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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!
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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!
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.
You can always publish online porn!
Last I checked the industry was worth 9 billion USD, plenty of upward mobility, you might say.
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
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!
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.
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.
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 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.
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...
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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?)
That's all fine and well if you have the clients.... Building a customer-base is *always* the tough part, though. I partnered with a friend of mine who was trying to get a computer consulting and on-site service business going, years ago, and the cost of advertising our services exceeded our income.
If we had a big loan, up front, to work with - sure, I think it would have broken even in a year or two, and started making money. Fact is, we didn't have that luxury. We simply had a limited budget to start with, and the knowledge that we were both really good at what we did.
Being good at the job doesn't equate with short-term profitability, though. When you're out of work and need to pay the bills, this type of thing isn't usually a workable solution - unless you've got large cash reserves.
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?
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]
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.
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.
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.
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...
Telephone sex workers should be able to work at home instead of at call centers...
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.