Just a couple of quick points from a point of view of someone who has hired/worked with a lot different employees and freelancers. Firstly, joining open source

Just a couple of quick points from a point of view of someone who has hired/worked with a lot different employees and freelancers. Firstly, joining open source projects is all well and good, but this is only a part of what people are looking for. The main thing is that you can finish something. For want of a better expression: that you can "ship". If you are someone that can consistently complete assignments and projects, then it really doesn't matter if you're introverted or not. If you are the type of person I can give a project to and I know that it will be done when you say it will be done to the quality I expect, then you can really do what you want - work from home, in the office, on a beach. However, from your post, this is probably something that needs to be worked on. As others have said, consider joining a freelance site or similar to get a few completed projects under your belt. Secondly: communication. Saying no is absolutely fine. It is how you say no that matters. I've had a couple of people not want to do a specific projects for me, due to cultural/ethical reasons. And this was fine. They explained their reasons why, I accepted and everyone was ok, and we still work on other projects. If they were an arse about it then most probably I would never work with them again on anything. The only advice I can offer you here is to think about it from the other person's perspective (and this works both ways). Once you have can prove that you can get the job done, and you can communicate effectively, then you don't need to be "teamplayer" to be of value to a company. Good luck with it