"Vibe Code Cleanup Specialist"

A common prediction from the early days of vibe coding was that there'd be a huge market for software engineers specializing in cleaning up vibe-coded messes, to the point that it would show up in people's LinkedIn headlines or job titles.

I don't think that's going to happen on a significant scale, for two reasons:

• Cleaning up a messy codebase is the least fun part of software engineering. Doubly so if it's not your mess. Because of that, you'd better be prepared to pay top dollar. But:

• The person responsible for that mess is unlikely to put a high value on non-messy code. Otherwise, they would not have ended up in that situation. 

To be clear, this is different from taking a prototype, vibe-coded or else, and bringing it up to production quality from someone who's fully on board with the need for that: "I made this, I know it's limited, please take it to the next level" is different from "I made this, it's basically done, I just need one of you nerds to come in and polish it a bit."

In the end, legacy code is legacy code, whether human-created mess or AI-created mess, and cleaning it up is a major skill. There's a reason Michael Feathers' canonical tome on the topic, Working Effectively with Legacy Code, clocks in at 450+ pages.

The best thing is to avoid such mess in the first place. The second best thing is to stop making it worse right now. The third best thing is to hire me to take your project to the next level. I won't have "vibe code cleanup specialist" in my title any time soon, but if you've got a valid project going and want to make sure it won't blow up when you release it into the world, I'd be happy to take a look.