Yes. It's covered by overcharging on services most of the time. So you have a project, you price it for cheap baseline. But then any scope changes, annual licenses, hosted SaaS and operational services you price jackpot. That way yes, you make a loss on delivery, but on licenses, support and additional work packages you stay afloat.

All this was sustainable because that's what everyone did. You'd be dumb not to. But this is the real "fat" that is getting trimmed over the next few years. Fat income stream for delivering crap, or for highly overpriced really good stuff.

As soon as AI peoples stop being such yolo noobs and start focusing on how to not just ship quickly, but get into that lower time preference and ship with extreme quality, things will look bleak for everyone that is half capable. And if not, I will just do continue to do consultancy and put big vendors out of business with extremely high precision solutions, made by the customer, to solve their own bespoke problems.

Empower everyone!