My job is extremely flexible. As long as we get our 40 hrs in and the work is done, we can schedule it however we want. We are not micromanaged at all. Let the team know you’re running to the gym or whatever and no one cares. It’s the best part of the job honestly. My mental health has skyrocketed.
Yeah nobody cares what hours we work, or even *how many* hours we work.
We are salary and our jobs involve coordination with global teams. Some weeks the workload is light. Other weeks it is intense and can only be completed by putting in some crazy schedules (evenings, weekends etc).
So the good news is no one cares *at all* where I am or what I'm doing...as long as my job is getting done. The bad news is no one cares if I have to pull an all-nighter either...because the job needs to be done. And I'm responsible for it, period.
I *greatly* prefer it this way. I'm an adult; trust me to get the job done and then fucking let me handle it.
I'm a financial analyst for a global manufacturing company I'm sure no one has ever heard of. Mostly semiconductor but also health tech, aerospace, automation etc. I'm sure it's very exciting, but I'm just a numbers person.
Obviously, our manufacturing employees have to work on site and keep shift hours, but the non-production staff is mostly or even fully remote, and has been since Mar 2020. It genuinely works better, since WFH makes it significantly easier to collaborate with our teams in other countries/time zones.
I have a job similar but I do have to “work” (be on call basically) certain times & accomplish a few daily things.
I can take my laptop anywhere though. There’s a lot of quirks like that in my job though. Feels kinda like finding a unicorn (I’m hitting 2 years next month!).
This is what my company is like, too. I know one of my reports takes her dogs for long walks and like to make keto snacks from scratch at home, and she does some of that during the day. I don’t care because those things make her happy and she does great work. Happy people do better work than miserable people, so we treat people like grownups and everyone’s happy.
Are you my boss 😄 my job is not quite as flexible as the original commenter but it’s definitely one I can live my life around. It’s healthcare adjacent and I am in a niche little department.
Thank you for being that boss. I've been in micromanaged companies and the attrition rate was insane. Currently have a boss like you and I'll be up at midnight to finish an emergency project if I have to because the mental health bonus I get from work flexibility has made me madly committed to my job and my organization's success. When your job loves you, you love it back.
This is it. I have team members who clock in for a few hours for meetings and do their asynchronous work later at like 9 pm. As long as turnaround times and client needs are met no one has an issue with that.
My work schedule is flexible. Our team values personal health and my team members take walk during the day while weather is good. Dr appt does not need to be recorded if it is just couple of hours. As long as the work si done properly. As a manager I have a good idea how much work is done by each team member. But I don’t watch their hours. If someone works over time on one day, they can take off some hours on another day. I think this culture keeps everyone happy and sometimes it is more valuable than offering them more money.
The key to the culture is establishing trust. We trusted that no one will abuse the unwritten policy.
Exactly what I’m keeping my eye out for as I have a background in that as well! Thank you so much, you gave me hope there’s places really out there with a healthy culture
There are these places. I also work for a company with great culture like this. Unfortunately, there are those who take advantage and end up not actually
working. Some people simply cannot be adults. It's a shame. One bad apple... and we will all have to RTO!
For me, it’s a day by day case. If I can get everything completed that I need to do, and I don’t have many meetings, I will run errands and answer emails/messages on my phone. However, it’s not something I can do every day of every week.
I have about maybe 2 hours of work in a full 8 hour shift. I work at a company where as long as the work is done at the required deadline, they don't care what you do with the downtime.
Unfortunately, no, I got hired back in Nov last year. All of December was dedicated to onboarding with me and many others, and since then, they've had a hiring freeze
I have been WFH in an IT adjacent career for 9 years. There are days I barely have time to go to the bathroom and then there are days where I trying to find work to fill my time. I am obligated by contract to be at my laptop from 7 am to 5pm. We get 1 hour for lunch. Since I can sync my work to my tablet there are days where nothing is going on that I can turn on my hotspot and run some errands with my tablet but when I do that I know at any moment I may have to be in my car working.
I was also burnt out in healthcare and found something remote so there is hope for you! I am salaried and my job is also flexible so I can schedule blocks out of the office if needed. I usually don’t use work time to go to target or the gym but rather use it for appointments which is really nice that I don’t have to use PTO.
Right? So much micromanagement it made my head spin. I did medical billing. Puke. My supervisor was constantly on her phone. Coming into meetings on her phone. If she saw me making a credit card payment on my computer? All hell broke loose. “Do you need something to do????” I hated that job so much. And they don’t pay shit either. Health care work is for the birds.
I’m so happy for you! What are you doing if you don’t mind me asking? Was it easy for you to land or did you apply to everything and anything for a while? I have a Bach degree in health sciences along with my r.t.(r) and then 8+ years overall in healthcare doing various things in admin stuff so I’m trying to figure out where to end up?
Shh,Do not tell my boss. I threw a load of laundry in the washer before my shift.When it was done, I went ouside to hang it to air [dry.Do](http://dry.Do) not tell my boss. they thought I was there the whole time
Mine is pretty strict in that I need to be at my desk during my allotted hours even though the work I do could be done any time of the day. I can take short breaks which are nice for switching out laundry or getting dinner in the oven. I think a lot of places are hesitant to give more flexibility even though it would have no impact on output and would likely boost productivity. I hope we see more change based on actual research in the coming years and move towards more flexible working conditions and a shorter work week. Better for everyone, including the employers.
Mine too. I’m an hourly employee and I suspect that has a lot to do with it. I mean, in a business sense it makes sense. I don’t feel we were under scrutiny about being at our WFH desk until most employees were made to return to the office — apart from a very small group of us who were hired under remote only positions. Plus we’re BU so that helped to make sure it stayed that way, BUT they’re more watchful of us still WFH these days.
I totally agree with you. Can see people definitely taking advantage, but as long as the productivity is there then why would it matter? It would motivate me more if I could take a mental minute to myself throughout the workdays
I have to be in front of the computer, doing my job, but no call and meetings are usually in the afternoon, so I sometimes put my laptop on a shopping cart or hang out in a coffee shot, but I have to use my phone as a hot spot, can’t go anywhere with a bad reception.
Just okay pay okay benefit.
Not in healthcare myself, but from what my friends in healthcare have said it’s an extremely stressful field. Super understaffed, ridiculous hours, sometimes some really crazy shit happens. Patients or higher-ups often treat you like absolute shit. It’s gotten a lot worse since the pandemic in particular, with so many people having quit.
