1

My wife asked if I could work from home. I can’t, my current job doesn’t allow for that. That got me thinking, I’ve worked in office settings for nearly a decade and that is the extend of my workplace knowledge, I’ve never thought of a career path that could keep me at home. I’m a generalist for the most part, mostly doing help desk and random tasks (web design, photoshop, plugging things in), but I’d like to throw this out to you folks that do work from home. What is it that you do? Programming? Remote Help Desk? It might be about time to start turning the wheel on this old ship into a new direction and where better to get advice than from my fellow Spiceheads?

86 Spice ups
2

No, but I’m a generalist (official title is Desktop Administrator, but I do some sysadmin and network admin stuff, helpdesk, purchasing etc.)

My sysadmin and 2 of the 3 programmers are able to work from home whenever they want. I suppose I could if I really wanted to, but I prefer to work on-site because there’s nobody to put their hands on things when hardware needs to be fixed/replaced otherwise.

It comes down to how your org is set up and if you have backup bodies to do the physical work when needed.

12 Spice ups
3

The only thing really keeping me from working from home is tradition, and the jealousy of other employees. I do it on occasion. If I have to work overnight, for example, if I don’t need to be here physically, then I’ll just work remotely. A lot of things like server / website software updates, etc, can be done remotely for me.

10 Spice ups
4

I do it all here, they prefer me in the office but if I need to leave early for something then I can make it up at home.

Edit: Worked a half day in the office and now home sick with a wicked head cold but still working, oh the irony.

11 Spice ups
5

Honestly pretty much anything in the IT field can be done majority of the time from home with very few office visits, especially if you have remote hands on-site to hit a power button for you every once in a while. Especially with the current responsibilities you mentioned, there should be no reason to not be able to do that job from home. With the ability to setup secure connections these days with 100 different tools, if your boss won’t let you work from home, then it’s probably more of a control thing on the employers part.

I suppose industry specific things like PCI compliance factor into an employers decision making, but even that just seems like there are ways around it.

8 Spice ups
6

If you really want to guarantee working from home, start freelancing web development. Work for yourself. Then you can always work from home if you want, or a beach in Thailand.

13 Spice ups
7

Systems Administrator, and working from home isn’t as great as it’s made out to be. Working from home, from time to time, that’s always nice. Working at home full time? It’s old. Why?

  • Your office is AT home. There’s no time to decompress. I’m 10 feet from my office door. That’s my commute.

  • If you have a significant other or children they become a nuisance. “I’m sorry hon, I can’t have lunch with you right now, I’m building a server that needs to be running 2 hours ago.” “Sorry Jimmy, I need you to go play outside because you’re being too loud and Daddy has to build this cluster or we don’t pay the rent.”

  • No social life. Unless you’ve got yourself a solid hobby that gets you out of the house and mingling with other people you can kiss any kind of social life goodbye.

*Working WAY too much. It’s really easy to get to the end of the day and tack on an extra hour or to. I mean you don’t have a commute after all right? And that project has to get DONE.

  • Increased cost of living. I’m gonna be home all day? Gotta keep the A/C (or heater) at this temp ALL the time now. Grocery shopping? Sure. Gonna need snacks, and beverages, and I gotta come up with THREE meals a day instead of being able to just swing by Wendy’s or anywhere else to just grab a bite and be done?
63 Spice ups
8

This is a huge part of why I can’t work from home. I work with a lot of “old school” end users that want you in their office when they call. Generally the series of events when something goes wrong:1. Problem occurs.

  1. End users calls their secretary to call IT.

  2. Secretary calls IT to tell us to go to the office of end user.

  3. IT shows up in the office, realizes it’s a server issue.

  4. IT goes back to their office to resolve issue.

  5. IT applies palm to face for period of time.

32 Spice ups
9

A few years ago, the kids were new and got sick a lot. Rather than burn a sick day for a 2 year old’s ear infection, my boss let me work from home for a day or two. I liked it better than using sick time and not working because really I’m just sitting there while the kid is laying on the couch watching a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse marathon. On occasion I refill the sippy cup with some apple juice, but aside from that, I’d be bored out of my skull.

I couldn’t do it all of the time. Some things need face time and a hands on approach. But it was nice to be able to get caught up on things without users knocking on your door.

3 Spice ups
10

I really like Roelstra’s reply. I think if you’re young, single, don’t mind working a lot, and don’t mind having work possibly collide with your social life, then working from home full time might be ok. It works for certain people. But I think that for a lot of people, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be, and it’s very easy to get your work-life balance out of whack to an unhealthy degree in the long run. So personally, I do work from home now and then, but only under special circumstances.

Work to live, don’t live to work.

9 Spice ups
11

the main problem i would have with working from home is i have a telephobia, so most of the help desk work i would need to call epople or wait for a very long time for emails. also i would get distracted VERY easily at home. and i also have anxiety about whether or not im doing enough during work time, so i would always be stressed out about that.

11 Spice ups
12

Just my 2 cents here:

* Your office is AT home. There’s no time to decompress. I’m 10 feet from my office door. That’s my commute.

No commute? Hell yes! Work in shorts and a t-shirt! HELLLL YES. My decompression starts when my shift is over. I don’t think I’d have a problem with that.

