Ask HN: Who works from home?

At my last job we were allowed to spend the occasional day at home, but we were generally expected to be in the office. I have a few friends that work exclusively remotely, but they didn't begin that way. They worked for a few years at a company, and for one reason or another moved to a new city. Their employers decided to keep them, so they let them work remotely.

Inc magazine had an article a while ago about working remotely (http://www.inc.com/magazine/20100401/the-case-and-the-plan-f...). Thought it was interesting. I'm curious as to whether or not more people are starting new jobs exclusively as a remote employee.

I graduated from grad school about four months ago and started working at home as a data consultant. It's important to find a comfortable space where you can still get work done. Having a nice chair to sit on is also very important.

I've never had a professional full time job, as I started working for myself straight out of grad school. I have had numerous retail jobs that I had as a teen and during college, but that's a different story. So i'm not sure about 'how to begin that arrangement.'

I've worked from home every single day since I graduated from college 6 years ago.

My first job was as a one-man team managing a webapp for a local insurance adjusting company. I lucked into working remotely, as they didn't have a central office, so working from home was required.

My second job was working for AOL/Netscape under Jason Calacanis, and due to his experience with hiring remote employees for Weblogs, Inc., the idea of working remotely was not foreign to him or his other employees, who all worked remotely as well.

The same situation applied to my third job - Mahalo, working for Jason again, although since I left there a few years ago, they've transitioned to having all of the developers work on-site.

Now I'm back at AOL again, hired by someone I worked with the last time around, who himself was working remotely in the Orlando area until AOL opened an office there.

At this point, the ability to work from home is #1 or #2 on my list of qualifications for a job - I gain all of the time that would be lost commuting, my job market is much bigger than people who have to work on-site, and I greatly enjoy working in the office that I custom-built for myself (seend here http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2146210).

I've worked from home 100% of the time for the last 6 years and haven't even met most of the people I work with in person. Your company culture really has to support it, and it's going to be tough if other people are not already doing it.

Most likely you won't start 100%, or even be able to get 100%. Get one or two days in the middle of the week to avoid the impression you're trying to get long weekends. Promote the extra time from not commuting, energy/green savings, etc.. There are lots of suggestions out there on convincing your boss.

Finally, remember that it doesn't work well for everyone. Some people don't self-direct well without the office environment, miss the social aspect and so forth.

I work from home as well, ~1.25 years now. One of our bigger clients allows us to use one of their rooms as an office if any of us need to meet up, luckily it's like half a mile from my house. I like it and would have a hard time going back to working in an office. Though I do have a kid on the way and a wife soon to be home, we will see how much longer I say that :-p.

My two dogs keep me company and when I need a break I can just go outside and throw the tennis ball with them in the backyard, no more spending my breaks still thinking about a problem. Huge collection of music to keep me happy. Plus I now have a corner office with plenty of sunlight.

That would be me, too. For the last decade or so. Beginning the arrangement was not a problem for the reasons that 1) I own the company and 2) I relocated the offices literally a stone's throw away from home.

I chose to do this for lifestyle reasons, to spend more time with the family and to be able to do my own thing at my own pace, without employees (strength peaking upto 50) harassing me :-) with issues every now and then.

Has worked extremely well for me; no complaints.

I've been working at home for two and a half months, and switched jobs to do it. Or more accurately, I work from home as a consequence of switching to a job that was more in-line with my interests.

This comic pretty well sums it up how it's gone:

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/working_home

Me. I started when I started consulting. I've had 1 office job after that, didn't like it. When I take a job (as an employee) now, it's with that condition. If not, I consult, and then I set my own rules of course.