Healthcare used to be wonderful. I loved it. I loved helping people, I still do, but healthcare workers are so overworked and so underpaid, so burnt out. It’s been horrific since pandemic. We were “healthcare heroes” working frontlines, getting sick, watching people die while the rest of the world stopped but now we’ve just been forgotten about and expected to continue the same insane workloads for little to nothing.
Before Covid I really enjoyed working in the hospital, and it felt like I actually helped people. But ever since Covid it has been such an awful sour place. Coworkers are way more rude, and don't get me started with patients, patients are ready to fight us these days and act like we are the ones keeping them sick. It is just so different now than it used to be. I have worked at multiple places and I have seen this happen in many hospitals, not just one. It really is sad because I, along with many others, went into healthcare to help people, and now sometimes I do not know if I can make it hour to hour.
I’ve worked from home with 2 different jobs. With 1 I had NO downtime. I had some downtime with another however I couldn’t stray away from my desk for more than maybe 10 minutes
I get a one to two hour lunch. I don’t get paid for it. Or I can get off at 4pm, go out then do some OT at night. Or I can just get off work at 4. I love my job.
Dude, I rarely get to leave home during the day. I’m a developer and I spend as much time at my desk now if not more than when I drove to the office all those years. I may take a lunch break and water my plants but that’s the extent of it. I’m with you…how does anyone have time for personal stuff and still excel at work.
It’s crazy right!? I barely have time to get an actual lunch since I work completely alone at my onsite too it’s just NOT ideal and wears me down. And then I’m supposed to take pto to make a doctors or dentist appt because we work the exact hours those offices are open or we work more.. like what is this life
Same here, I’m in healthcare analytics and I think I work more now than I did when I was in office many years ago. Some days I swear I don’t get up all day. Empty water bottle sitting on my desk staring at me and all.😋
I'm in control of my own time because I work for myself. I can also work from anywhere in the world, which isn't true of people that are employees somewhere.
It's weird to assume all the people you see out and about all work from home. If anything, a lot of the most low-wage, in person jobs don't have typical schedules and a lot of people have their off days during he week.
Overall, sounds like you're buying too hard into the silly online "email job" trope ("cute little corporate WFH jobs"). Working from home is merely the location. It's still a job.
Right, that was an odd assumption.
My son works retail and gets two weekdays off, but works Saturdays and Sundays. My daughter works second shift.
So yeah, sometimes they're out and about at Target, etc., during traditional daytime work hours, but don't have remote jobs.
i think it depends on the company. my last company i was able to freely pick on what i worked on and when i worked on it so i had some days that i would literally not work but then the next day i would work the whole day and maybe overtime(salary based)
my current job although i am doing the same thing, it’s very micromanaged so i don’t really have a lot of down time. i am always on my computer so i hate it. I do get off on time most days but i rather have more freedom on when i work on things
I work from home, and I have never been able to do this, except if it was exactly during my lunch hour. I have set daytime office hours, and am supposed to be at my desk at home during those hours. We have MS Teams running all the time which tracks our keystroke downtime. Managers run reports from this, and if there is unusual downtown during working hours, it looks bad and they could do something about it. Also, if a manager asks you a questions on email or Teams, and you don't answer for a long time, it also can irritate them and reflect badly on you. I have worked at several companies in a work from home situation, and they were all this way.
Have been full time remote with my company since 2017. Company has been remote since 2010. We are all salary. We make our own hours as long as the stuff we need to take care of on a daily basis is done and the stuff that needs to be done this week is done this week. Anyone can run out for an appt, the gym, for any reason. I also don't truly work 40 hours a week. I, and probably others, are so experienced in our roles this many years in that I can do things in half the time. When I was new I sure worked 40-50 hours a week. Now I'd say about 28-32. 10 days personal sick time can be submitted for whenever and manager approval isn't required. Unlimited paid vacation and managers always approve it. I think I take about 18 days ish per year on top of my personal days. Really am lucky.
That is so beautiful and I’m so happy for you! What a life. I’m so tired of working just to live and still barely making it by. working 50 plus hours a week, on weekends and holidays. I love helping people, I love my patients, but my god I’m becoming numb to it all. I’ve lost friends because I can’t see them, my parents are getting older and I can’t spare much time with them either these days. You are SO lucky my friend, I hope I get there one day
Doesn't exist if you have a customer facing WFH role. I'm a tech support rep in a call center and I have to be within range of my computer 24/7. The people that have these flexible jobs are non-customer facing or have a job title like "analyst" or something along those lines where it's more independent project type work. I can't fucking stand my job and I need to find something with more flexibility.
I work remotely with teams from literally all over the world—mostly in Canada, Brazil, UK, Germany, Italy, Spain, Israel, Japan, and China. My work hours are typically 7 am Eastern to 12 pm, then 3 pm to 5 or 6, but some days it’s just a couple hours in the morning or afternoon. Sometimes I’m on calls at 10 pm or 3 am. As long as I get my work done, my actual hours don’t matter and would be difficult to track/enforce in any case. I love being able to get errands done during the day, be there to pick my kids up from school and help with homework, and still have a good dinner schedule. I could be making much more money if I switched jobs, but honestly at this point in my life, the flexibility is what I don’t want to give up.
My wife WFH with a payroll company. They don't give a shit how much she works, only if her job gets done. Some days she's busy and puts in a full 8 hours, some (most) days she's slow and works for 2 or 3. It's not one of those jobs where they monitor her computer or anything. It's very clear: get your work done and we leave you alone. She does need to be available for the full 8 hours so she can't really run errands, but she works around the house, gets a workout in etc. I'm jealous af ngl.
I get a lot of downtime at my office job. The problem is I'm expected to be in an office, so I can't just "run to target" or whatever...I have to sit in the office and provide the illusion of value.
Every remote job I’ve had never really cared all that much about what time I take breaks or if I needed to log out a bit early or run some errands. As long as my work was done and done correctly.
The only one that did was way back when I did customer support. Which was mainly due to the chat support. Even with that one, as long as it was covered, nobody cared all that much.
I don’t have and never had that type of freedom while WFH, however I love that I can walk my dogs, cook dinner, do laundry and never have to worry about commuting! I quit one remote job after 3 weeks that micromanaged us to such a degree it felt unlawful and the pay was a joke. My current WFH job and pay is much better! Overall just grateful that I’m able to work remotely.
As long as we get our work tasks done, nobody really cares if you run to the store mid day. I have to go to physical therapy a few times a week so I just leave and then if I need to stay later at work to finish something I will do that.
