In a kitchen, somewhere in Hong Kong, the wife of a freelancer is leafing through the local rag, frowns and calls toward the living room: "Honey, it says here that the Hong Kong Police Force is urgently looking for someone who systematically isolates people, puts them in windowless rooms for hours, gives them false hope, and slowly drives them mad."

The freelancer sips his double espresso, looks wearily up from his screen – five unread emails from the project manager, three open to-dos in Jira, a Teams call with 19 people where no one is speaking.

Then he says dryly: "Yeah, so... theoretically that would be exactly my thing. But I´m already booked to a large client as a Scrum Master with 80 percent remote."