Career - Need some perspectives - programming?

[Georges]

I've been mulling it over for more than a week now, and I haven't found a good way to approach this.

 

(...which leaves me a little lost - I'm not used to having any trouble framing a question/problem.  It's part of what makes programming appealing to me.  Along with the tedious/engaging process of tracking down bugs and the excuse to cuss at the computer.)

 

I think PHASE 2 is "find employment programming or debugging code, with a company that doesn't need me to commute."

(PHASE 3, obviously, is "Profit."  Or more accurately, and in line with my goals, "Income.")

 

I'm not collecting underpants right now, because I can see that it is not what PHASE 1 should be.  I'm not doing anything right now, because I don't know what PHASE 1 should be.

I'm not even sure that there even IS such a thing as "employment programming or debugging code, with a company that doesn't need me to commute."  Is that even a thing?  Or is it one of those things like flying cars that was promised to me when I was younger, but never actually happened?

 

I think that's my first question.  Because there's really no point in any of the follow up questions if the answer is no.

 

IS there such a thing as employment programming or debugging code, with a company that doesn't need me to commute?

 

[Nuala]

Well, the answer is yes and no. Some company will allow you to work from home but they will usually ask you to commute from time to time for some meetings and other un-interesting stuff. But technically, yes it exists.

[Starstuff]

It's going to depend on what you mean by "commute." Do you mean you need a job that doesn't require you to come into the office at all, or just one with an office nearby your home? Or maybe even just one that's easy and quick to get to via public transit?

 

Based on my experience in the software industry, if you mean you need to be working from home all the time, that's highly unlikely as a developer and loathe as I am to call anything impossible that doesn't violate natural laws, finding a work-from-home QA position is so unlikely it might as well be impossible. Now, you might be able to find a position that regularly lets people take work-from-home days where you might eventually be able to transition to full-time-except-for-meetings work-from-home after a few years. Maybe. A position that's partly work-from-home is much more attainable, though.

 

If you mean one of the other two options, that's going to depend on where you live.

[Raikas]

As starstuff said, it depends on what you mean by "no commute"

 

If you mean "close to home", that's highly dependant on where you live.

 

If you mean "work from home", you may want to start by looking for companies that support mobile workers rather than looking specifically for your goal position.  Once you know which employers allow/encourage it, then look into whether or not they have the position you're hunting for.  It is certainly something that exists:  I work from home about 90% of the time, not specifically because of my position (I'm a systems admin, but the same is true for programmers, analysts and so on) but just because my company  encourages it - of the 40,000 people who work here easily a third are at least semi-mobile, and that number has been going up steadily for the past 3 years.  You would just need to find an orgainization with a similar philosophy.

[Georges]

Thank you for your responses!

 

To clarify, by "no commute," I meant that I am about 90 minutes/60+miles from the nearest city with jobs, which means that commute time would be at least 3 hours per day.  While I can do that occasionally, or even once a week, I cannot (physically cannot) drive that daily. 

 

I think Raikas is on to something... I'm going to take a look around for companies that support/allow/encourage at least partially working-at-home.  If I can find any, I'll see what options they present for careers, in IT or otherwise.

[concretecavewoman]

The people I know who work from home full-time spent several years at their company before they received that degree of flexibility.  My experience in this industry is that fulltime virtual work is rare unless you're self-employed or a contractor.

 

Do you already have some experience in dev or test?  If not, you can check out some of the websites that act as job boards for small code projects.  It's one way to build the resume and be able to work at home.  Is there something barring you from relocating to a tech center or larger city?

[Eirlys]

When I had a 5.5 hour round-trip daily commute, I eventually buckled and signed up to a house-share so that I was in town (right next to the office) for 4 days a week.  I then got one day to work from home (as a software engineer).

 

The house-share option was probably less expensive than the travel costs in my case, so it worked out ok.

[Endor]

I would agree that typically you can do at least part of your work from home but that you will need to prove yourself first by spending time in the office.

 

I wouldn't hire someone on a salary and let them work full time from home straight away. After the trust has been built up that you are reliable and your work is up to scratch then at least part time from home should be ok. It's also hard to build relationships if you're always at home.

 

If I want someone to do a job 100% remotely and never need to interact much with the team why would I hire someone local? I'd pay 10% of the cost and offshore the job...that's the reality.

[RiotInferno]

The engineering company I work for sometimes hires contractors for 2-3 month at a time that are 100% remote. The thing that keeps them contractors vs full-time employees is that they don't want to move here. I would definitely look into contracting / freelancing if your end-goal is to work from home.

Best of luck!!!