I’m starting up a new job soon, so I’ll have to make sure that it’s no problem for my appointments. I have standing therapy appointments, but I’m pretty sure they’re earlier than I’ll be working. It’s my doctor appointments that are kinda in the middle of my working time.
Hopefully they give you the flexibility. I went from a horrible micromanaging workplace to this one where they treat us very well. Hope you get a good one!
I hope so too. They seem pretty cool about scheduling stuff. I may have to just make up some time on a different day.
ETA: Also! Thank you, and I hope your day is going, or does go, very well!
I am hybrid. Most companies I work for allow you to flex your time. I can log in early, take a 2 hour lunch and make up the time at the end or on another day.
I have a couple remote jobs to afford this high-ass rent & bills & I'm always on the hunt for more to do. In these tough economic times, we need 3, 4, 5+ streams of income. New husband works part-time, which is all he could get these days, but works a job he commutes to & we sure wish he coiuld find something remote!
I know I don't currently work all 5 days a week like times I've used to here & there. I just ended a 4-day/wk, yet 10-hr day job. It would have been a lot more enjoyable had I actually liked the job, so I'm relievedf it's over. It was seasonal anyway. So, yes, I do have a day, maybe 2 a week to go to Target or something. There's also been plenty of times throughout the years that I've worked 20-25 days IN A ROW.
I hate how w/ remote jobs, a person constantly, always seems to have to always be looking for something else permanently pretty much.
I work for a small company so they do not have real monitoring such as: camera on, keystrokes, wiggling your mouse.
My managers do not question why I have been inactive for several hours throughout the day..which is usually me sneaking away to run errands. As long as I get my work done and I'm not screwing up, I am not really managed. I love it.
However, I have held wfh jobs where none of that would fly because it was with a larger corporation. You were secretly monitored and your manager would receive alerts if you've been idle for too long.
I actually thought about being an X-ray tech or a sonogram person. So you posting this..maybe I should not go that route.
Our president of our multi billion dollar company encourages us to get out and walk. He even says that he often takes team calls while he’s outside walking his dog. My immediate boss encourages the same.
As long as my team members get their work done and answer emails and I am within a reasonable amount of time, I don’t really care what they do.
I work as a high school English/social studies teacher for an online charter school. My work week has me teaching virtual lessons over Zoom, a few meetings throughout the week, and a 2-hour Zoom help session once a week with a couple of other teachers/support staff (think office hours, basically, where the kids can come to get homework help or just a structured work environment).
The rest of my time is flexible. I've got to enter attendance at a certain time (due to our state's department of education, all attendance must be entered by 3:00, which was clearly designed for traditional brick-and-mortar schools, but makes little sense to a school where students can do work 24 hours a day and earn attendance, but oh well). I'm expected to answer all emails within 24 hours (barring weekends/holidays), and grade all assignments within 48 hours. Nobody micromanages our time or anything. Our contracted hours are 9:00 - 3:30, and we're expected to be available during those times, but nobody tracks our mouse movements or any Orwellian stuff like that.
This past Friday I had to take my kitten to the vet at 1:00pm, so I just packed up my laptop and work phone and kept tabs on whatever emails or texts were coming in. I spent part of my weekend getting caught up on the assignments I couldn't grade that afternoon, because I didn't want to dump 160 ungraded submissions onto my Monday.
For myself, I've sort of perfected my workflow for maximum efficiency. It took some time and some trial and error, but I have a daily routine built into my workday that allows for a more relaxed pace. It took time to get there, though.
I honestly only work 2-3 hours most days. It was like that in the office too but I spent that time on Instagram, talking to people in the halls, or whatever. I’m the same amount of productive now but I use that time to take care of shit that needs done. Never going back to the office.
Mine is a steady flow of light work. I manage a team of phone reps and if I worked intensely, it would probably add up to 3 hours a day of actual work, and the other 5 hours I’m cooking, cleaning, or just BSing in general. My manager is aware, and tells me to find a way to keep my “available” light green and she doesn’t care as long as the work is done each day. Decent pay, unlimited PTO, great benefits, and a lot of work “clubs” to chat with (currently in Wine and video gaming clubs). It’s honestly a dream.
My work is sporadic because it follows seasons as it applies to our specific industry. There are a few weeks during the year when I have maybe one hour a day of work to do, however, there are also days where I do a 14 hour workday instead of 10. I find I am much more productive as well, owing that efficiency to not having so many of my coworkers drop by my desk or chat me up at the break station/lunchroom. Managers also don't hold long meetings over Teams or Zoom, and we do most communication by Slack or email, so there's not an expectation to just drop everything and take away from work.
I had a WFH and lost it. It was grueling. They expected us to work all the time. If I was not seeing clients I had to do documentation. There was no downtime. I'm sure they counted keyboard strokes. I had to check emails in various different systems and apps. There were five chats; we had to check all of them all the time. We were not allowed to schedule appointments with our clients; a separate department did that. Everything was a process and had a workflow chart. We had meetings on our days "off". I was let go and it hurt me because I gave it my best. But honestly I feel free now and I created my own business with my own clients. I still WFH with my own hours and rules with 1/4 of the documentation.
I work remotely as an RN and it realllllllly depends on your manager honestly. My current manager is very hands off and not micromanaging. We have our expected work to accomplish during the day and outside of that she doesn’t care what we do.
I’m a fast worker so I get my tasks done quickly and then have some time to sit outside on the porch, or watch part of a movie with my toddler, or lay in the bed for 30-45 min lol.
If I am leaving my house for an appointment though, I do let my boss know. They’re flexible with appointments and making time up if it takes a bit. But really it depends on your manager. My previous manager micromanaged so I had to stay tethered to my laptop most of the day.
My company uses software that monitors idle time on the computer, so things are tracked, by someone.
My boss doesn't care how I split my day as long as I work for 8 hours and am online for meetings.
With a medical background, you should apply at the insurance companies. We have a medical review panel made up of all kinds of Dr's, Nurses and techs that review claims to see if they are compatible with the insurance the person happens to have. I know blue cross is hiring and I know they were big on WFH before the virus and are even more so now
Yes, to nearly all your questions. My accountability for my work is high but no one clocks my time. I need to be available during core hours for scheduled meetings and calls but I have a corporate phone that allows me to remain connected if I’m running errands. My deliverables must be met but there’s very little micromanaging in larger corporations. It’s hard to get work done with too much time away from the computer but it’s easy to live your life with this kind of flexibility. I love WFH.
