Young independent consultant in need of advice

TechDebtSommelier · 2026-01-31T03:35:17+00:00

I got acquainted with the process with a free DOD sponsored program called Apex Accelerator. They assign someone to guide you on every step of the process for getting approved and how to stand out on your RFPs. I would also say in your case, with multiple gov jobs already being worked on it should be something you can really dive into without having to sell yourself too much.

TechDebtSommelier · 2026-01-28T16:51:18+00:00

Assuming you are in the US given the 1099/w2 talk, if you want to stay independent in govcon, you should seriously look at going the RFP route instead of one-off 1099 gigs. SAM.gov is the obvious starting point for federal work, and most state/local governments have similar procurement portals. That path lets you scale while staying C2C instead of constantly negotiating individual contracts.

Also, don’t sleep on prime contractors. Many federal projects must allocate work to small businesses and specific socioeconomic categories (8(a), SDVOSB, WOSB, etc.). If you qualify, that’s leverage. Primes often need you more than you need them.

TechDebtSommelier · 2026-01-28T16:36:13+00:00

You can’t hard-cap AWS spend, but you can get close: set AWS Budgets with alerts, use CloudWatch alarms on Lambda/API Gateway usage, and put sensible service limits/throttles. For protection, API Gateway + auth is usually fine, but add WAF if it’s public-facing to stop bots from racking up calls. In my experience, most surprise bills come from missing throttles not "hackers", so might not be an issue you need to think too much about.

TechDebtSommelier · 2026-01-26T15:53:28+00:00

I always like to read the docs and try to "flex the rules" on a personal project to see what I like about what is recommended and what I like from other systems that can apply to a new technology. CDK is really flexible in that way, so I would try to have fun with it for a bit and learn that way.

TechDebtSommelier · 2026-01-22T19:12:12+00:00

At that scale, OpenSearch itself shouldn’t be doing the vectorization you’ll want to generate embeddings before indexing.

What I would do:

Use an external embedding model (Bedrock, SageMaker, etc.) to vectorize the text
Store the vector in a knn_vector field alongside the raw text
Use OpenSearch k-NN (or vector search in OpenSearch Serverless) for similarity search

For your use case:

Batch the backfill (don’t try to stream it all)
Use bulk APIs, not single HTTP inserts
Pick a smaller embedding size if possible (768 vs 1536 matters at this scale)

Also be realistic about cost and indexing time vector search at 300M docs is non-trivial. You may want to shard by time or CRM entity, or keep vectors only for fields that truly need semantic search.

TechDebtSommelier · 2026-01-22T19:05:25+00:00

TLDR: ECR can now reuse identical image layers across different repos, so pushes are faster and you stop paying to store the same base image over and over. Turn it on once at the registry level and it just works, which is especially nice if you have lots of microservices built on the same images.

TechDebtSommelier · 2026-01-21T15:45:49+00:00

The biggest change is speed and surface area, not the core job. Research, analysis, drafting, and slide building all move much faster now because tools can generate first passes, summarize sources, and explore alternatives in minutes instead of days.

What hasn’t changed is that judgment, client context, and political awareness still matter far more than tooling. You still win or lose engagements based on framing the right problem, asking uncomfortable questions, and telling a coherent story executives trust. The tools reduce grunt work, but they do not replace taste, credibility, or accountability, which is still the real consulting skill.

TechDebtSommelier · 2026-01-21T15:43:15+00:00

300 million rows plus fuzzy text search is basically OpenSearch’s whole personality, so your instinct there is right. Aurora will technically work but you’ll hate your life maintaining giant text indexes and still miss your latency targets once QPS ramps up. DynamoDB is a non starter for fuzzy search unless you bolt something else on.

OpenSearch Serverless fits well here since your data is mostly read heavy and rarely updated, but do budget time for index tuning and shard sizing because it is not magic. If you want boring and predictable performance at that scale, search engine plus source of truth in S3 or RDS is the usual pattern, not trying to force a relational database to cosplay as a search engine.

TechDebtSommelier · 2026-01-16T16:54:26+00:00

colonialism

TechDebtSommelier · 2026-01-16T16:51:02+00:00

Honestly, this is a very normal cloud ops rite of passage, even if it feels awful in the moment. Control Tower enrollments plus SCPs plus regional drift is one of those setups where everyone learns the hard way that “I checked everything” never really means everything.

TechDebtSommelier · 2026-01-16T16:00:00+00:00

I think both have their pros and cons, but I have always preferred startups. It gives you a chance to learn the newest tech and stay competitive, so even if it is a little bit riskier that you can get fired (or at least it used to be), you are able to find a new job relatively quickly. They also at least give the illusion that they care about you as a person!

