It's easy to get started with smaller clients, with more manageable scope (for newbie) and to built up the portfolios. Many local clients (especially from non-

It's easy to get started with smaller clients, with more manageable scope (for newbie) and to built up the portfolios. Many local clients (especially from non-IT companies) are not sophisticated enough to use services such as elance, thus they are fairly happy to found a programmer which they could work with locally (my customer still expect face-to-face communication). Eventually I did landed on a semi-government job, where they pay is probably 3x more lucrative than smaller clients, but longer duration + more politics + more stress to handle the human side of things. The worst is "uneducated" clients, meaning they don't know how custom software development works, and asking why you charge 10x more than off-the-shelve accounting software and still deliver a product "full of bugs" (you should have tested vigorously and solve all the bugs, right?).