Questions for those who work from home

[scrapquitler]

My Husband 'works at home'. He's a computer systems engineer and does consulting work. He works for a company that does custom database software which they sell to and maintain for HUGE companies around the world...he talks to the people in those big companies and helps customize the software for them. Prior to this work at home company he worked for a big consulting company that has since gone bust, so he made lots of connections then.

It's sure not a bed of roses: he's home ALL the time. He does go to meet the client or visit the salesmen that go talk to the client, and sometimes he needs to travel (both locally, nationally and internationally). Because a lot of the clients are international, he is often on the phone for conference calls at odd times of the day/night (a few weeks ago he had a conference call at 3am!). And anytime the system goes down, someone calls him to make a patch and get things running again, so at 5am Sunday the phone is ringing just as much as it does during 'business hours'.

As for health insurance, we pay 100% of the 'direct pay' plan, which means it is EXPENSIVE. If the OP has a way to get insurance thru the husbands employer, its going to cost a FRACTION of what you will pay buying it yourself. I promise.

 

[bettymae1121]

I do, but it's a pretty unique position. I'm a corporate travel agent, but I don't work for an agency and I'm not an outside agent. I work directly for a major non-profit that likes to do it's own travel bookings in-house rather than out-source it to a corporate travel agency. I worked at an office for 8 years before they decided to move my division to work-from-home because they needed space at headquarters for something else. Because I work for the non-profit, I'm covered under their benifits plan.

Other people at my non-profit also have telecommutte status, meaning they work from home 1 to 5 days a week. For a person to qualify, it has to be a position that can be done remotely at least part of the time, and status is only granted to employees that have worked for the organization for few years and have proven proformance. They won't grant it to new hires.

 

[DMickey28]

My DH works from home and has had three work from home jobs in our marriage. He is in Sales for one of the top two software companies. All of his WAH jobs have been Sales or Sales Engineering for software companies.

He LOVES it now, but he does struggle with leaving the job in his office. It's great though because he actually sees Alex more and will be on hand more when the baby is here. He has an office about 15 miles away that he can go to if he needs to which will be helpful when the baby is here and he has important calls that he needs absolute quiet for.