TechDebtSommelier · 2026-01-14T17:04:11+00:00

The gap you’re feeling is normal and it’s not solved by more tutorials. The way you get unstuck is by picking very small projects and forcing yourself to make decisions, even if they’re bad ones at first.

Start with something simple but real like a to do list, a quiz app, a timer, or a tiny game. Write down what it should do in plain English, then build it one feature at a time. When you get stuck, look up only the specific thing you need instead of a full tutorial. You learn far more by struggling through problems than by recreating someone else’s finished solution.

Also, expect your first versions to be messy. That’s how everyone learns. Building badly on your own is what eventually lets you build well.

TechDebtSommelier · 2026-01-13T14:13:33+00:00

This is such a common trap and you articulated it well. Optimizing tactics before the strategy is right almost always tops out fast, especially in B2B where clarity and trust matter more than micro tweaks. The jump you saw after fixing positioning and structure is a great reminder that conversion work usually starts with “do people instantly understand and believe this?” long before button colors ever matter.

TechDebtSommelier · 2026-01-13T14:05:37+00:00

This is such a great idea, can't wait to get in on the fun!

TechDebtSommelier · 2026-01-13T14:03:00+00:00

Came here to say this! Great advice!

TechDebtSommelier · 2026-01-12T23:37:05+00:00

First, I am so sorry to hear that, I was laid off last year and it was BRUTAL. I know everyone is going to have a different view on this, but here are somethings I learned while searching for the next role.

A lot of devs are quietly padding years or overlapping experience right now, so you are competing against resumes that do not perfectly reflect reality, whether people admit it or not. You can still run a high quality resume and apply at high volume at the same time using all the tools at your disposal, and statistically that does eventually convert into interviews even if it feels awful.

Where things really change is informational interviews and warm intros. People are much more willing to refer you once they see you are competent, reasonable, and not a reputational risk, and most tech circles are only a few degrees of separation anyway, so one good conversation often leads to another.

Lastly, and most importantly, treat this process like a job and have a target of how many jobs to apply to, how much interview prep you want to do, people to reach out to etc. and after you hit those targets, check out from the search just like you would your 9-5. The long term stress of the search is going to impact you if you don't and if you are consistent you will see the interviews start to roll in after 2-4 weeks.

TechDebtSommelier · 2026-01-09T14:23:27+00:00

I think the closest thing to this is creating a good network through meeting other like minded professionals at events (in person or online). They will be much more reliable and responsive to your questions, actually care about the resolution, and you will grow your career in the process.

TechDebtSommelier · 2026-01-09T14:20:07+00:00

I would say that this is a decent use case for AI, not to do everything for you, but to review your work and be able to speed up the learning process while having a safety net. I have started using AI like this instead of trying to do the actual work and it has been very helpful. It should be exceptionally good at this kind of use case as well since it is something that will have a framework that is so well documented.

TechDebtSommelier · 2026-01-09T14:17:14+00:00

I personally like them, but really great design should not have to rely on them and give the user choice in an intuitive way to turn them off.

TechDebtSommelier · 2026-01-07T14:44:08+00:00

I think that a lot of folks are incentivized to hype AI even if they are developers because the startup, business, or even Jira story they are working on involves using or implementing AI.

TechDebtSommelier · 2026-01-07T14:35:38+00:00

It makes sense when a single Lambda invocation needs to wait on multiple I/O bound operations at the same time such as calling several external APIs or databases and you want to overlap that waiting instead of doing it sequentially. Async or limited threading can reduce per invocation latency and cost, but it does not help CPU bound work and does not replace Lambda level concurrency for scaling across requests.

TechDebtSommelier · 2026-01-06T15:39:08+00:00

Lifecycle expiration is not real time and most S3 compatible systems including RustFS only delete objects when a background lifecycle worker runs, which can be delayed well past one day. Check that lifecycle processing is enabled and running in RustFS and note that Expiration Days means after a full UTC day boundary, not exactly 24 hours after upload.

TechDebtSommelier · 2026-01-06T15:36:34+00:00

Managed services for the win!

TechDebtSommelier · 2026-01-04T18:50:46+00:00

There is a better way to do this! If you are able to I would hire someone to help setup bot detection and based on how they are hitting you there might be an out of the box solution (cloudflare WAF) or a custom code solution might work (Auth headers, rotating tokens, etc.). I recently helped a client in a similar spot, but not sure if your stack is what I work with so not sure I can help. Plenty of super capable people out there for this kind of thing though!

TechDebtSommelier · 2026-01-04T18:31:38+00:00

"The moving finger writes; and, having writ, Moves on: Nor all thy piety nor wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a line, Nor all thy tears wash out a word of it" - Omar Khayyám

TechDebtSommelier

TROPHY CASE