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What Types of Jobs are Best Suited for Telecommuters?
upwardlyAndconstantly-Mobile asks: "I'm a systems engineer in the IT department of a bank. My wife is a PhD candidate looking to graduate in 4 years or so. Due to the nature of academia, she may need to move several times for post-docs and professor jobs once she gets her credentials. Her job opportunities may come from any number of cities or towns in the US or around the world. My current skill set ties me to only a handful of major cities, so I am trying to figure out the best path to prepare myself for being uprooted. Besides running something like Slashdot, what are the best tech jobs that are mobile? How many people have jobs that can actually be done from anywhere they can get email and web access? What's the best way to prepare for something like this? I have time to prepare, but what should I be doing? (I write this anonymously because I don't want my current employer reading it!)"
Technology journalist
Everything else requires a modicum of face to face interaction.
I have been pwned because my
Join a consulting firm or go out on your own. Work anywhere in the country/world during the week and fly back home to whereever your home is at the end of the week. Did this for years.
Easy
Telemarketing?
*ducks*
slashdot!=valid HTML
Systems security consultant: You don't even have to be given access to the systems you need to remotely access!
Error: PANTS NOT FOUND. Press <F1> to continue.
I am a contractor a military agency and we actually have dedicated telecommuting offices set up. Plus you have to murder someone to get fired from a government job. Serendipity!
/Janne
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
I'm a software engineer and I fly to client sites for my job. Since I don't work at home I can live anywhere. Its reverse logic to what you're currently looking at. It might work for you.
Most very large companies have a Professional Services or Enterprisee Consultants. It might be a slight switch from what you're currently doing but it will keep you employed in interesting work while your wife establishes her career.
I just saw an ad for tigerdirect on Slashdot. Yes, the scam artist company with the horrible BBB rating and the FTC investigation against them. It is highly irresponsible for Slashdot to show these ads. I warn all Slashdotters, do not order from tigerdirect
A quick google search
One of the worst ratings on resellerratings.com
Tigerdirect also is apparently a frequent user of spam marketing.
So what's next Slashdot? Alex Chiu life rings?
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Most people don't realize this, but the majority of medical transcriptionists actually work from home as telecommuters. Sometimes, transcriptionists can work on the other side of the globe from their employer. There's a quite a but of technology involved, if you don't mind typing and like medical terminology!
I commute once a month to NYC for meetings, use Net2Phone for phone calls and broadband internet to get the work done. End result: on the crappy pay, I can afford the mortgage on a nice home in the sticks, food, clothing, the whole deal...
You can always publish online porn!
Last I checked the industry was worth 9 billion USD, plenty of upward mobility, you might say.
I do programming and system administration work. There's nothing I do at work (other than sit through long, boring meetings) that I couldn't do from anywhere with net access. My employer doesn't like that though, so I spend at least 2.5 hours a day on the road.
Find and organization that encourages Telecommuting and it won't matter what job you have. My org does this and everyone from developers to project managers to secretaries can be remote if they desire. I am not only remote but I have a very nonstandard workday; pretty much whatever I want whether it's 2am or 9-5. I have never met most of the people in my department and many of them are remote as well.
A lot of things change in 4 years. What languages should I be coding in? What kind of certifications will employers be looking for in 4 years?
Yes this may sound like a troll, but ask the question when you're a big closer to your deadline. Who knows, four years from now maybe you could be running a laundry-mat from your home.
I'm a writer, a poet, a genius, I know it. I don't buy software, I grow it.
People e-mail me tips every day about how I can work at home. I've never looked into it, but it sounds like there are dozens of ways that you can be self-employed and make thousands of dollars per week, with little or no investment required. I'm surprised you haven't seen these tips, everybody I know seems to get them. I'll forward them to you if you want.
This link shows all the telecommuting jobs on dice.com. Lot of telesales and technology recruiter type jobs, but not many real jobs.
You don't give us any idea of what your current skill set is, so it is hard to offer meaningful advice.
Question: is your skill set rare enough that your current employer might be conviced to allow you to work remotely most of the time? Perhaps you can offer to telecommute 3 out of 4 weeks, and be on site for the 4th week. True, if there are more people with your skill set than there are jobs you are screwed, but the fact that you are currently employed suggests that may not be the case.
You may also be able to start consulting in your current work area, and thus travel to the customers' sites. You might be away from your wife for much of the time, but if you are bringing in enough money you can consult 9 months out of the year, and coast the other 3. That may even work out better depending upon your wife's schedule - you may find you can take a nice vacation over the summer months.
Otherwise, you will have problems - if a job can be outsourced to Joe Bloggs in the USA over the phone, it can be outsourced to Miguel Jloggs in Mexico, Chackra Coggs in India, etc. If your skill set isn't rare enough, you can be replaced, so you will have problems.
Can you give us a hint as to what area you are in?
www.eFax.com are spammers
Yeah, but I've been banned from the girl's locker room after the X10 incident.
You can do many jobs or even re-train yourself to do coding from remote. System Administration is often conducted from home so no real problems there unless it's a small company because you need somethere there to do physical systems work.
So your looking for a SME to a large company, very likely global, that will allow you to work remotely. Hmmm this is'nt going to happen. You need to define what country your wife is going to work in and then do something about it.
You could of course run an Internet business, however many people forget that even that cannot be run completely from remote, there is still paperwork, meetings, bills, landlords, and other physicalo necessities that you'll need. I'm sure some college kid on here will disagree with that, but then they probably hav'nt clocked up 1 real day of work in their life.
So in short, you both need to define what countru your going to end up in, before doing any more planning. Also bear in mind the differences in infrastructure between country's, you may not have access to ADSL/Cable modem/leased line in that region/country.
Good luck.
If you have a robust spirit (patience),
then you may enjoy an exciting carreer in tech support.
Many web hosting companies have online help desks that are ran 24/7. You are a smart fellow, so you might qualify to be at the top rung of tech support, getting all the truly interesting problems.
