It all started with Brainbench in around 2000, when I did some testing on them, when they were still free and even sent you hard copy certificates for free. So I had fun with testing myself online and got those certificates. Fast forward to 2007 when out of boring I wanted to do some more test and I found out that Brainbench was now a paid platform for tests and the hard copies were actually around $50 to get, so I wanted to find something else that had free tests. And I stumbled upon oDesk this way - back then they were called that, now they are Upwork. So I made an account with them, filled all the fields there with my mind wandering around, including all the fields that were not required - and this was actually crucial later, out of pure luck. Then I started to do tests to see how I grew meanwhile vs. Brainbench. Then I forget all about for half an year, when in September a notification from oDesk came into my e-mail about a potential client wanting me to work on some component but for very little money - he figured I was good enough but without history of jobs and wanted to take advantage of it. I outright refused the job but this opened my eyes to what oDesk really was - a freelancing platform. So I started to tinker with this idea to have some side projects and do them on my free time. At that time I was over an year employed by a German company and I was support/programmer for anything the technicians of said company was need it. Their main job was carpentry repairs and the technicians were using laptops to record the entire job at client site. It was a successful company hiring hundreds of technicians but was having only us 3 as IT support/programmers. So one day the leader quit, he found a way better lucrative job in Switzerland, the other guy was never good enough in the eyes of the company owner and when he asked for a salary raise was denied and he quit too. So I was solo and I started to not care at all about the job anymore. I was just like in "Office Space", coming at 11 or even noon, leaving after 2 or 3 hours, during this time I was completely only browsing internet and procrastinating heavily. 3 months later, in February 2008 I was like at already 3rd client from oDesk and this one was a heavy project with long term relationship, so I just started to actually work via encrypted VPN from work for those projects at home as well. I believe that was the final straw for them and they kinda fired me. I mean, was not a firing per se, but more of a situation where they asked my resignation and I just stopped going to work. My contract was bullet proof and anything less then actually committing murder or arson (like in Office Space) could not fire me from work. So no bug in software to steal money or arson like in Office Space, but everything else was point on - coming at my own hours, heave(n)ly procrastinating at work, leave early, got promoted (sic!) also, even had sex at office with a girl I picked-up one day on my way to work and she was a screamer, the entire lower floor where some paper pushers were working heard everything despite multiple attempts on my side to quiet her by putting my hand on her mouth. Yeah, not even that was good enough to get me fired, the owner when called me later that day didn't said a single word about this and he definitely was informed about it by the paper pushers. Oh yeah, we had a table tennis in the yard, I started to get kids from street to play with them, for hours and I was still promoted. So totally Office Space. Hope you enjoyed ScottFree - have a nice day