Yes as a freelancer I once got handed admin passwords to financial accounts containing hundreds of millions on your second day because the company has a problem

Yes as a freelancer I once got handed admin passwords to financial accounts containing hundreds of millions on your second day because the company has a problem that needs solving (and would have been first day had that been a full day instead of half), whereas as an employee you need to go through the company-designed teaching and vetting process lasting 6 months or more before they'll let you in the building where passwords to financial accounts are stored. Handed to me on a little scrap of paper that I "needed to make sure was properly destroyed at the end of the week". It was a firm that did financial transactions, so not only did those keys give access to the money itself, they also allowed one to approve normally refused transactions or vice versa (e.g. make a transaction with a wrong pin entered go through anyway). Obviously we were watched, but still.