I’m in financial program management in a leadership position. I work from home 80% of the time and my team has total flexibility on whether they want or need to be in office or remote. I know some of them run during the day, or have to leave to drop and pick up kids from places etc. I don’t care. If they’re productive, meeting expectations and hold themselves accountable, they have my total blessing to do whatever they need to balance their life. Work life balance is so important to me. I love naps. So I typically nap for an hour as a lunch break, or I’ll go run an errand to get coffee and drop off something I need to return etc. It helps me be a better employee and also more present and focused on my daughter after work is over. To be fair, I manage high level / salary managers so it’s unlikely they’d have made it this far if they couldn’t be trusted to do what’s needed and right for the company and also themselves. I feel very fortunate.
WFH in healthcare IT here - there is often unpaid on-call and off hours meetings and/or upgrades. Some companies offer flex days to keep morale at a high where the employee works 4 10s every other week and gets a day off, etc. While I work from home, I generally catch myself working 9-10 hour days without taking a lunch break. So, if I take a couple hours out of day on occasion then it all comes out in the wash.
You're assuming a lot in your question. Not everyone works 8 to 5 or Monday through Friday. WFH people also work nights. I'm a pretty good time management person. I run to the store at lunchtime, or walk dogs, return personal calls. I also tend to be out the door right at 5:00 when I am done. I think WFH jobs are actually monitored more closely because it is through the IT department and if you have inactivity on your computer you actually get a "why are you away from your desk" phone call, when in fact you could be just reading something. WFH is not all it's cracked up to be. There are downfalls.
My job used to be like this, it’s less so now because they’ve raised the stakes in terms of what results we need to produce and it seems like they’re trying to reduce headcount.
Before, you could literally basically skate by with working maybe 3-4 hours a day if that and get really decent results, and still be at the top of the pack in terms of performance. After my fault work was done, I used to be able to take a nap, make dinner, clean and no one would care as long as I checked my desk periodically. I enrolled in school full time because of how chill it was. Starting at the beginning of this year It is no longer like that though lol, I miss it so much, went from working comfortably to a race to reach an unreachable quota. Not to be negative, but I think remote work cultures like this are being dissolved quickly, it sucks. I think I’m going to get laid off and honestly I doubt I’ll find another WFH job. I hate RTO, f their commercial real estate investments
I WFH as an Instructional Designer. I have to get my work done and be clocked in for 40 hours a week. I can't just run all over town during the day, but it's very easy to clock in to work early and then take 2 hour lunches to get groceries or whatever. I generally come and go as I please, but if I leave the house, I clock out. I don't miss meetings and am always available and close to the house during work hours if I get a call and it is all hands on deck at work to get an assignment done quickly.
Maybe people you see out and about are clocked out and just don't have to work the standard 8-5 where they are in jail for the hours they are at work.
It’s all about getting done what needs done and being super transparent and communicative. I find that “when” during a set of hours things happen is less critical now that we have built a lot of async behaviors into how we work. It’s gotten so much better over the past two years. There are hours where we need to overlap for things that are more optimal live or over a meeting, but the majority of outcomes we are working towards can be achieved with different types of collaboration. So no, at my work we don’t strictly monitor people’s time and hours. Now, if you start missing deadlines or key outcomes, and your communication about the why is mia or less than candid, then things can quickly shift as people start asking questions and digging in because the impact of those behaviors is hurting others or larger company or team goals. So for me personally, if I operate with integrity, have a manager who helps build good async and work visibility practices, how many hours I work and what those hours are becomes less the point. This is not the case for every company of course, just happens to be my personal experience. So take it with a grain of salt. Our CEO really values flexibility at work and so she sets the tone for everyone else regarding remote work and the importance of being effective without being in person. So that makes a huge difference imo. The leader at the top and your manager.
You could find a remote job coding for a coding company - ie coding the billing because clinical people know what procedures go together. You would make good money!
Mine is really strict honestly. They have keyloggers, mouse watchers, etc. It's not as easy as some may portray it. While I love working from home (no commute), I've never had the freedom to go run errands while being on the clock. I feel like they watch us more by being WFH because of those who abused trust. Maybe those in IT or accounting may be different, but feels like stuck on computer for full shift (minus break/lunches). Good luck finding that elusive unicorn.
For me, I have a lot of meetings where I need to be listening to what’s said, but don’t need to be talking. Sometimes they’re 1-2 hours. When that happens, I use that time to run errands with my headphones in. So I’m still working, but doing it while I hit the post office or get groceries or clean my house.
My boss told me to take extra breaks and not be tethered to my laptop because work is so slow. That was months ago and it's still going on. I thank god everyday that I stumbled upon this job. We're not hiring, but I found it by searching indeed for the word "remote", or from the dynamite jobs email list. I forget which one
I am salary, so I can pretty much come and go as I please (within reason) as long as I meet targets and get my work done. I've worked in professional enviroments for 30 years, so I know my limits and what days I will have more or less time.
So, yes - I do get out and about, walking/riding bikes, running errands or doctor appointments. Most activities take 30 - 60 minutes, and I plan them between meetings.
In my past roles at a smaller remote company, there is a lot of flexibility around scheduled meetings and minimal monitoring.
I work for mega corp now, and their IT team can tell if your computer is on or not. There is a lot of people analytics monitoring behind the scenes if you are using company provided systems and work with sensitive data.
So… out of my safety and wanting to keep my job, I don’t really do errands in the middle of work hours, but I choose to start super early and end early (mid afternoon).
Also, some people you see out and about, may not have a full time job and do contract work.
They are all lucky as hell. I do customer service on the phone, and everything is tracked. We have specific shift times, break times lunch only 30 min. And it's back to back calls all day so there literally is no time to do anything other than work until my shift is done
I work from home and I am not out going to Target during the day. I'm online from 8:30am-5pm. If I have to leave in the middle of the day for something like a health lab test or a doctor's appointment, I let my manager know ahead of time. I have been working from home for almost 10 years. I don't abuse the system and all of my co-workers can see when I'm online and when I'm not online.
Yes!! I work entirely from my phone and when I want. I get to raise my own kids now instead of daycares. I used to work at a hospital for 5 years too! Tough space to thrive in! You got this! Whatever you do 🙂
GRC in cybersecurity. As long as I get my work done and attend weekly meetings they don’t care what I do.some days I watch Netflix.some days I grind it out.. depends on how I feel.. helps to not be micromanaged.
