I've read your whole reply and agree with most of it; what I don't agree with (or don't understand) is below:

> If you are in need vibe coding disaster remediation consulting, it's not because you need to refactor 300,000 lines of slop real quick. That's not going to happen.

My experience as a consultant to business is that they only ever bring in consultants when they need a fix and are in a hurry. No client of mine ever phoned me up to say "Hey, there, have you any timeslots next week to advise on the best way to do $FOO?", it's always "Hey there, we need to get out an urgent fix to this crashing/broken system/process - can we chat during your next free slot?".

> Like everything else worth doing, deep specialisation is valuable and, to some extent, insulating.

I dunno about this - depends on the specialisation.

They want a deep specialist in K8? Sure, they'll hire a consultant. Someone very specialist in React? They'll hire a consultant. C++ experts? Consultants again.

Someone with deep knowledge of the insurance industry? Nope - they'll look for a f/timer. Someone with deep knowledge of payment processing? No consultant, they'll get a f/timer.

> My experience as a consultant to business is that they only ever bring in consultants when they need a fix and are in a hurry.

No, that's fair, and I think you're right about that. But refactoring 300,000 lines 'real quick' isn't going to happen, regardless of that. :)

> They want a deep specialist in K8? Sure, they'll hire a consultant. Someone very specialist in React? They'll hire a consultant. C++ experts? Consultants again.

I implicitly had narrow technical specialisations in mind, albeit including ones that intersect with things like "insurance industry workflows".