I have a few friends who do infrastructure consulting for a multinational chemical company. I think only one of them has ever met the client face to face. They all work out of their houses and dial into one of the company's RAS servers. From there, they go across the globe managing 3,000+ network nodes. In a company that big, physical location is meaningless.
Offshore development firms prove it too.
I'm very happy with my job as a Systems Administrator for a major IT outsourcing company. Because there is an on-site hardware group, there is no reason for us to be in the office at all. My coworkers and I work from home (with new management having just created a less nazi-like policy than my former management) under very reasonable terms. In short, if I get my work done, and I respond quickly to requests, they don't care if I am at the beach or on the moon.
So, a Systems Administrator role that is not tied to performing the on-site hardware maintenance is a very nice work-from-home job. Of course, FINDING a position like that is tough!
Starting up is an option. There are all sorts of things you can do with email and web access.
Freelance web design is the obvious option, but there are others.
Trouble is, even Google can't differentiate the good opportunities from the trash.
PHB.
One job I can think of is the one a friend of mine has, he's a Websphere technician, does all his technical support on the phone or by different remote admin solutions. Pays pretty well too, and he actually sends the phone bills to the caller, so he can do this anywhere he can have a SECURE (very important) computer to acess his customer's setup with a handsfree (much easier) phone. But keep in mind, he's got a truck load of certifications so it's just not something you jump into, but maybe with the skills you have there is a variant of his job that would work for you.
As a embedded software developer who does a lot of telecommuting I can assure you telecommuting is not all it is cracked up to be.
On the home front, things tend to get muddled up and it's difficult to keep home and work life separate. Make sure to set up an office in a separate locked area so you can "leave the office" for the day.
I find that a good balance is to mix it up, spending about half the time at my place, half at the "real" office.
Beware the pitfalls of jealous and politically inclined co-workers who haven't been permitted to telecommute because they are perceived as slackers by management.
Seriously. Four years from now, you will have worked your ass off putting your wife through the PhD program. Having to deal with a lot of shit and being the chief breadwinner. It'll be time for you to take a break. She's got a PhD now, so you can sit back, figure out which beer you like the best, maybe pick up some tennis or something. Trust me, you'll want a break. Then after a year or so announce that your skills are outdated and that you are going to go back and get your own PhD.
To date I've never worked in an office, I've always worked out of the home. I've done everything from software support to development using the web, an email client and a toll free number directed to my home.
Lay off, Slash-dot-nazi!
Even if you telecommute, you still need to see people face to face once in a while so you can't live *too* far away from your business, clients, etc. Until, of course, we have holographic onferencing or something :)
Usually, women have less qualification for their job then their husband.
Perhaps you should choose the path any secretary etc. would take if they get a highly skilled academic husband:
Staying at home and raise the kids.
Of course, if you wife has an artsy-fartsy profession where she won't make any money ever in her life, this advice wouldn't be very helpful.
I suppose that is is also the reason why most female art profs at universities aren't married.
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
with your wife about her status in the program.
A PhD "candidate" is one who has completed
qualifiers, has a research topic, and is
almost done. A candidate is not 4 years
away; a candidate is more like 1 year, in
lengthy cases.
So, you should really talk with her about
how much time it takes, and what her status
is in the program. Many PhD programs can
be ENTIRELY completed in 4 year, from admissions
to qualifiers, to thesis, and defense.
Are you sure she's been honest with you about
where she goes each day?
I have telecommuted for over a year as a tech writer for a large software company. While it's not so far that I can't drive in once in awhile for face-to-face meetings or to have my company-provided desktop upgraded, I do most of my work online. Even with a slow broadband connection (768k cable), email, IM, Lotus Notes databases, and the telephone are all I need.
I guess that was a joke, but let's make sure everyone understands that attorney licensure isn't easily transportable across state lines.
Just be an IRC server operator.
Develope software for open source, sure you won't make any money but you'll be helping a worthy cause and your wife can support you :)
Another possibility might be staying with your job. I'm not suggesting that you divorce, but you might want to try a commuter marriage for a short time.
Despite what you might expect, statistics show that people in commuter marriages are actually less likely to divorce than married people who are actually living together. At least according to the textbook of my sociology of the family class...
There are obvious problems (like not being anywhere near each other), but you can arrange things such that you see each other on weekends.
My Dad's a college professor and spends a semester in Washington D.C. every 2-4 years. My Mom stays home (she's an elementary school teacher). So far (some 20 years into this arrangement) it goes okay.
Granted it's not the same thing as staying home while your significant other begins her career, but at least for a couple years, it might be a worth considering.
At any rate it's better than heading off to get another degree (as suggested above...).
In fact, I think there are regulations governing the transport of most toxic substances across state lines...
I just created my own telecommuting position with the company I am with. Essentially - I needed to move about 400 miles away for my family's sake, but didn't want to stop working for the company.
.. it might be different. . . . but give me a fast net connection, a webcam and a mic, and in some ways it works better than before.
.
Just approached the boss with a proposal. Took a few months to grow on him, but he went for it - and its working. Its working better than we could have hoped. What it really boiled down to - is that the tasks that I actually perform have little relationship to the relative position of my butt in XYZ space. Now if I was making license plates or ceramic widget polishers or something in a factory
Noone takes my stapler anymore . . .
anything i tell you will cloud your opinion.
After getting tired of working for someone else, read I was laid off, I decided to go into business for myself creating and selling databases. I currently have one which is a fairly all encompasing solution for university police departments and another for hair salons on the drawing board. All I need to sell and support them is the ability to travel to various universities and a cell phone and email so they can get in touch with me for sales and support questions.
This sounds like an almost ideal solution for you, moving from place to place would constantly change your sales area as basically anything within easy driving distance is fair game. You can support you existing customers from anywhere you can get email and obviously a web site for your product doesn't care where you are located, just update the contact info as necessary.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity -RAH
If you can learn to do something creative that you can do by yourself where delivery is measured in weeks or months. That is the first step. What that thing is depends on what you're good at or like.
If you can find a business that regularly requires what you can deliver, that's the second step. You may not have much flexibility until you establish trust, but this is your first client.
Once you establish trust (the third step), you can work from wherever you want as long as you deliver on schedule.