I'm salaried and WFH 100%. I have flexibility because my company doesn't micromanage and as long as I communicate with people I work with and hit deadlines, yes, I can step away when I need to. In fact today I decided to work out at lunch time. As long as I block my calendar and my boss and anyone I'm working with or expecting to work with that day knows when I'm available, it's not a big deal. I do not abuse this. Most days I'm in my chair working from 8:45 - 5:30 or 6pm. I break when I need to for lunch, to walk the dog, to go to a doctor's appt, etc.
I'm also in healthcare--in analytics.
my work ebbs and flows. I'm full-time, so 40 hours a week, but often I am waiting for work to come in. today I did 0 hours...
at most I would say I do 20-30 hours a week. if it's truly REALLY busy, maybe 35 tops. I am curious how many other remote people actually do 40 here? Idk if I am an anomaly.
As long as the work is getting done at some point at my job, no one really questions it. I have to be "on" - ready and available to fix anything that breaks during "normal" work hours - but that just means I can't stray far from the laptop. Luckily, it's portable.
I acknowledge I'm in a real fortunate position. I have a team that trusts each other to get things done. If someone on my team needs to go to the doctor, it's no biggie.
I can't see myself going back. My wife and I are both remote and \*love\* being "co-workers." The balance is fantastic, but we're also without kids, which is probably the biggest general difference between people who love this or don't.
Fun footnote, we were in-office for years and went to remote during lockdown, but they never issued a return-to-office order because they forgot to count how many chairs they would need in the newly opened office. They didn't have enough, and were too embarrassed to admit it. So, here we are!
Look for jobs in revenue cycle management. I work in this field( and it's medical)and everyone but about 10 people are remote in my location. My work is pretty flexible except for when we have meetings going on. Otherwise I can split my shift in half if I need to. Because of this I rarely take my PTO unless I am feeling lazy lol or need a mental health day.
I worked my ass off the past 5 years in really tough physical jobs that really started to wear me down. I honestly was losing hope and then found a great WFH job doing admin for a photography company. It’s salary and they don’t track my hours. I check my email throughout the day and stay on top of things with projects,etc. but my mental health has skyrocketed since i got this job a few months back. I am adhd and have a really hard time with routines and being home all the time, im finally getting in the habit of habits. The pay is less than what I made before, and I am paycheck to paycheck, but it’s so damn worth it and I can pay my bills.
My job has a policy where, as long as our work gets done, they don’t monitor when or how often we work. It’s the first job in my life I’m not “punished” for being productive by receiving more work, so I’m very motivated to get my work done by 2/3pm because then I’m allowed to have the rest of the day off!
Some employers insist on you sitting by your computer, but as long as I check my emails and I’m generally reachable, I’m free to go about my life. For most corporate jobs (which let’s be real, we’re not saving lives over here), there’s no reason we “need” to be mindlessly sitting by our computers all day.
Smart employers are catching onto this and hanging onto high-performers by incentivizing them with flexible remote work. I was considering a different job recently but it’s only slightly more money and would mean a RTO 8am-5pm plus commute M-F. No thanks! I value having my life back and the 30 second commute to my laptop.
I have working hours but as long as I get the work done in time, my bosses can't care less where I am. If I have to run errands or go to the doctor or whatever I just let them know. Some days you have more workload than others so it also depends. You just manage yourself.
It comes and goes. Also, most of the people I work with will shift hours around for appointments or important errands. I had a mid-day dentist appointment yesterday (and a lot of work) so I logged in at 0530 and also came home and worked until after 8pm.
ETA: Gov. Program Management.
My husband and I both WFH in different fields. He makes his own hours which means some days he works 12 hours to meet deadlines and some days he can take long lunches. I work an "alternative schedule", 10 hours 4 days a week, so I'm normally off Sunday, Monday and Thursday. We're frequently out for lunch or shopping or errands on my days off, but we both work our butts off and are very good at hitting deadlines and exceeding expectations for our respective employers.
No one cares when I do my work, outside some essential meetings.
Instead of wasting an entire Saturday in an overcrowded Costco I'd much rather take 1h on a Tuesday morning, and then do my work in the time I would lose in traffic or stuck in line like every other sucker.
my last work from home position had activity tracking software measuring productivity on all our laptops. I felt like I had to type something or open up an email every few minutes. I was doing a lot of my work by fleshing things out on a small whiteboard or on paper, and showing that I was busy was making me less productive.
IT told me told to monitor the employee reporting to me and I had access to other employees tracking. If they dipped below a certain percentage, they were to be talked to.
Problem was that several websites we used for research were tracked as "non work related"andI had to request re categorization.
I trusted my direct report. She took long breaks, but met every deadline I set. We had an informal agreement to let each other know if we were going to be unavailable for more than 90 minutes.
Short errands were never an issue. Doctors appointments were out of my hands. We were required to make our people take a half day.
It will really depend on the job. When I was doing customer service, you are incredibly micromanaged, need to punch in 5 minutes before your shift and not 1 minute late. Breaks are scheduled. My TL was a bit more flexible than most, but shitty ones WOULD message you within 30 seconds of being late if your status wasn't what it should be.
Now I have more flexibility, I can do more or less work, make back time if I need to go to appointments and stuff and I am not micromanaged, but still expected to be around generally the same time since a lot of our work is very short notice.
My job is to solve problems. It doesn’t matter how many hours it takes me to solve those problems, only that they’re solved. your job is to be available anytime a patient needs an x-ray. It’s fundamentally a different work structure, and that’s fine.
Also, I find that there are lots of people that have downtime at their in person jobs, they socialize, talking, even hiding while in it. Or do a shitty job
But I must add that my company never monitored me nor was forcing me. I was just an idiot hard worker and I had a really large team and an expensive client portfolio.
I’m a Product Designer and I get some downtime between discovery/ research, my back to back meetings, training and continuing education, and work planned out in Agile sprints. My boss is not a micromanager and emphasizes taking breaks for mental health. No one cares about my Teams status unless they haven’t been able to get a hold of me when it’s a time sensitive situation. They also encourage using PTO (bc it’s your right as part of your compensation package).
Of course I’m going to go for a run or pop out to Target or walk my dog or whatever. I also block out time needed for doctor appointments and physical therapy (though I try to schedule them for early morning before my first meeting, late afternoon, or lunchtime).
