I am fascinated/jealous of work from home people!

[disneychick0412]

I have pretty much always worked with the public (grocery store/nursing home/medical office). The last 20 years have been a mix of different healthcare front office jobs, currently working the front desk of a physical therapy office. I do check in, scheduling, prior authorizations and so on. The prior authorizations I could do from home, but not the rest of it. So I don't see work from home being a thing as long as I'm working here. (I love it here and don't see myself leaving). Since I've never worked a job that could easily transition to WFH, I'm curious as to what people are doing that they get to do this. (Yes, I'm jealous!)
I don't know a lot about the different fields out there because I have been in healthcare for so long so that has been my focus.
If anyone wants to share what they do, education that they have, that type of thing, within their comfort level, I would love to hear!

 

[wvjules]

I work in public accounting and regularly went to client site prior to Covid, but then when Covid hit, we transitioned to a WFH model (where it was possible). We've been primarily WFH since then, transitioning to a hybrid model.

 

[Jennasis]

I own a farm.

 

[starvenger]

I work in IT, usually in project implementation. That role doesn't really require that I be in the same room as my team. And because our software is cloud-based, I also don't need to travel to client sites.

I will admit that WFH isn't all sunshine and roses. It can be hard to separate work and home life, especially when the kids are home. And I do find myself working longer because I don't have to worry about a commute. But overall, I think I'm happier doing this versus doing 1 hour commutes to and from work.

 

[tvguy]

Education wasn't a factor for my 15 months working from home, the pandemic was. My company had to get creative to make work from home happen, but they did. Out of 125 employees, all but 25 worked from home. Only jobs that could not be remotely controlled had to go into the building, although most of those people did work remotely a couple of days a week while someone else in the building did the hands on part of their job.
From my perspective, it was the most productive 15 months of my 42 year career. From my manager's perspective, as soon as people could be brought back in the building, they were. Their big issue with remote work was they couldn't see what you were doing and how, not that you were getting more done. Several people actually moved out of town during the pandemic, and ultimately got fired because they could no longer work in the building.
Now my son's company, everyone went remote on March 2020. In 2021 when the lease on their office building expired, they didn't renew it, they make everyone permanently remote, with the stipulation that people might have to do an in person meeting once in a while. My son moved 400 miles away. They had their FIRST in person meeting in June of this year, the company picked up the air fare, meals, hotel and rental car, and had to rent a hotel conference room for the meeting, but they figure not having to pay rent has saved them thousands and thousands of dollars, more than the cost of buying a laptop for all their employees.
My DIL got hired without ever stepping foot into her company's building 4,000 miles away. Two years later, she has never met any of her bosses or co-workers in person, or her clients. Everything is done over Zoom.

 

[soccerdad72]

I work in administration for a community college. We're hybrid, so I'm in my office 2-3 days a week and work from home the other days.

 

[Christine]

I work in finance/accounting for the government and pre-COVID we did WFH maybe 1-2 days a week. During COVID we went full time and it was wildly successful. We've now been ordered back, especially those that work in the DC region, because the real estate lobby and the city-based restaurants are losing money and need us their to buy our $15 sandwiches. Congress and adminstration is supporting that. We are now doing WFH 2 days per week but I wouldn't be surprised if it was fully taken away because, you know, somehow federal workers need to prop up the economy. I'm not public-facing at all so not like I work for the Social Security Administration or something like that.

 

[lovesmurfs]

I'm in healthcare accreditation -- accreditation of physician residency and fellowship programs. I do have to come into the office a couple of times a month, but since Covid, I've worked from home. Masters in Organizational Leadership, Certified Association Executive, and now pursuing (10 years before retirement) a PhD in Business Management.

Pre-Covid I worked from home a couple of days a month to do certain projects.

 

[Kwami]

I'm an engineer and I mostly design hardware for communications systems. I used to work at the office 3-4 days per week, but now I work entirely from home. It's been that way ever since the initial Covid-19 shutdowns. Some people at the office prefer to go in every day and work and others stay home for various reasons. I choose to stay home because traffic around here is horrible. Plus, now that I'm a remote employee, I can finally move closer to my family where the land is a bit cheaper and the traffic isn't as terrible.

Anyway, there are some downsides. You don't get to see everyone else and have those impromptu conversations about random things. You have to make an extra effort if you want to attend office parties and stuff like that. Sometimes, I have to ask someone else to push a button or hook up a cable somewhere. And I do wonder if I'm limiting my promotion potential since I won't be there and interacting with the higher-ups all the time.

But so far, the tradeoffs have been worth it to me. I save at least 1.5 hours every day not commuting, I buy a whole lot less fuel and my car doesn't get beat up as much. I also have more flexibility when scheduling appointments with doctors and stuff like that. I can put some clothes in the washer when I get a quick break. I can eat whenever it's convenient for me. It's all quite nice.

 

[soccerdad72]

I work in public accounting and regularly went to client site prior to Covid, but then when Covid hit, we transitioned to a WFH model (where it was possible). We've been primarily WFH since then, transitioning to a hybrid model.

