Big companies? Small companies or... your own Bedroom?

In the past 6 years i have been looking for a job that gets me up in the morning. I've tried small companies, big comapnies, and i've noticed that in the end, that doesn't make much of a difference. People hire or fire you for many many different reasons that mostly have NOTHING (NOTHING at all!) to do with your skillset or even your behavior.

Let me just break it down to you. It has to do with MOTIVATION the only factor that you have some control over!

Just to set a few points here. Most of my experience has been with JAVA, the whole deal, Hybernate, JUnit, Maven, exactly the most used ones. Sometimes i worked with PHP, CodeIgniter JQuery, SQL, MySQL Postgres, Oracle and i also had great success while working with these. Front-end, Back-end, you name it, i love it. I love it all, i love learning new stuff, it gets me going, it gets me motivated, every single project i did, small one, big one, public, or private.

I want to share with you an episode of a work that i consider to be the best working experience so far in my (somewhat short) carreer which is also why i want to get to work through Toptal in the first place: I used to work with Home-Office doing a Front-End application for IBM Personel (by the way, check this guy's review of that job! It's Vishwa Persaud's, the best mentor i've ever had (and an awesome architect! check it all here: https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=82476769 )

I managed to learn a LOT, in a very short period and i've been able to build an entire front-end for that application in 8 Months! Why is that? is it because i'm a good developer? no, i've seen not so good developers do even better than this just for being motivated enough and passionate about what they were doing. I did it without having to worry about what people were thinking about me (this used to drive me nuts! on some places i've worked on), without having to attend to pointless meetings (that usually broke my train of thought), and this kind of freedom is REALLY motivating!

I've tried this before i did the trip on E-Lance and oDesk and i have to say, it's very stressfull, and frustrating if you are a newcomer. It's very hard to apply for the jobs, and some companies sometimes make you go through a very intense quiz about technology and logic and all that, and that sometimes that drives formidable professionals away instead of bringing them in. All and all this experience was very tiring. And then i stumbled upon a new world of possibilities: Toptal. And i feel i have what it takes!

I'm comming back to freelance platforms because i think that is how i will be able to restore my passion for what i do, and i believe that will also make a lot of people happy. I am willing to give Toptal a chance, if it will make me have a chance.  I just applied for the Front-end ranks, and i hope this goes well. I'm really excited about this!