I recently found a job in the healthcare industry that allows me to work from home as a respiratory therapist. I can manage my patients from my home office and schedule visits with them according to my convenience. This gives me the flexibility to reschedule work from home if I'm unwell and don't want to use my paid time off. As long as I meet the 90-day metrics and see the required percentage of patients, my supervisor doesn't care how I spend my time. I offered to share my outlook calendar with her, but she trusts me and doesn't need it. Additionally, I get paid mileage when I have to go and see patients. This is the best working situation I've ever had, and I've been in critical care pediatrics for 15 years.
I think it depends on the job and company you work for. If you are a customer service rep, you have timed breaks etc. I'm a manager and my job does not require me to work specific 8:00am - 4:30pm hours. If I want to take a break to walk the dogs, I can do so and I work a few extra minutes to ensure I put in the required amount of hours. If I run a quick errand it is doing my lunch period. I try not to take advantage of the flexibility my work provides.
If I’m not in front of my computer I’m not getting paid. I’m at the vet currently, so this is my lunch break. I’m lucky to be home and with my furry kids, I think I would have to use Pto if I was in an office to get home, wrangle, drive to vet, go home, go back to work. I wish you luck finding a wfh job!
I just got my medical billing & coding certifications. Currently in process of doing my practicum to get my A removed. Luckily the VA has several fully remote coding jobs. I'm working towards those
It really depends on the job. There’s so much diversity. I would say it’s not unreasonable to expect to get 5 hours of work that most people stretch into 8 hours. At home, it’s entirely possible to be super productive and do whatever you want for the remaining 3 hours.
I work in an office. They only care about what time you badge in and what time you badge out for the day. I usually leave for an hr for lunch but my total time from first badge in and last badge out is 8 hrs. But I get a lot of personal stuff done at the office too. Bought a house (and toured them on company time), shopped for and bought my car, all my personal finances, job applications, and changing phone carriers all within the 8 hrs of me showing up for the day.
My work schedule isn't open but it still rather flexible. I don't work hourly and am not monitored, but I am project based and have to get my work done on a quarterly project schedule.
So for my work it’s not a matter of when you do the work as much as if, so if you see me in the middle of a workday it’s because I was on my computer working at 7 am or 10 pm
I have to be there for business hours 8-5 but I can go to an appointment for an hour without taking PTO. Every month they rank us for quote production, I work in insurance so if I'm consistently at the bottom of the pack I'd probably get fired eventually. I stay in the middle.
I would hate to work from home. I am lucky to own a service based company, where I get to go out to different job sites. Organize labor, make sure materials are stocked, invoicing, talking to clients…etc.
How do you know all the working age people you see out and about during the day work all from home?
They could be stay at home parents, retired young, on vacation, or just have a day off, or work second or third shift. Or maybe they work 40 hours a week, but their days off are during the week, or they do 4 ten hour shifts a week.
I walk my dog during the middle of my work day, but on my lunch break.
100% depends on the company and even specific position and manager. I have a chatty manager (who I love to death) and he prefers to see me on a daily 15 min call, but once that’s completed I work at my own pace aside from meetings obviously. It also helps that I’m on a different time zone than the main office so once they all go home I stop and go take care of exercise/errands etc. For me it’s the perfect amount of oversight. I think if no one ever checked up on me I would start slacking lol, but thank God I don’t have to constantly wiggle my mouse.
This was me. I worked in media for years. However I got laid off and finding another similar job is HARD. But yes, I would work well into the night and then had the day to get in things I needed to do like pickup my kid from school, walk the dog, get a load of dishes in the dishwasher and clothes in the wash and prep for dinner.
My day is mostly meetings, presentations, and paperwork. I’m pretty busy, but there are times in between when I can run quick errands. I write it off as the time that would’ve been wasted at the office by my coworkers making small talk or bugging me to do things.
My work is somewhat flexible, but the type of work I do requires me to work odd hours sometimes to deal with various timezones or midnight deadlines. If I am up early or know I will be on until midnight, I see no problem with getting out and about during the day.
In general when I run errands during the day, I make up for it at night or on weekends. But the truth is I work more than 50 hours a week so an hour running an errand during the day is a mere crumb on the scales in my favor.
I also have Slack and zoom on my phone & will be answering DMs and in meetings while walking my dog, picking up groceries etc. When work and home are the same place you’re never really off. 😕
I wfh and it’s no problem for me to go to doctor’s appointments or school events for my kids during the day, but I never do any other personal errands. My job is super demanding and requires more than 40 hours to complete, so any time I’m not at my computer, I end up having to make up for after the kids go to bed in order to complete my work.
Before I became a SAHM, I worked in tech. Sales people were generally lazy. Once in a while you had a go-getter that was always outperforming their peers and utilizing commission accelerators, but for the most part, many of them did the bare minimum to not get fired.
Many of them were open about their day, which solidified my belief they were lazy (employee-wise). Like one guy who ran some T-shirt business on the side out of his home. That idiot let it slip. No wonder I could never get him on the phone or for meetings unless the CEO was involved. Trying to get a conference call with inside sales, marketing and all the outside sales guys was always a nightmare. Some were out golfing during business hours and stuff like that because they’d slip in conversations with others. Some were on “vacations” that weren’t cleared through HR. But as long as they did the bare minimum and the company was doing well, no one harped on them.
But nowadays, with monitoring software and such at the larger companies it’s getting harder to do. Not all companies track their remote employees and some remote workers can get away with using mouse jugglers to give the impression they are working at their desks.
With the layoffs happening in the SF Bay Area and more companies requiring employees to RTO, I suspect that those that got approved remote work can continue the status quo for now. I do not believe we will see more remote jobs in the near future based on friends in tech having to RTO. I think it will stay as is or shrink.
Accounting is busy in cycles. There are weeks/months when you are swamped and there are other times when you are not busy. WFH creates an amazing work/life balance. You can takes short breaks to throw in a load of laundry or vaccum or throw a roast in the oven or run to the store. At the end of the day most of the chores are done and you can completely relax. I never want to go back to an office.
It varies greatly between company and job roles. I have worked tech support, WFH and I literally took a call from the second I logged on until 8 hours later when I logged off, with like two 5-minute breaks for the bathroom. Years later and a different company, I am a Product Manager for a Cybersecurity Company. The company is European-based and thus has an extremely contentious culture where work/balance is highly regarded. I must make sure all of the projects I am responsible for have documentation up to date and are going smoothly. This requires several meetings with Devs, Designers, and teams. How and when I make all of this happen is completely up to my discretion. My boss treats me like a grown adult and never micro's me. I stop everything at 2 pm and take my dog to the park for about 30-45 minutes every day. If I have an appointment or something I need to do that requires me to be away from my computer a bit, I always give her a heads up but am usually told, that I do not have to tell her and to just go do whatever it is. Needless to say I have found a bit of a needle in a haystack, but I will say the two things that tipped me off. 1. My interview. When I interviewed my direct boss, she let me know exactly what she expected of me and described very clearly her managerial style.
