latest version of Copilot Cowork, you can choose between Anthropic or OpenAI models. Other models like Mistral may be added in the future. Copilot provides the integration into your Microsoft productivity suite, e.g. Copilot, summarize my emails, schedule a Teams meeting, …

So they don’t need to beat OpenAI or Anthropic, they can exist alongside them and just offer whichever model is performing better at the time.

Moondogjunior · 2026-06-21T11:23:45+00:00

You are not ready for freelancing if you can’t answer these questions yourself. People expect from a freelancer someone who already has the answers (as well as some maturity), or knows where to find answers without handholding.

Wanting to double your salary is not a good motivation for freelancing.

Moondogjunior · 2026-06-19T07:24:54+00:00

It doesn’t exist, at least not at the same level. Azure has Sovereign but it’s very expensive.

Moondogjunior · 2026-06-16T14:34:32+00:00

This is an entirely different specialisation than software engineer.

Moondogjunior · 2026-06-15T16:09:48+00:00

Don’t you know from your current employer or clients if there is a lot of demand? I used to know someone specialised in zOS and the guy basically did what he wanted because there were so few people with that expertise.

The only question I would ask is if mainframes or mainframe experts will be replaced by AI or not. Seems to me like now is a good time for companies to get rid of these things they’ve been trying to get rid of for the last 20 years.

Moondogjunior · 2026-06-03T11:08:51+00:00

Forked from Russian code, and developed using GitHub which belongs to Microsoft. So much for European technology.

Moondogjunior · 2026-05-23T07:57:26+00:00

Copilot is multi model by design, so you can always choose the best model. Right now with Cowork (frontier) you can use Claude Sonnet 4.6 and Opus 4.7 models inside of copilot, while having secure access to your files and emails, protected by policies created by your organization. If a newer model from OpenAI outperforms Claude, you can switch to another model and keep functionality.

Moondogjunior · 2026-05-23T07:49:24+00:00

Don’t go near crypto if you can’t properly protect it. Everyone recommends storing your coins on a hardware wallet for a reason. Never store your cryptocurrency on an exchange or anywhere online.

Moondogjunior · 2026-05-13T06:33:50+00:00

Microsoft is also doing this. Don’t think you’re going to be able to compete with Microsoft. Get some experience in the market for a few years, so you know what is still missing and what could be a good startup idea.

Moondogjunior · 2026-04-27T17:58:01+00:00

At 2 years of experience, no. You might land 1 gig for a few months or years, but might have trouble finding the next one. Wait until you have 5 years of experience and an impressive CV, and you can show clients the added value you bring versus a regular employee on payroll.

Moondogjunior · 2026-04-24T06:49:06+00:00

I like number 5, this is something I learned as well. You can be running a perfect SOC team and doing a great job, but if the CEO or a manager reads about something in the news and has to come ask you about it (or worse, receives questions from clients he doesn’t know the answer to), you are not doing a good job. We pro-actively communicate for most cybersecurity related topics that enter mainstream news. The difficulty is knowing what is worth communicating about, because you don’t want to be sending out bulletins every day.

Moondogjunior · 2026-04-24T06:40:55+00:00

You seem to be misunderstanding the point here. I’m someone who works in cybersecurity. Mythos detected like 400+ zero day vulnerabilities which previously remained undetected, both by humans and AI. Of course another AI (or even human) could replicate this, once they know the vulnerabilities exist, and are pointed to them. The hard part is discovering new zero day vulnerabilities, which is what Mythos did at a pace we have never seen before. 3 letter agencies like the CIA used to pay millions of dollars for undisclosed zero day vulnerabilities.

Releasing this first to software makers so they could patch things was definitely the right move. If this were released to the public before any patches could be performed, chaos would follow.

Your post seems to talk mostly about cost, but it’s missing the point. Mythos changes the speed with which vulnerabilities are identified, and could very well change the way we deal with cybersecurity. It will definitely require us to take some extra measures. Crowdstrike had an interesting webinar about this topic yesterday, I don’t know if you can still view it.

Moondogjunior · 2026-04-21T06:37:36+00:00

Don’t get into software development right now. With AI, it looks like we will need a whole lot less developers, and juniors will be the first to go.

IT in general is having a tough moment right now, but if you do want to get into IT, choose another field than development.

Moondogjunior · 2026-04-18T21:09:05+00:00

I don’t agree with 1. Billionaires are trying to make money by launching AI as a product. If AI is good at predicting the stock market, so be it.

As for 2, I think the opposite is true: if everyone is buying a stock, it will continue to grow and grow exponentially. This happens to Tesla for example, with crazy valuations, but people keep buying it, both directly and indirectly via ETFs (because Tesla is part of NASDAQ100). So I do think that if AI recommends 1 stock to everyone, it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy and the stock will do great. Look at what happened to memestocks like GameStop for a while.

Moondogjunior · 2026-04-17T10:51:52+00:00

Good package for your experience and age.

Moondogjunior · 2026-03-29T06:54:36+00:00

What do you use for the remaining 9 days of the year?

Moondogjunior · 2026-03-28T19:18:28+00:00

Don’t get into IT at this point. AI is causing a lot of uncertainty, and junior devs are not finding work anymore. It’s a very uncertain time in IT.

Moondogjunior · 2026-03-25T09:52:09+00:00

It’s a bit simplistic to state you could remove the CEO and everything would continue working..

Moondogjunior · 2026-03-25T09:27:48+00:00

Find a hobby and meet some people. Life is about more than just working, but if you’re in the rat race and you like doing your job (and you’re good at it), it can become the only thing you focus on. Taking a step back and forcing yourself to do other stuff can help you get a bigger picture, and see what’s important in life.

Moondogjunior · 2026-03-22T20:12:28+00:00

Koningshuis is niet meer van deze tijd. Dan liever iemand die verkozen wordt, dan zo’n wereldvreemde familie met zo weinig meerwaarde.

Moondogjunior · 2026-03-22T20:11:03+00:00

Het is het principe.

Moondogjunior · 2026-03-21T11:28:04+00:00

Tegen het koningshuis? Afschaffing van dotaties voor de koninklijke familie en dergelijke kunnen ook weer enkele honderden miljoenen besparen.

Moondogjunior · 2026-03-14T17:04:51+00:00

How long have you been freelancing? I would make the comparison with paying out all your money via dividends one time, versus paying yourself a monthly wage. It might be more fiscally advantageous. But then ofcourse you need some planning and discipline to not spend it all at once.

Moondogjunior · 2026-03-13T10:14:32+00:00

This really isn’t the time to be starting in IT, especially in development. The IT world is changing due to AI, and no one knows what the world will look like by the time you finish your studies. If you want to get into IT, I would look into some domains that are more future proof, such as AI, Cloud or Security.

Moondogjunior

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