The final step is looking for more clients, earning you more money and more security.
Congratulations! You're a contractor in business for yourself!
(I'm working on step 4)
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
I can't think of anything better than this. Ask Scott Adams about it.
If your artistic capabilities don't allow for this, I'd go with software development (self employed of course).
Street corners are everywhere.
Born millionaire dilletante. Look what Esther Dyson has parlayed this into.
Cultural huckster with a magazine. Mark Potok of
SPLC comes to mind.
Free lance writer of feature articles. Wired always needs them, last month they did one on water shortages in Uzbekistan.
Tech writer. And you don't even need to be accurate, look at Jesse Berst and John Dvorak.
Why posting anonymously? Four years from now, you'll have probably gotten laid off anyway! In my past experience, employers don't like their employees looking for jobs on company time. But if their employees are making a big life choice, like moving to a different city in four fucking years, they're usually pretty supportive. I've given my bosses 6 months notice (after I make the decision, I give myself 6 months to tie everything off) for a move in the past, and they've always been grateful and supportive. One offered the opportunity to telecommute. It was perfect for a long time... 'till seeing nobody but my bitter and angry girlfriend day to day because I had no friends and no life drove me crazy. I was writing web apps, search engines, etc. Any web-based job like that would work perfectly. You could remotely administer an entire ISP, if you tried hard enough.
1. Programmer
2. Project Manager
3. Tech writer.
4. CTO/CIO
5. Instructional designer (or subject matter expert on your field)
Pretty much anything that does not require you to be a day-to-day first line supervisor for a team. Project management is possible since you are running the project, not the people.
At my previous job we had all these people telecommuting. The CTO telecommuted from Rhode Island to Maryland ahd he was pretty damn good at it. He travelled to our office once a month, spent two days in meetings and then back home for another month.
Half the programmers were telecommuters. Only one person out of 10 abused the telecommuting, the others played it by the book. They liked the concept so much that they did not dare goof it up.
Project managers do very well as part time telecommuters. It all depends on the project schedule and on incoming client meetings.
Pedro
----
The Insomniac Coder
I was an admin at a mid-level (statewide) ISP for about 4.5 years in the mid-late 1990's. I had a similar situation to yours and didn't know where to go.
Turns out, if you are willing to move out of admin and more into marketing and research, the skillset is highly valued by many companies.
I ended up going to work for a small linux-based ISP equipment manufacturer that within a year got aquired by a major telecomm equipment manufacturer. I'm still with the larger company, though they have had some layoffs during the tech crunch of the last couple of years.
I started out as a field technician for technical support doing remote problem diagnosis and some travel for on-site issues. I was transferred to Sales (not my choice) for a couple of years as a Sales Engineer, where I basically worked as a system engineering consultant helping customers define exactly what products they needed (in many ways, this position can be the antithesis of the dreaded sales rep position since I got to say when the rep was wrong and both sides valued the fact that I was honest in my recommendations). During this time I started working with the product groups to define new products right before the smaller company was aquired. Later, after the aquisition, I found an opportunity to exit Sales (yay!) and went to work for the product definition group as someone who helps define various technical areas of a product that they were not familiar with, as well as provide real-world feedback on feature requests.
All of the above areas are good for someone with practical experience in the field who doesn't mind public speaking. I still work from remote and have moved twice in 3 years. Lately my company has faced lowered travel budgets, so I'm expected to travel less and get to stare out my back office window at the rocky mountains on a daily basis.
During this time I've been approached a number of times (without scouting for them) by other companies who are looking for a similar combination of problem solving/technical knowledge/public speaking for similar jobs. Note that you don't particularly enjoy crowds of people (I don't), but you do need to be able to hold technical discussions with strangers and write/give presentations to large groups (250 is my largest crowd so far) intelligibly and warmly. I usually retire to my hotel room after such a gig and chill out with a movie and room service while the sales and marketing folks go out and party.
I have been considering finishing my degree (I started working at the ISP and dropped out of school due to lack of time) so that if my company cuts more workers I feel confident going back into the IT workplace, but so far it appears that marketing and product definition jobs get cut at a far less rapid rate than remote sales positions at my particular company.
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
I work for a software company with five offices in the U.S., one which is about to close, and a single office left outside the states in London (we closed Cambridge and Calgary).
My title is Senior Network Engineer out of Texas, but I work for any and every one of the offices requiring attention to their network gear (mainly Cisco) or Unix systems (mainly Sun, with some IBM and HP). For example, at the moment I'm tracking problems across a matrix of eight Catalyst 2950's in London, trying to identify a trend in the significant CRC and frame errors.
As others have mentioned, this type of work has a significant hurdle - a physical presence is required at some point for work like this. Each office has staff that can perform the physical work as specified by me, and I do travel several times a year. The people I work with make a kick ass team, and I enjoy the job more because of them.
I was not hired into this position, however. The office I've worked in for many years is closing, and staff not relocating are given severence and sent on their way -- except for myself, because of my expertise. This is probably as rare a situation as you'll ever run across, and took some wrangling with management goons to make them understand I really don't need an entire office to keep doing everything I've been doing for every other office.
In short, I wasn't hired into a telecommuting job - the job mutated into a remote situation. I'm not sure jobs like this are even offered to new hires.
Good Luck!
A friend of mine does fill time free-lance web development, and works with people and companys he never actually contacts physically all the time. All he needs is internet, a phone line, and a good long distance plan. (Cell phone with free long distance and alot of minutes). He tours with a band he is in and while in the van does web development on his apple laptop..when he gets to a hotel connects to the net VIA a AOL (they have local access numbers EVERYWHERE) account and uploads what needs to go up. It works out fantasticly.
adventure-today.com
Telecommuting is one of those wonderful benefits that was supposed to give us all the oportunity to kick back, relax and work at our lesuire from home. As long as the work was done, and the projects on time, who cared if you started your working day at 9am or 3am, right?
Unfortunately, the real world doesn't work like that.
Telecommunting isn't a myth. It's not equal to the fabled "paperless office". You actually can telecommunte. However, don't expect to do it straight off at your new job.
