A friend of mine in IT wants to move with his wife to the middle of nowhere. He has a work history of doing software quality assurance and Linux administration. He was talking to me about finding jobs that allow them to work 100% remotely.
I wasn’t sure if things have progressed to that. All the software work I’ve done was in an office, and we didn’t have anyone working remotely. Although we have people working an other offices in other states. Are there companies that have entire companies or departments that are telecommuting 100% of the time?
Anyone have experience doing this? Would he need to have remote working experience on his resume to be considered?
I suspect that he would have to take a cut in pay to do this, but since the areas they want to move in are much cheaper to live he might be better offer financially speaking.
Technically I can see Linux administration being done remotely. Software QA could be too, but I wasn’t sure if he would run into a situation where they would want him to work in the office first and then remotely.
Anyone have experience with this in the two professions I mentioned?
Personally, I’d be afraid that I would move to a remote area, the company would have a layoff and then I’d be stuck there unless I could have another remote job.
I’m in IT, but I’m a Technical Architect. My current contract is with a large multi national IT company and our entire project team is home based. I’ve been here 14 months and have never visited an office, my interview was phone only. Until a few weeks ago I had never met a single colleague face to face as we just skype. But a PM I’d been working with was in my neck of the woods so we went for a few beers together.
This is my 2nd home based contract and it does take some discipline. You need to have a room set up for work, preferably one you can lock. Otherwise your family will be in and out all day asking you stuff. They need to know that you are at work and so do you. You also need a solid internet connection.
My day rate is about 20% lower than if I was office based. But there is more to life than money. I don’t have to commute, so I save money and time there. I can have a decent cup of coffee whenever I like without having to queue at a machine or give starbucks lots of cash. It’s almost 1:30 in the afternoon and I’m still wearing my dressing gown. So my dry cleaning bills have gone down! I can pop down stairs and throw some laundry in the machine so the chores don’t build up which makes life easier for the whole family. If a child is sent home from school due to illness, I’m available at short notice to pick him up. And can keep an eye on him while he stays home the next day without anyone having to use up holiday time or lose pay.
It’s a great way to work, but it can get a bit lonely sometimes. I get over excited if the postman has a parcel that needs signing for as it’s human contact!
Yes. But, he’ll probably have to work at a start-up or newish company. Might be able to pull something like this is a federal, state, or local employee but it’ll be a lot harder to find those positions.
But, start-up, should be easy. I’d suggest looking in areas that have a higher cost of living as they’ll usually set the pay for that immediate area.
Working from home does require discipline and routine. A colleague of mine already spent odd days here and there working from home and due to a change in circumstances asked if he could work at home all week. In the end, there was a compromise and he went in one afternoon a week.
He told me that at first, he had a desk in a spare room and wandered in, still in his dressing gown at around 9 am. He soon found that it didn’t work, and began to fall behind, so he spent some money and created an office in his garage. He had a separate phone number and a fast broadband connection and his family knew that daddy was at work and not to be disturbed. In the morning, he got dressed in work clothes and walked round to his office. In the end, because his income was based on commision, his earnings actually increased; he did have to turn down a promotion though as that would have meant commuting again.
I talked with him again, he told me the current list of Software QA jobs all seem to list a different software testing tool as a requirement, while the Linux admin jobs have the same basic requirements.
But he is concerned with having to support a system as a Linux administrator out of hours. He wants remote work and have regular hours to be with his family when they are available in the evenings and weekends. I guess in software QA they can have crunch time to get the job done, but that’s different from being on-call at 3 AM to go fix a server as the Linux administrator.
I’m assuming the remote Linux administrator jobs still have someone there to handle actual hardware problems, but that might be a thing of the past considering many have moved to cloud computing which is off-site.
Another friend of mine works remotely for a large company. He said he started working there and after six months his boss approve him working remotely only having to come in one day a week. I’m not sure you could start off asking for a remote option if it wasn’t part of the original job description.
20% pay cut, that might be fine considering the reduced cost of living and other overhead with having to hold down an in-person office job.
Pretty much any IT job can be done remotely. It’s all down to the company’s willingness to support it. I work in a team of 10 software developers spread across 3 countries and 4 or 5 of us, including the manager, work remotely. I’ve been working from home for over 2 years and love it.
Our QA team is mostly office based. Split between senior people at head office and an outsourced QA team in India.
I’ve never met a sysadmin who was strictly 9-5. There are always emergencies and out of hours maintenance that needs to happen.
I’ve been working fully remote for the better part of the last 15 years, as has Mr. Athena. We live in the middle of nowhere; there are no jobs for us locally. We’re both developers, but my company hires fully remote devs, qa, sysadmins, devops, user support, even managers. Not every company does it, but there’s enough out there that have made the jump that I wouldn’t worry too much about your friend.