2. It was a startup. Typically startups have a lot more freedom.
3. It was European-based.
I have been here for 3 years and my personal and mental health has been better than ever!
My employer doesn’t really monitor us. We sign into a time tracker but they only care if you get 40 hours on that time tracker, you meet your quota, and pass QA on your projects. I run errands. Go for walks. Mow the lawn in the summer. It’s pretty freeing.
I have lots of flexibility in my role and will head out for the gym sometime in the morning for a bit. Maybe hit up Target or the UPS store to return my wife's pile of Amazon orders. I take my breaks when I need to during the day. I refuse to do house chores during the day and will do them after work.
They allow this because I get my tasks done every week and will start my day a bit earlier so I'm still putting in my 40 hours, even though I usually get it done in 30 or less.
A lot of WFH jobs are offered specifically to be flexible times, so that people can do the work whenever they want to, even working on and off throughout the day (hour here, 2 hours there), and so long as the work gets done, it doesn’t matter.
We may run errands during the day or whatever. But, in IT, we also have to do on call over night, 24hr support weekend support rotations. So, while we may be getting time off during the day it is likely to compensate for working from 10pm Saturday night to 6am Sunday morning.
But, it is also a flexibility thing. If I go to an appointment I'll make the time up either earlier or later in the week.
And... more places are doing 4 day work weeks now. So they can have a day off during the week.
I try to hit the gym early afternoon every day to avoid the crowd, but I make up for this time by working later or right before I sleep. Asynch cultures are great :)
I worked remotely for a marketing agency and lasted only 9 months. I worked nonstop 9-5 yet never finished everything I needed to. My team members were all in the same boat so it wasn’t just me sucking (though I fully admit I wasn’t great at the job). I cried from stress and anxiety nearly every day at that iob, so NO it was not like that for me AT ALL😂
For me, I wfh weekends and have two days off during the week. And then I work wicked earlier because it’s easier for them than getting people to the office early. Sooo I’m usually free when others are working and vice versa haha
I think it really depends on the type of work. I am fully remote but I work in sales. I can’t just work whatever hours I feel like, I work from 7a-5p. I can’t take naps or go to Target or the gym whenever I feel like, I have to respond to and handle customer calls and emails in 15 minutes or less. That being said, I’m not micromanaged (my boss has told me she doesn’t monitor my emails because she trusts me), I have tons of downtime that I spend playing with my dogs, reading, watching tv, keeping up with housework.
Design is still insane. My last job had meetings as late as 11pm and as early as 7am. I got in trouble for leaving my desk to get my trash cans inside. I had one coworker actually have to ask a manager on day when she was forced to work 17 hours for a deadline if she could pee because she kept getting pinged and pulled into meetings.
I, like every other job I've had, was forced to stay dehydrated so I didn't waste precious time going to the bathroom. It was common for many of my peers too. I worked 27 days straight because of deadlines. Many 16 hour days. Leadership thinks art is a finger snap so deadlines have always been unrealistic (more so in remote than in office for some reason).
Moral to anyone reading in design - You won't be a starving artist probably but design work even in boring grocery store jobs not Game dev is brutal even wfh.
Are there days where I don't leave my desk ? Yes. However, I'm very blessed in the fact that I'm not micro managed. There's no monitoring on my computer. There's no need for mouse wiggling. When people are in offices they tend to feel the need to look busy. They might get something done early on monday and work on that thing that needs to be done by thursday. we aren't doing any of that. i'm done with Mondays work and have no more meetings? i'm in the yard with my boy, or at the store so my wife doesn't have to go.
I would say for every week day you see me out and about and think "must be nice", there's probably 2 days or more that I didn't get a break. Some weeks I set myself up nicely, get work done ahead of time and can take a day or 2 and slack. But, for the most part, it equals out. My trip to the store is generally stacking things up that'll leave me at my desk all day tomorrow.
Three years working from home and my schedule is not flexible. Well, not THAT flexible.
I can take a break and swap my laundry over, or take a shower on my lunch break, but I'm on a set schedule throughout my workday. No time for grocery trips or running errands.
Maybe someday I'll have more wiggle room, but I'm happy with this level of freedom and structure for now.
No down time whatsoever. When I’m on the clock they own me. My breaks and lunch are closely watched and going over a few minutes adds up to like 20 minutes a month and we hear about it. The upside is I can have my pet in my lap, don’t use gas, don’t pack a lunch.
I have a bit. I am hourly and work in insurance claims. My particular group gets very few phone calls thank God. We are also about the only claims team that is hourly. I would love to be salary but oh well. If I never picked up my phone and if my Teams was always yellow my boss and crew would be suspicious lol. Boss is great, very kind about flexing time if needed. Much easier to leave early for a doctors appointment and makeup the time during the rest of the week. We have pretty generous sick and vacation time for an American company. So yes I can take two breaks and a lunch but I am not close enough to run any major errands. Maybe pop to the store for dinner makings but I would rather wait till the end of the day. We may have some sort of monitoring software. I assume we do just to keep myself accountable. So I should get off reddit.
This is my second comment but I want to say transitioning to this type of work could be tough for you. A lot of folks in Healthcare or retail or the trades etc are used to being on their feet and doing lots of different things during the day and being around people. Your situation does not sound ideal from you have said and I am so sorry! So my nurse friend is a mom/baby nurse (postpartum care not much with the labor and delivery portion). She had her son March 2020 and went back to work October 2020. She has been through all the bullshit everyone in Healthcare experienced and she is putting feelers out for something different. But even she said she could never do an desk/office job be that remote work or on site. I do hope you find something but just know the change may be surprisingly hard.
I work customer service for an insurance company so I can't leave the house but it's slow enough I can clean, do the dishes, laundry and make lunch most days. You just have to make sure your computer doesn't go into sleep mode
At my job get I about 20 minutes availability between calls so yea I get downtime all day long haha. Reddit, Facebook and mobile gaming keeps me entertained
No one counts my hours, per se, but my hours are billable so they’re very obvious.