* If you have a significant other or children they become a nuisance. “I’m sorry hon, I can’t have lunch with you right now, I’m building a server that needs to be running 2 hours ago.” “Sorry Jimmy, I need you to go play outside because you’re being too loud and Daddy has to build this cluster or we don’t pay the rent.”

Single, no children and I don’t want them. Don’t even have pets. I’d have to assume that if I was with a significant other who was living with me, she would understand that when I’m on the clock, that has to be priority. Also why isn’t she at work making money to pay the other half of the bills?

* No social life. Unless you’ve got yourself a solid hobby that gets you out of the house and mingling with other people you can kiss any kind of social life goodbye.

I have never socialized with my co-workers outside of work, and on the few occasions that I’ve gone without talking to them for several weeks, I can assure you that I did not miss them at all. I’m a weird introvert though.

*Working WAY too much. It’s really easy to get to the end of the day and tack on an extra hour or to. I mean you don’t have a commute after all right? And that project has to get DONE.

I suppose this could happen to me, depending on the situation, but I’d never work in a salaried position that expects me to work extra hours like this, and if it’s hourly then I’m making more money.

* Increased cost of living. I’m gonna be home all day? Gotta keep the A/C (or heater) at this temp ALL the time now. Grocery shopping? Sure. Gonna need snacks, and beverages, and I gotta come up with THREE meals a day instead of being able to just swing by Wendy’s or anywhere else to just grab a bite and be done?

I mean it isn’t like my company provides me with anything as it is. Stopping at Wendy’s every day is freaking expensive. Making a meal from scratch, even if it’s just throwing some soup in a bowl and microwaving it, is far cheaper, and I’d be more likely to do it if I was at home. I go out to eat to get the hell out of the office for half an hour. The food is really secondary, I just need to not be bothered by people for a little bit so I don’t go insane.

58 Spice ups
13

Network administrator/Network Infrastructure. I handle basically anything from system admin through network admin. I can work from home but I’d rather not. I’d be to distracted by the NES classic or the PS4.

7 Spice ups
14

I work from home sometimes, but my employer wouldn’t be happy with me doing it too much. Sometimes I do it just to get away from interruptions so I can focus on a higher end task for a chunk of time.

Personally, I find that if I don’t have a major project to work on at home, I can’t stay motivated. If I’m going to work on a wide range of smaller tasks, I have to be onsite, or I will spend all day screwing around.

1 Spice up
15

I mean, I can technically do my entire job from home, but everything I need I can just get online… or with a VPN!

1 Spice up
16

I could probably work from home 75% of the time. I’m responsible for OS and software deployments, system configuration through Group Policy, scripts and custom programs, etc.

17

I can when I am not in front of customers. I’m a Sales Engineer.

18

Three days out of the week, I’m home. The reason I’m able to do this was when I came back to Davita they realized that the first time I left, was because the drive was killing me. Also, a lot of my job happens at night. And I’m a Deployment Engineer.

2 Spice ups
19

Everything @joebob said …Even in the office we do 95% of everything remote anyway - including talking to each other via IM when we are not more than 50ft apart.

It wouldn’t necessarily work in all environments, but it sure would in ours.

2 Spice ups
20

Your office is AT home. There’s no time to decompress. I’m 10 feet from my office door. That’s my commute.

No commute? Hell yes! Work in shorts and a t-shirt! HELLLL YES. My decompression starts when my shift is over. I don’t think I’d have a problem with that.

  • If you have a significant other or children they become a nuisance. “I’m sorry hon, I can’t have lunch with you right now, I’m building a server that needs to be running 2 hours ago.” “Sorry Jimmy, I need you to go play outside because you’re being too loud and Daddy has to build this cluster or we don’t pay the rent.”

Single, no children and I don’t want them. Don’t even have pets. I’d have to assume that if I was with a significant other who was living with me, she would understand that when I’m on the clock, that has to be priority. Also why isn’t she at work making money to pay the other half of the bills?

  • No social life. Unless you’ve got yourself a solid hobby that gets you out of the house and mingling with other people you can kiss any kind of social life goodbye.

I have never socialized with my co-workers outside of work, and on the few occasions that I’ve gone without talking to them for several weeks, I can assure you that I did not miss them at all. I’m a weird introvert though.

*Working WAY too much. It’s really easy to get to the end of the day and tack on an extra hour or to. I mean you don’t have a commute after all right? And that project has to get DONE.

I suppose this could happen to me, depending on the situation, but I’d never work in a salaried position that expects me to work extra hours like this, and if it’s hourly then I’m making more money.

  • Increased cost of living. I’m gonna be home all day? Gotta keep the A/C (or heater) at this temp ALL the time now. Grocery shopping? Sure. Gonna need snacks, and beverages, and I gotta come up with THREE meals a day instead of being able to just swing by Wendy’s or anywhere else to just grab a bite and be done?

I mean it isn’t like my company provides me with anything as it is. Stopping at Wendy’s every day is freaking expensive. Making a meal from scratch, even if it’s just throwing some soup in a bowl and microwaving it, is far cheaper, and I’d be more likely to do it if I was at home. I go out to eat to get the hell out of the office for half an hour. The food is really secondary, I just need to not be bothered by people for a little bit so I don’t go insane.

i cant spice this enough!!!

@joebob

4 Spice ups