My wife's firm has begun insisting that people come back in office.

Since nobody in her group is local (they're scattered all over the country, plus in India), she's still mostly WFH, although she goes into the local office once in a while.

 

[Smugpugmug]

I build websites for home builders and my job is fully remote. If you're local, you can go into the office if you want to but it's not required. My team is in Florida, Texas and Canada so we all communicate through Google Workspace/Meet. Honestly, I love WFH. The commute to the office is 30 minutes without traffic and since there is always traffic regardless of the time, it can turn into 1+ hours. I am also the meme where you wear a nice work shirt on the top for video calls and sweatpants on the bottom.

 

[Trinity88]

I'm an IT Project Manager. My projects are all software based, so I work with developers and testers, all of whom are at home. I can do my job very effectively from home with the use of tools like MS Teams and Miro (whiteboarding, planning tool). My clients are internal (employees) so I never need to travel to meet with my clients, we just hop on a call. We have started a hybrid schedule where we're in the office 2 days every 2 weeks. I try to use that time for anything that is better handled in person, but honestly, we've been at home for 3+ years now and there is nothing that can't be handled from home.

 

[YachtClubWoman]

I work for a pharmaceutical company- the office is local to me but I am remote unless there is a pre scheduled in person meeting.
Remote work has allowed the company to hire the best people no matter where they live and not force relocation.

 

[PollyannaMom]

My DH works in biotech. Back when he was in the lab, he obviously went in. Once he moved into a different role, his job involved periods of travel, so they were all set up for remote work. The company realized that it now made more financial sense to have them work from home in between trips as well rather than to maintain an office building. (This was well before covid, but since his group was already remote, they led the way in helping as many others as possible convert to remote during the lockdowns.)

Fast-forward to now, smaller company has been bought by bigger company that insists they come into an office 2-3 days a week. So while DH still works with people in his group all over the world, he works next to strangers from other departments in a rented office space. It's ludicrous. They have no concept of how much productivity they're losing to commuting time, sick days from unnecessary contact, etc. (And I pack his lunch, so he's not even boosting the local economy.)

 

[champagne&disney]

I work for a software company and I run a team of account managers across the US and Canada. We are a hybrid model but I mostly work from home. I am on video calls all day - sometimes up to 13-15 different ones a day. Because of this, I have to be very intentional about blocking time on my calendar to even have 10 minutes to eat lunch otherwise my calendar is filled from 9-5/6pm nonstop. I definitely work longer at home than I would if I went to an office but I enjoy it.

I can effectively do my job at home but it isn't for everyone. I don't mind not seeing colleagues in person but some people miss the connection. I just make an effort to reach out over instant message or random calls to say hi and catch up. My coworker is my dog and that's okay by me.

 

[nene0182]

I manage an AP team. I’m hybrid and go into the office two days a week usually. However most of my team is remote from me. I have some locally, another group 3 hours away and another one 7 hours away. Even my manager is five hours away from me. But, we are a large company and have offices all over so even those that aren’t local to me have a “home” office they can go into.

 

[sachilles]

I do logistics. 50% of what I do involves moving motorsports related equipment and people to and from race events domestically and internationally. I also have a spin off business in trucking. So I can work from home a bunch. I also find myself driving a truck on occasion, and find excuses to drive it to florida to get a visit in to WDW. It allows me to get 24-48 hours in. Oddly enough, the resorts are a great and safe place to park a truck and trailer in florida.

 

[bjscheel]

I've been curious too. I work in a law office and we still do quite a bit of printing and mailing and physical files so it doesn't work great remotely. I did two weeks of quarantine and just did what I could and would email someone to print and mail a letter for me.

When my boss retires, I wonder about a remote job because there's not a lot of opportunities in our small town. But I also don't put myself out there socially much so it might be a bad idea to stay home for work too! My dog would be thrilled though.

 

[Lord Manhammer]

My wife works from home and loves it. She especially loves the fact that she can travel with me when I go on work trips which is glorious.

 

[NYCgrrl]

I retired from property management ultimately. Started my own business and only used my home as a conference room when needed. The rest of the time it was a corner of my living room for daily ops. My employees worked from their own offices which were either in their homes or located in a building we managed. Our weekly in house mtgs were via some computer program or conference call; it wasn’t Zoom maybe Skype. Began this long before the pandemic.Have a degree in hotel and restaurant management which led nicely into property mgmt. Started a sideline biz as a solo real estate investor that I subcontracted the mgmt of to a professional acquaintance; it was a different type of building and I didn’t need the headache of re inventing the wheel.

Advantages of working at home: you can sound professional wearing your pjs,
great tax benefits using a home office, easy to care for run home errands,etc.

Disadvantages: your mother thinks your home is now the DewDrop Inn and chooses to not understand about office hours. About those pjs…they can become a bit of a habit leaving your nabes to wonder if you still live in the bldg,lol.