Telecommuting has many advantages. It also has many potential down sides. Which is why 99.99% of employers will want you in their building, at one of their desks for at least your first 6 to 12 months. Why? To ensure that you actally can do the work you're supposed to be doing. It's all well and good sayin you can code like a guru, or are to systems administration what Tolkien was to the fantasy genre, but most employers won't take that risk on new people.
For situations such as yours where you're going to be moving away, I wouldn't count on telecommuting to make your life easier. Unless you're insanely lucky, no-one will give you a telecommute job - regardless of your past achievements at other firms - without testing you out in-situ first.
Janie took my gun...
Let me get this straight. Your wife is going to be at a University. The last time I looked, every university had an IT department, and they are all desperate for people. They don't pay top salaries, but they are always hiring.
Or is your skill set so limited that a university wouldn't hire you?
For about two years, I lived in Kentucky and did realtime systems development for a client in Georgia. They shipped me the hardware I needed, so I could do the development and a certain amount of testing at home, and then I would upload the software to them and do remote testing/debugging with them over the phone. It worked out really well, and when I joined a consulting firm I brought them along as one of our clients.
There are companies that make telecommuting and remote development their standard practice - check out Art & Logic for example.
I manage a web hosting company, and I never met most people that ever worked for me, they never stepped in our office. Those were regular, full-time company employees, some stayed for more than 3 years, and they worked from home, or wherever they wanted. All we require is constant instant message connection during work hours, and working on the tickets assigned to them.
:-)
They do sysadmin tasks, client troubleshooting, and interact directly with customers via the ticket system. Those people don't talk to clients over the phone, but if we needed this would be easily arranged with some VoIP arrangement.
So the web hosting industry may be an option if our competitors are doing the same (we're not hiring now)
Good Luck!
Divorce your wife and all this wont be a problem. Since she is probably smarter then you she should handle it ok.
Can you telecommute a welfare check?
My company had a woman in TX do programming on a Lucent Merlin Legend/Intuity Audix system when we added a T1 switch and did a cutover. She'll get a paycheck but we never saw her in person. Everything was conducted over phone lines. She made either $75 or $100 a hour. Also investigate company layoffs as there might be a lot of experienced people trying to start this up on their own. It's something to look into without playing commuter, that's a lot of stress and it didn't sound like that's what you wanted.
"My current skill set ties me to only a handful of major cities...."
Nope, it's your attitude that ties you to those cities. If you'll open your mind you'll find that your "skill set" includes things that could get you hired anywhere.
Drop all the way back to the very basics for a moment. You could pump gas or flip burgers. The chances are good that you could stock shelves at a Wal Mart or answer the telephone in a legal office. Work up from there.
The only problem that I see you having is that the only "skill set" you WANT to use ties you to those cities. I live in an area where there are quite a few folks who were in either entertainment or law enforcement in southern California. Don't ask me why people from those professions are so common here, I don't know. But they have either dropped back to basic skills to live here or learned other skills.
You can too.
Methinks you just need to open your mind a bit more.
. Quit playing Monopoly with Bill. Switch to one of many non-Microsoft products today.
I think you might be able to be a professional baseball player from home.
IN TEH FUCHAR, LITERSY WLIL EB OPSHANAL!!!!!111
I test software for a living, and last year when going through a family emergency, my employers (bless them) let me work from home for four months. It worked out well. I went into the office every couple of weeks so that people would remember who I was and not steal my cubicle stuff, but even that wasn't necessary to get my job done well.
-aiabx
Just this guy, you know?
Genuinely funny comment. Thanks mikeplokta for making me laugh!
Your question assumes that the only tele-commuting option is for you to work at home from wherever you wife's academic job search leads her. As you suggest, this leads to your family having little or no geographic choice: you live where the job is, no matter how disgusting a place it is.
Such is the nature of academe....at least until recently. Now there are opportunities to be a work-at-home professor as a long distance faculty member of a University or College. There are good jobs out there with accredited institutions, and the competition isn't as tough as for traditional faculty jobs because lots of folks don't know about these positions.
Two caveats: (1) some academic snobs still look down on distance education, and (2) there isn't anything comporable yet to a "premiere job at a Ph.D.-granding research University." (Then again, 95% of traditional academics don't land that sort of job, either! So, unless your wife is limiting her search to "first tier" academics only--a nearly suicidal job search strategy for academics--the distance education option is worth throwing into the mix.)
The easiest, most flexible, and most lucrative way to earn money with computers is as a consultant. I've been working from home for years, and rarely see my clients (except for analysis meetings). Web-based development, database analyst/admin, sysadmin -- all can be done remotely, and usually ends up being cheaper for your client as well. In fact, why not approach your current company? Base your hourly rate on double your current salary, and you'll be beating the competition.
My current skill set ties me to only a handful of major cities, so I am trying to figure out the best path to prepare myself for being uprooted ...divorce...
I'm not a nerd. Nerds are smart.
A friend of mine did websites for internal use in a major (and now bankrupt) telecommunications company. She was home everyday when her children came home from school, made a nice income, and only had to go into the office to mail packages or put training manuals together (so about once a month).
In what way is that serendipidous?
Or do you just like to say the word...
One word of warning, make sure you have decent home office to work in, a few years ago OCSA passed some crazy regulations in regards to telecommuting, so most HR departments are really paranoid about a telecommuters workplace. I know my setup is going to be inspected next month by some guy to make sure the it is ergonomically correct, which is completely ridiculous. Basically they will justify their existence by telling me to get keyboard trays even though my keyboard is already at a good height. Way to go OCSA, keeping me safe from the dangerous height of my model-m keyboard! They will probably furnish me with an MS keyboard that I will immediately throw in the closet.
Just tell your Pointly Haired Boss that you'll wear a really uncomfortable hat.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
If I telecommute, won't I be competing with a PhD from India, who is happy to work for $500 a month?
I don't know what field your partner is in, but it should be noted that a PhD is not a guarantee of an academic career. You might want to see how things develop in her studies as well as her and your job market over the next few years before making any irreversible decisions.
