This is great advice. I'd go even further and say it's about achievements. Make your CV about specific highlights in which you can justify your involvement. On

This is great advice. I'd go even further and say it's about achievements. Make your CV about specific highlights in which you can justify your involvement. Once you've passed the stage where you're applying for entry-level positions, nobody really cares about "My duties involved..." style entries, or "I participated in..." or "I was involved with..." Rather, it's all about "I designed and wrote four modules for XYZ product, three involving the internal messaging layer and a fourth interfacing with a legacy system, and performed code reviews for other subsystems," or "I was front-line support for XYZ product during its first high-growth period, during which I identified and categorized the most common issues and wrote several procedures to resolve them". This style might only represent 20% of your actual work around that time, but it gives your potential employers something concrete to latch onto, and to an extent it lets you guide the course of the interview in ways you couldn't otherwise. It also lets you gloss over differences in employed/self-employed status because it shows you had a consistent work ethic (and presumably a consistent set of results) regardless of where you got your income at that time.