[NikolaNovak]

1. All of it is true in general and explicitly not the case for the OP/GP I was responding to, which indicated a traveling/no-work year, so it feels you're fighting a straw man.

As well, all of it is easily discussable during interview, and my team and myself will not see any of these in a negative light.

2. >> "It isn't "lying" to say time spent not working on a paid contract is time spent in service of contracting."

Of course not. At the time of my post however, a lot of advice in comments was explicitly to lie and "Say you were in a startup / independent consulting / working on OSS / CTO even if you weren't, rather than admitting to gap / traveling year", and my reaction to them is: That lie will harm you much more than any honest discussion of the gap year.

So again, I feel we are talking past each other here a bit. I've been a contractor, I've been a consultant, and I'm a full-time employee now; I've taken a time to write a book/techmanual, I've run a photography business for a bit,and I've taken extended paternity leave; so I don't think my mind is trapped into thinking of employment as binary. But I do think honesty during interview is paramount - on my team, I don't care how good your technical or functional skillset is, if we cannot trust your integrity. I understand that this is a tricky position for the candidate as market at times rewards dishonesty; but I try to be convincingly upfront in what we're looking for.