Not to troll, but this is the exact question I submitted as an 'ask slashdot' a few weeks ago...I'd like to re-phrase it the way I posed it in my question: What are the most portable tech skills? Besides desktop support, which is computer related and can be done anywhere, what skills are are the most portable and relatively high paying in not-necessarily urban areas?
I am in a similar situation as this guy, so want to know the concensus...But, here are my thoughts on the matter:
The ability to change your skillset, and adapt to any skillset is one of the most valuable assets in the tech industry...Working as a tech is primarily about problem solving. The technology itself is (often) dynamic, and little more than the context within which you solve these problems. Granted, some technologies are easier to use, easier to understand, and more enjoyable. But, once you have developed your problem solving skills, you should be able to apply this to any technology... In line with this idea, I think a wide variety of skills are the best preparation for a nomadic tech lifestyle. Preferably ones you enjoy working with!!!
I imagine they're not in either of your minds at the moment, but 4 years is a long time, and minds change with them.
On a less contentious topic, I've met a few people who worked several hours away from home at the end of a modest international airline journey, arriving mid-morning Monday and leaving lunchtime Friday, over periods of years. Admittedly, you need a really secure partnership to do that for any length of time, but it seemed to work OK for them (kids in these cases were either absent or had already left the nest).
Like someone else commented, 4 years is a long time in the IT business. Using it to generalise your skillset so you can pick up short-term assignments nearer where your peripatetic wife will be located.
Ok, stop laughing. Faced with exactly the same quandry, I chose to trade stocks. You can do it from anywhere, the hours are great, and my tech skills haved all been expanded well beyond the limited horizons that a mere bank job can offer. Programming, networking, hardware, and math abilities have all been put to the test. And believe it or not, I am making a pretty good living at it, even in this market. Same cash as the bank job (I was a senior developer) but I have to pay for my own benefits. No PHBs and their loser deadlines. Full telecommuting benefits, with no travelling to the main office for "important meetings". Vacation whenever. It's hard work and took a long time to prepare for, but it's definitely worth it.
I take university classes in the morning and
evenings. (My first class is at 7:30 AM, my
evening class is at 6:45 PM, and there are
strict attendance policies). Getting my employer
to understand that this means (1) I must be at
the classroom at those times, and nowhere else,
and (2) I do not travel during the school semester, has been very, very difficult. On the other hand, I am allowed to telecommute all I want, 100% if I want except for meetings and tasks that require physical access.
What they don't seem to understand is that, even if it meant a severe lowering of my income, if I could find a way to do it I would go back to school full time, stay there until I finished all the grad degrees that interest me, and retire as a professor. Easier said than done -- it's easier for me to get a job paying $100K than it is to find a just-adequate means of support that would permit a basic standard of living while attending university.
Messed up!
An excellent telecommuter job is a pre-sales engineer for any tech company. I was a pre-sales engineer for Compaq for two years. They issued me a laptop, and ipaq, a blackberry (wireless email device) and a cell phone. This was my office. Infact, I had no desk or cube in any Compaq facility! I was full remote (i.e. home) office.
I believe most pre-sales tech positions will be similar. Good luck!
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
The bottom line -- excuses define priorities. "Honey, we can't live in the same place because of our jobs" is almost like saying "My job is more important to me than being with you." (And yes, I've heard that before, too, which is why I'm married to the one who would follow me anywhere.)
Best of luck to ya.
" "My current skill set ties me to only a handful of major cities...."
A person with disabilities can be tied down as well.
Family obligations can tie a person down.
Financial obligations can tie a person down.
"Methinks you just need to open your mind a bit more."
Me thinks someone needs to get out more.
I work from home as a contractor doing Perl/C/C++ programming and Linux system administration. Several years back I worked at home as a freelance writer for a local paper (all interviews were done by phone.) My wife's aunt works from home as a contractor doing HR software implementation/consulting and as a paid speaker for a national HR organization (she has to travel from time to time, but not at her own expense.) The father of one of my highschool friends worked from home as a contractor doing insurance consulting and risk assesment. (He eventually gave this up to work as a realtor. He was making good money but wanted more money.) The mother of a different highschool friend worked from home as a contractor doing interior decorating and made a very good living at it (though this still ties her to a single city.)
I'm sure you can see that common factor in all these stories. Work as a contractor, do something you love, do something you're great at, do something that's worth the money, charge reasonably, exceed expectations, and you'll have no problems.
Experience, and time will be his biggest factors in keeping his job at his cuttent company. That and making friends with management before the time comes...
--Forest C. Adcock--
Talk to your clients/inventor via the phone. Email/FedEx your work to the inventor/PTO.
Of course, you need 3 more years to school.
I'm a Sybase and Oracle DBA. My "office" is an hour away from home on the US East Coast. But the company's data centers are in Colorado Springs, Boeblingen, and Singapore. What difference if I telecommute from home over VPN or from the "office" on the company intranet?
Yeah, there was a time when I'd completely disagree with you - but lately, I'd say that's dead-on accurate.
With few exceptions, the jobs I've seen listed on Monster.com, Dice.com and HotJobs.com in I.T. have been looking for an extremely specific skill-set. It's not that the pay and benefits are necessarily bad, but the employers are fishing for a "perfect" candidate that just happens to have years of experience in several obscure technologies, plus a bachelor's degree and a couple certifications.
I often wonder if they ever find what they're looking for. Sometimes, you see these ads get listed over and over for several months, and suddenly disappear. (Did they really find someone, or just give up running the ad and settle for someone less qualified?)
I was thinking bus driver.
You're not talking about buying stocks with your own money are you? Surely you're talking about handling other peoples stock purchases for a brokerage fee. ...
...
Or should this read:
Ok, stop laughing. Faced with exactly the same quandry, I chose online gambling. You can do it from anywhere, the hours are great, and my tech skills haved all been expanded well beyond the limited horizons that a mere bank job can offer.
Or maybe:
Ok, stop laughing. Faced with exactly the same quandry, I chose hacking bank software. You can do it from anywhere, the hours are great, and my tech skills haved all been expanded well beyond the limited horizons that a mere bank job with a gun can offer.
