During your gaps you were doing freelance work. Not that uncommon in this line of work. I have a couple gaps I filled in with that (when in one case it might mo

During your gaps you were doing freelance work. Not that uncommon in this line of work. I have a couple gaps I filled in with that (when in one case it might more accurately be described as working on personal projects, I released a game), and no one's ever even asked about it. Also short stints isn't as bad as other people make it out to be. Yes, some people will filter you out, but not everyone. While I was in the game industry, I worked for three companies in a row that failed to release a hit game and I was laid off with the rest of the team after just over a year. Then I worked as a contractor at a another company in the marketing department that had the lead dev suddenly quit and they decided to outsource the rest of the project, killing my contract after only 8 months. And then I have another job right before all that where I worked in a student job at a faculty department at my college for a year, but then graduated, so I was no longer eligible to keep working. That's five jobs in a row with just over a year's worth of experience, some of which I had several months of unemployment between (especially when I switched from game industry into enterprise web development). Hasn't stopped me from getting interviews and job offers. I was worried about my short stints as well though, and I do have a job I stayed with for over three years (when I should have left earlier) to get another longer job on my resume again, but yeah. You don't have to quit software development. You just might have some people skip over you, but that's okay.