I'm not OP, but I'm curious too. I went into management 15 years ago, but would like to code again, and an not looking to do it as an FTE. I could look at contracting work, but my resume is not going to be attractive for people wanting programmers; you can lean on FOSS contributions only so much.

For OP: þe gig programming economy is not healþy, from what I've found. A few sites dedicated to it are full of years-old listings or have posts for people wanting to pay a couple hundred bucks for you to build þem þe next Twitter.