Contrary to your first line, this post was supposed to be modded up as funny, right?
War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. - George Orwell or George Bush?
When I was flown down to interview with my company, I said up front that I'd be interested in working onsite for a half a year or so and then would want to move back to my original location and work from home.
And now I am.
i cant believe no one has mentioned this yet...but try your luck in the shareware market...try to pick an itch, and code it! shareware income is shaky at first, but cna grow exponetionally..at some point (perhaps 2-3 years), you will no longer need a day job...it will help you keep you tech skills up too!
good luck!
p
Your wife should stay at home and help to raise your children. She can get a good job even without a Phd.
I work for a mid-sized IS department for a unamed corporation. Our Is is centralized though we have facilities in 4 states. We didn't have a formal telecommuting policy BUT the IS folks who had DSL/Cable set up a VPN so work could be done from home. Some folks took 1 day a week. Others worked through rush hour then came in. All in all it was a good deal. Productivity was up (number of help desk calls closed was up). Employees were happy.
That was until the top dogs pulled everyone in last friday. Apparently some folks complained that they could not telecommute. So rather than take what was working and modify it and define roles/positions that could telecommute they pulled the plug on ALL telecommuting.
This was a good way to piss off a lot of good folks.
Bottom line, if the company you are looking to work for says they allow telecommuting make sure they have a policy in writing.
"If you are on fire you can just stop, drop, and roll. If you fall into Lava you are just dead." - my 5yr old daughter
While we're on the topic ... I don't doubt that some sensible telecommuting is going on, BUT ....
Telecommuting isn't being used mainly to save on transportation or infrastructure costs. Transport is borne by the worker, but the authority to telecommute is with the worker's management. Telecommuters also tend to have their own desks, cubes or offices at the company workplace.
"Telecommuting" is mostly a code word for the subtle authorization of management, salesmen and programmers to take time off at home while still getting paid. This is laziness and thievery, but since they are expensive and privileged labor, few have the position or gumption to call them those names.
Note well how call centers are filled with people who must commute every workday to do a job that is structurally well suited to working at home over the telephone. But that's not telecommuting as currently practiced -- that's for privileged types and not for the sweatshop laborers no matter how heavily the system revolves around pure telephony.
Exception-That-Tests-Rule: I do know somebody personally who successfully telecommuted while being on the bottom of the corporate totem pole. But the same impetus to allow a telecommuting employee like that, was part and parcel of cutting all kinds of costs, such as in-office management, rules for work (yes, I asked for the rules and regulations for employees and was basically laughed at for my trouble), and also abiding by federal and state regulation of their medically-oriented business. She was eventually fired for not following the unknown rules, and the last we heard, the state was all over the company anyway for noncompliance.
Work-from-home schemes are rife; they are always scams when advertised remotely, or half-scams when advertised by a local office; and the popular perception of telecommuting is equally out-of-touch with reality (the AT&T commercials being fine indicia of that). I am at a loss to envision how real telecommuting can become as pervasive as it needs to be, given all the work that could be done at home and isn't yet, as well as all the work that will need to be done outside of the continued downsizing of workplaces.
[also misbehaves on Kuro5hin as Peahippo]
I knew a couple in a very similar situation - they both had good thech/manegerial jobs, but she was well up the career ladder in a very big corporation, while he was probably more liike most slashdotters - a while here, a while there, sometimes team leader sometimes not. So he went in for training for his tech discipline. It is much easier to get in and out of, because you are not involved in projects with timescales of months and a need to build a working team, but week-at-a-time courses. Seemed to work for them.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
My father is a database manager for the CME (Chicago Mercantile Exchange) and he telecommutes from home every day.
It's improved is mood greatly, and overall, I'd say it's a Good Thing(tm) to telecommute for jobs like this (as databases are pretty much made to be remotely accessible).
They enjoy the part about exposing their privates among their fellow males, but the showering part ruins it for them.
What Tech Jobs????
Ya Sure! You Betcha!, The_THOMAS
There are various jobs which you _can_ do without necessarily needing direct contact with people (web design, writing software etc), but which many employers would object to you doing on this basis. For this reason, self-employment might be the best option for you. Its certainly worth considering.
That being said, if your wife does want to continue down the PhD path to research and academia, she may find this book: Ms. Mentor's Impeccable Advice for Women in Academia as helpful as I have. She (and I) may not agree with everything in there, but it certainly makes you think about a lot of things that you might not have otherwise.
It's psychosomatic. You need a lobotomy. I'll get a saw.
If thousands of dollars a year is not your game, become a SPORTS OFFICIAL. Get good and certify Nationally after 5 - 7 years which would mean you would be able to work for any local board anywhere in the country no questions asked. It's an idea if you LOVE a Sport and aren't too concerned about money.
. ;)
You would have to STUDY the whole rulebook, pass written tests, attend clinics, and concentrate on the game to succeed.
Mmmm.. W o m e n ' s V o l l e y b a l l . .
I was in exactly your position. A couple of comments first, and then a summary of my story.
1. Academia works on its own slow schedule. Expect delays on the order of years. If you think your wife if 4 years away, add another 50% to that time. If you think your wife is 6 months away, double or triple that number. This makes it hard to plan with your employer. If you want to enter a Masters program yourself, plan for an 12 month delay from application to start.
2. Treat telecommuting as an adventure to stay in the game. Continuing to work leads to contacts that generate the next job. Find a company that could use your skills and offer to work there. Negotiate the telecommuting deal up front. Use the telecommuting time as a bridge to find work locally. I found 10 months telecommuting to be my personal limit. I actually found my local job contact through an employee at the company for which I telecommuted.
The story:
In 1995, my wife was going to graduate in 2 years and we were going to have to move. I applied for a SW Eng Masters program. I was accepted, my employer paid for the tuition, but things did not really start until Jan 1996. I finished in May 1998, and my wife still was not close to graduating.
However, I changed jobs due to an opportunity made available from the degree and worked at that company until 1999. By that time, my wife was close to graduation and I asked the company for a telecommuting position. They declined.
