Hire me and pay what you want, just give me interesting work

I don't really enjoy writing tests at the best of times, for example, because I've never had the enjoyment of inheriting a readable test suite. Most of the time you're looking at coverage hacks that test the runtime and, hopefully, cover some behaviour, and you're lucky if they can give you confidence through a refactoring. Mocks and stubs and spies are helpful tools but I've lost count of the amount of times that the actual purpose of the test is faked without anybody realising it.

But now, this time, there is a purpose and also organisational remit to change this situation and I'm going all in on rebuilding test architecture and writing examples of what we want to see. I'm actually enjoying something I never really enjoyed.

So it is with documentation, or dealing with bugs, or tech debt, or anything like that. It's not really about want or don't want, but why... and if you're on board with the why then it's gonna be better for you than if you're not.

That, of course, depends on solid leadership. So ultimately you're looking at how tight your org ship is.

[...list of things that, as an engineer, I enjoy all of, as long as I’m engaged with the project, and none of which conflict necessarily with OPs requirements...]

Sounds like you just read your own stereotype of engineers ans what they like into that.

> You don't factor in the time cost of me or my team in onboarding you, dealing with you, dealing with your code and so on.

Well, no, nor does he factor in the potential value of his work on the other side, either. He offers to do an interview and let you, as the hiring party, factor those things in by setting a pay scale, for which the only up-front limits he proposes is that the hourly rate must be positive. Typically, that’s how factoring in value and overhead works in hiring, the hiring party, not the hired party figures them in and decides if and at what rate to make an offer.

I'm one of three directors of a small IT company in the UK and I'm feeling more and more compelled to steer it towards more innovative and societally important things. We are very small in the grand scheme of things but you will have heard of some of our customers. I am a pointy headed boss (PHB) who runs Arch Linux on his laptop and has a 3D printer on his desk. I also have a hammer drill and a set of sockets on it at the moment. That's at home.

I could probably find some jobs for you but frankly I suggest you start your own firm/organisation, do your thing and get all the rewards in whatever form that means - may not be financial. You sound very close to having a vision. Focus on what you really want to achieve and do it.

If you still fancy a chat, I'm up for it.

You might also consider working on side projects with an emphasis on them making money, but then I think you'll quickly find that you'll be required to do work that you don't consider fun and interesting, so you'd probably have to give up before it got far enough to become an actual money-making venture. So again, closer to $0/hour.

Or maybe you'd like to do contract work, but again, to fully complete a project for a client is most certainly going to require that you do some work that you don't like, so I don't think anyone is going to pay you for delivering something that's only partially complete, so again, $0/hour.