For... idk, at least a few months? I think a briefly useful job is "Guy who basically enters Claude Code prompts for you, but, manages ironing out the fiddly bits and making sure things work before merging each PR in."
This is different from "hiring a coder." I think it can/should be much cheaper.
Fable is competent enough that I can direct it like a manager to do open-ended tasks... but the actual process ends up requiring a moderate amount of attention. Things sometimes don't quite work. Fable sometimes gets confused. Even if things work, you can't quite trust that they work, etc.
These days, I typically manage 3 Fable threads at a time, because that's how much my brain can handle as I send it off to do stuff, it takes a while, and I spend that time thinking about a different task.
But, I have side projects that are not as important as my primary day job. They require enough attention that, by default, I can only do them in evenings/weekends during leisure time.
I used to sometimes try to manage those during working hours. This ended up getting too distracting, and the distraction didn't have an ending point. There's always a bit more I'd like to polish, one more feature to add. Surely if I give Fable one more thingy... but... actually, it's a surprising amount of attention to articulate the one-more-thingy I want Fable to do.
...
But, I had previously hired a thinking assistant, who I meet with remotely on a zoom call for ~4 hours a day for $30 an hour, with me paying for their Claude Code subscription. Recently, I've had them start managing my side projects for me. This has some advantages:
1. Focus
Even though, often, I basically type them the same prompt I would have typed Fable and it works about as well, the simple part where I'm not directly in the loop is better from a vibecode-addiction standpoint. I stay focused on my day job, I'm not able to be annoyed by the little finicky details that Fable or Opus didn't get quite right so I can't get as distracted by it...
2. Time
...or, if I do notice the finicky details, I can just say "oh, fix those things" and I don't have to figure out how to articulate "what exactly are those things and how do I fix them?" because my assistant has enough context to do that.
More broadly: they can build up enough context that they can often figure out some implementation details I'd otherwise have to figure out how to articulate.
This overall means that, with about 20 minutes a day of upkeep, I can maintain one more project stream than I otherwise would, without cost to deep work.
You might think "if I can do that with 20 minutes of work a day, can I have a horde of assistants doing a horde of things with slightly better attention efficiency than me managing them myself?".
Maybe. I do not currently attempt that because I am currently bottlenecked on my ability to think through the hard parts of design. Anything simple enough to not require that, probably isn't that valuable and is not worth spending affordable-but-real money on.
I think at the point where you're hiring a ton of people, you want to be hiring high-taste people who you can get away with chatting with like once-a-week rather than "multiple times per day."
I do this via a zoom call, where we're often on mute, but it's very easy to unmute and say "hey, actually, do this instead of that" or for them to say "hey, are you sure you want X and not Y?".
Various other form-factors presumably exist – in person, or perhaps just over text. I like the reliability of the scheduled hours where it's easy to track how progress is going, but, I assume different people will want different tradeoffs.
Anyhoo, this is a fairly simple concept. I think "Vibecode Assistant" is nicely compatible with other forms of assistant (i.e. normal personal assistant stuff, metacognitive assistant, etc). But, I suspect it requires less compatibility than metacognitive-assistance does.
(This is specifically for projects where you're happy to accept "fully vibecoded, basically no code review except "make sure a fresh Fable agent reviews each PR")
So, consider taking this thread as a time to say:
"Hey, I would like to try hiring a Vibecode Assistant! (and, maybe other X/Y types of assistant-ing?)"
or
"Hey, I would like to be hired as a Vibecode Assistant! (and, perhaps other X/Y types of assistant-ing)."
The tier above "Vibecode Assistant" is "Designer with pretty good taste." If you have experience designing products that many other people have used and enjoyed, and are looking for work, I encourage you to list yourself here as well!