I then went in search of a programming job that would support a telecommuting position. I found one by convincing the company that even though telecommuting may not be a such good idea, it would be an interesting experiment.
I worked at that company in town for four months, then moved when my wife got a job. For the next 10 months, I telecommuted for 3 weeks at home and telefamilied 1 week at the company. The position was a permanent-fulltime one, but after 10 months, I left the company on my own.
I was productive for the first 5 to 6 telecommuting months. After that, the isolation took its toll. When I work with other people, there is constant chatter with new ideas and different perspectives. When I work alone, those new ideas and different perspectives are missing. When I was stuck, I found it hard to find a different approach alone. I ended up playing a game: 'what questions do I need to ask'. That is, instead of brainstorming answers, I would brainstorm questions that other people would be likely to ask, and then brainstorm answers. That worked pretty well, but it was no substitute for real interaction.
I found that working at home encouraged long naps. Instead of being in an office, I was at home where a bed or couch was nearby. Again, for the first 5 to 6 months, I worked pretty well, but towards the end, the naps were winning more frequently.
On the plus side, I was able to contribute to the company for quite a while. Also, those 10 months allowed me time to generate a network of local contacts that I leveraged into a local job. Actually, I found my local contact through an employee of my company. This individual had worked in the town where I ended up, before moving to the town where my company was based. He knew some people where I lived and gave me a reference, which landed me the local job.
AugustJames.com (Web Design)
MyGeekdom.com(The Sublime, The Ridiculous, and The News)
Geek out
i've heard of this place called mcdonalds... they say it's everywhere and always hiring good people...
The point is, she got to know a number of people in person, establish a reputation, then was able to work at home.
How many people have jobs that can actually be done from anywhere they can get email and web access?
Probably most desk jobs could be done remotely. That's a huge number of jobs; I'm guessing, but maybe of the order of a tenth of all jobs. Something like 10 million jobs in the US alone.
But that's the wrong question. The real question is, how many organizations will actually hire people to do jobs remotely? And how many managers in those organizations will hire teleworkers? Very few.
As much as I dislike office politics, it is not
something that can be disregarded or discounted.
To me the most important practical feature of any
telecommuting environment is an even playing field.
That means that an organization in which all or the
bulk of the employees are telecommuting is 10,000%
more desirable to work for than an organization
that merely allows telecommuting.
From my point of view, the single positions that
benefit the most from telecommuting are software
development and HR. Software development because
of the immense gains in efficiency from a quiet,
uninterrupted period of work, which categorically
outweight any losses due to the increased expense
of team co-ordination, and HR because it *is* the
network, so to speak.
I've been telecommuting for 12 years now, and I
would never go back, unless I was offered an
opportunity to accomplish some over-ridingly
important goal by taking a commuting position.
Much more important than the choice of job desc,
I think, is the choice of organization.
Telecommuting in a Nasdaq/Fortune 500 will always
stink, because office politics are vastly more
important than production, delivery, in that
environment. Go for a well-founded start-up
or a deeply entrenched niche-market organization.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
Oh, they do. Most people will ditch a sinecure
at IBM for a telecommuting start-up with stock
options in quick order. If you open your jobs to
100% telecommuters, suddenly you're hiring from a
pool of 6 billion people instead of a local pool
of the small disaffected percentage of qualified
candidates in your local metropolitan area. The
result is that you can focus your requirements much
more finely, and get much higher-quality candidates
willing to work for less money.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
But what if your wife was not so willing to set her career aside and follow you around? Would you then quit YOUR job and go to where SHE found work? Is your job more important than being with your wife?
It sounds to me like you're happy to have a stay-at-home and bake cookies house-marm. Not every woman is like that anymore....in fact, very few are. You know why? Because that's the role we males have thrust upon them for a long time, and very few are willing to let go of it.
This message brought to you by the Council of People Who Are Sick of Seeing More People.
I went through a bout of unwanted unemployment. While looking for another networking job a friend asked me for help. I study Japanese as a hobby and his boss just got a fancy new VCR, with directions only in Japanese. When I pulled that out of my butt, the boss asked if I could do technical translation. I bought some books and started studying. I work 30-60 hours a week, set my own schedule, work via e-mail and FedEx. I clear 65-85K a year without ever leaving the home office. My Japanese is passable, my tech skills are untouchable -- that is the key to the high salary
That's your best bet for a good telecommuting job. You sit around the house in your underwear all day telling callers that you are sitting around in your underwear.
You could be a spammer. Course we'd all want to kill you but its well suited to telecommuting and even goes well with moving around a bunch so that no one can firebomb your house.
--- Always remember. 99.36% of all statistics are inaccurate.
Suicide Hotline
Gay-Bisexual-Lesbian Hotline
Also, there are plenty of Telemarketer openings all the time.
Need I say more? Jeez Louise!
Take a look at The Social Life of Information by John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid.
It contains unusually insightful comments about telecommuting.
Tech journalism was hit even harder than high tech in general. Remember, dot.bombs don't buy advertising anymore. "Old Economy" companies slowed down ad purchases as they discovered they didn't have metrics to discover their ROI in Net advertising any more than they actually have them for conventional TV/print advertising. The fact that they didn't have them for the Net bothered them. TV and print are part of the way they are used to do business.
Magazines that have drastically reduced revenue streams don't have enough money to pay writers in significant numbers, if the income goes down far enough, the plug is pulled.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Become an open-source developer! Using SourceForge, you can work anywhere.
Only problem is that the pay isn't there...
Before that I run a small bussiness for 5 years - the people involved in the team, producing dynamic websites, where either in different locations (200 km apart) or moving (Europe - US). It worked quite well.
Why does it work?
Assuming that all people in the team (not the customer) know how to do their work, it really all can be cooked down to communications. The most crucial part seems to be the communication customer - team, where the more vague and eh, surprising, ideas need to be refined into something clear and realistic. Within the team it seems to helps a lot when people choose to rather get the job done and be honest instead of being in control or cool.
I am not to sure it actually helped or not that we never decided on a common "protocoll" for exchanging ideas and questions - instead the members try to write in an understandable way.
Joerg
(slashdot,@,baach,dot,de)
1. Think sales. Employers do not *want* salespeople sitting at the desk. They want you out *there* with customers.
2. Think http://www.elance.com...it is a thriving marketplace for remote knowledge workers, and there will be steady dealflow.
3. Look at e-commerce. If you are very careful and disciplined you can sell good or services online (yes, even on eBay) and get a solid revenue stream going. If you have time to prepare, then perhaps you can do this, but this is basically as complex as going into business for yourself, so watch out.
Telephone sex workers should be able to work at home instead of at call centers...
In your case, you might look around for employment at a large corporation that does allow telecommuting. Some certainly do but you'll have to ask around the grapevine to find out. I know of a couple of former co-workers whose wives went back to grad school in another state and their current employers set up telecommuting for them. You'd also likely have to work at such a company for a year or more before being allowed to do this and it might also depend upon the type of work involved. Of course, if you continually moved from one place to another yearly, the company might not like it.
Just wanted to toss out an opposing viewpoint. I've ordered from TigerDirect three times: first an entire system, then a new monitor for a different machine, and finally two gigs of PC133 SDRAM to make all of my machines happier. The prices were fine, the products arrived fine, and I've never had to call them for service.
My only complaint is that the Restore CD they shipped with my Tiger system did not work when I decided to format and reinstall about a year after purchase. I put the CD in and got an error like "This CD cannot be used on this computer." No biggie, I just installed straight from a Windows CD.
TigerDirect doesn't spam, or at least they don't send "unsolicited" email. I used to get emails from them every week or so promoting their latest deals, but that was because there was an existing business relationship. I clicked the link to unsubscribe and I haven't received mail from them since.
I can run any server... anywhere... anytime... I may need a body "there" once in a while, but man, just lemme at it, I will even obsolete that dude... (or gal)... just kiddin... Server administration is done via "network" connections anyway, no matter the driving distance to get there.... I hope you can get the right job, 'cause I plan on workin' 'till I'm 80 and from some Island in the pacific... Assuming Sat connections are good enough there......
I've been a software engineer with my current employer for some 6 years and change now. In February, I began telecommuting. It has, so far, worked out very well.
/. Another requirement, however -- and presented by others in the thread already -- is that the person should be able to turn off, too. Overwork happens with telecommuting because the home is the office. "Just 10 more minutes, hon" has often been heard in my house over the last few months.
I work for a company that has offices in various cities around the world. In our Japanese affiliate, I am the sole software engineer. What ultimately made telecommuting possible for me is the independent nature of my work. I'm responsible for localization of our corporate software into Japanese, as well as doing customer-specific extensions for our domestic projects. This means that I have historically dealt more with head office (i.e., HQ-based development teams) than I have with staff at the local office.
For six years, the work got done, on budget and on time. I was left more or less to my own devices, only given cursory management (a monthly report indicating what I had been working on). Totally hands-off from the company here and everybody was happy. When the company decided to dip a toe into Lake Telecommuting and test the water, I was the crash-test dummy given the nod.
I guess the company has been pleased with the results. Two other employees have since started working at home. I hope it works out for them, too.
The biggest thing that I see, at least in our situation, is that telecommuting is well suited for a person/position that doesn't require a lot of over-the-shoulder management. I work in software, but I think that any number of positions could be well suited for telecommuting. The primary requirement is that the person will put in a full-day's work instead of surfing
If you do really well with phone calls and e-mail -- which I prefer due to the ever-present audit trail it affords -- your goals might be well served by any number of positions.
One thing I may have missed is this: with the difficulty of nailing a telecommuting-from-the-start position, what are the chances of you making the transition to telecommuting within your current company? It seems to me that if you could do that, then moving to another city becomes less of an issue later on rather than worry about finding a telecommuting position later just prior to a move.
Salespeople have been telecommuting since before the telephone was invented.
You should both forget the notion that your job is very portable and that you will be able to find a satisfying job wherever her tenure track takes you. You've already started on this track by realizing you may not find on-site jobs that work. But you probably won't find telecommuting jobs that work perfectly either, and being uprooted every couple years to an arbitrary place won't help your career either.
You and your wife need to realize that both of your careers are equal in importance. As such, to keep the marriage intact, you will both need to evaluate offers and locations in terms of what they offer both of you, and you will both need to settle for something reasonable, because you probably won't find a place ideal for both of you.
If you don't compromise, one of you will probablyu be very bitter and it'll put huge stresses on your marriage. My wife chose a location for grad school that has no jobs that I find enjoyable. I'd explained that I didn't think this area had anything to offer me, but I allowed myself to be overruled. I'm employed, but my job is exactly what I promised myself I would never do. I've come extremely close to movinjg out and on several occasions. For our next move, we're both looking at areas, and we're not going to choose a location that both can't agree on.
I work for an IT department at a bank, and I telecommute about 90% of the time. Employer pays for broadband and provides a laptop, and a set of docking stations, keyboards, mice and monitors (one for home one for office). You get VPN software and a SecureID card and you get a credit card to buy equipment and books you might need.
My boss has instituted a mandatory In the Office day - every second monday of the month we all come in and get free lunch. However, some people live outside of practical driving distance, and are exempt. Most people live reasonably near a data center, close enough to drive to once a month.
It works excellently for us, but our managers are all pretty good with it - in fact, my manager _refuses_ to meet employement candidates face-to-face until they've actually been hired.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
Check out Elance, maybe this is the future of software development? Just put the specs for your company's new project online and wait for some eager beavers from Bangalore to code it for 3 Rupees an hour. There will be work in producing specifications that will in some way corresponed to the desired outcome, something I've not seen at any company I've worked at for a long time now.
David
clearly.
The same kind of job that can be done from Korea, India, or any other low wage country.
If you get a job that is easy for telecommuting you should expect competition from low wage countries. It is just as easy for a corp. to arrange telecommunication from there as it is from Silicon valley.
You may or may not have heard of www.elance.com . Work is simple and the pay is great.