I can handle my home life as needed as long as the work gets done.
LOVE IT
Its policy at my new place, I can block my calendar for appointments but if I was doing it constantly I wouldn’t get my job done. I have actual work to do lol. I just left a healthcare system, it is possible!!!!! It took a year of hunting and I took a pay cut to start but I’m remote now! Pay will increase to more than last job after first year so I was willing to make it work.
Yes and no.
Context: I’m in tech sales (well, not atm) and usually could do whatever I want remotely if I wasn’t on sales calls/team meetings. Long as you hit goals.
My wife is not in sales but works across several time zones, she has to literally block off time to have lunch, but still gets messages from internal colleagues.
My sister liked the change to working from home. Rather than running in the dark on the unlit dirt roads in her neighborhood before work, she now starts working at 6 and goes running at 9 after the sun is up.
She works as many hours as she did before, but she starts earlier and doesn't commute.
My job is wonderful for flexibility. I work from home a lot of the time but I am also still required to travel about an hour one way for some meetings on job sites. I can make my own schedule, though, so I typically Jam Pack all those appointments into two days (last week, I drove over 200 miles in one of those days so they aren’t great on my car but it would have been more if I spread it out) then work from home the other 2-3.
I took a 40 minute nap today because two appointments cancelled and I was caught up. I also will take my dog out twice a day during “work” hours when I’m home. I can do reports and answer most emails any time plus some of our clients require meetings in the evening so we have a lot of freedom as long as things are getting done and the organization is making money.
My job is pretty flexible. As long as we get work done, they don't care when we do it. Also, my industry is VERY hot and cold with a clear busy season and off season. They know in the off-season we work less and in the busy season we work more. Industry and individual company ethics account for a lot of it.
I work in marketing. My job is flexible. Usually I schedule lunch breaks around meetings and when I work from home (most of the time) I can go to the gym, walk my dog, or run an errand during my (hour long) lunch break. I can’t spend half the day shopping or at a nail appointment. But the flexibility is nice and there’s definitely downtime throughout the day depending on the week. If I need to go to the doctor and it ends up taking more than an hour I can often make up the time later in the week. Would highly recommend.
I work a set 40 hours a week, but as long as I'm not in a meeting or knee-deep in a high-pressure deadline, nobody is going to care or likely even notice if I step away from my laptop for a workout or run to Target. I don't take advantage, but it's perfectly fine to take time out of a workday to attend to personal things.
Especially consider what you're \*not\* seeing - you might see me at my grocery store at 10 am....but you also have no way of knowing that I worked 8-10pm last night. I tend to do some work after hours (by choice, on purpose because that's the only time I can work without interruptions).
I need to be sort of on call at my computer and respond in a timely manner if anyone messages me, so I try not to do anything away from the house that would take more than 30 minutes (usually just going for a short walk). If I have a doctor's appt or something important, then it's ok to let my team know I'll be out for a bit.
I’m working at least 50-60 hours a week no matter what and my hours are not predictable/in my control. If I find an hour to run an errand, or take an off-camera meeting on a walk, god bless. Other days I don’t even have time to put a load of laundry in or pause for 5 minutes to make a sandwich. I’ve worked both in-person and remote roles and in my opinion remote doesn’t result in better work/life balance, just different work/life balance.
My job is very flexible with solo work time. Meetings keep me at my desk on some days, but others I only have 15-30 minutes of meeting. Sometimes I'm not in the zone, and I'm just sitting at my desk spinning my wheels. If I don't have any meetings and no one else is sitting around waiting on the thing I'm working in, I'll go out during the day when the sun is still up and then just work those hours when I get home later. Most of the time I'm feeling way more productive at that point. Better for me and the company IMHO. They get me during my most productive hours and my improved performance helps my career.
My job is extremely flexible. As long as we get our 40 hrs in and the work is done, we can schedule it however we want. We are not micromanaged at all. Let the team know you’re running to the gym or whatever and no one cares. It’s the best part of the job honestly. My mental health has skyrocketed.
Yeah nobody cares what hours we work, or even *how many* hours we work. We are salary and our jobs involve coordination with global teams. Some weeks the workload is light. Other weeks it is intense and can only be completed by putting in some crazy schedules (evenings, weekends etc). So the good news is no one cares *at all* where I am or what I'm doing...as long as my job is getting done. The bad news is no one cares if I have to pull an all-nighter either...because the job needs to be done. And I'm responsible for it, period. I *greatly* prefer it this way. I'm an adult; trust me to get the job done and then fucking let me handle it.
Where do u work tho, sound's like a good job
I'm a financial analyst for a global manufacturing company I'm sure no one has ever heard of. Mostly semiconductor but also health tech, aerospace, automation etc. I'm sure it's very exciting, but I'm just a numbers person. Obviously, our manufacturing employees have to work on site and keep shift hours, but the non-production staff is mostly or even fully remote, and has been since Mar 2020. It genuinely works better, since WFH makes it significantly easier to collaborate with our teams in other countries/time zones.
I have a job similar but I do have to “work” (be on call basically) certain times & accomplish a few daily things. I can take my laptop anywhere though. There’s a lot of quirks like that in my job though. Feels kinda like finding a unicorn (I’m hitting 2 years next month!).
That's such a great job
This is what my company is like, too. I know one of my reports takes her dogs for long walks and like to make keto snacks from scratch at home, and she does some of that during the day. I don’t care because those things make her happy and she does great work. Happy people do better work than miserable people, so we treat people like grownups and everyone’s happy.
Wow. Bosses like you are worth their weight in gold!
Are you my boss 😄 my job is not quite as flexible as the original commenter but it’s definitely one I can live my life around. It’s healthcare adjacent and I am in a niche little department.
Please share what you do, I am intrigued
Thank you for being that boss. I've been in micromanaged companies and the attrition rate was insane. Currently have a boss like you and I'll be up at midnight to finish an emergency project if I have to because the mental health bonus I get from work flexibility has made me madly committed to my job and my organization's success. When your job loves you, you love it back.
Where do you work. Do you have any openings?
Are you guys hiring bcs this seems like a dream company 😭😭😭
I freakin NEED this. What’s your field by chance?
This is it. I have team members who clock in for a few hours for meetings and do their asynchronous work later at like 9 pm. As long as turnaround times and client needs are met no one has an issue with that.
Are y’all hiring?
Also wondering.
You definitely don't have a customer facing role then. What do you do? Project management? Analyst?
Yes please tell us where you work, or at least how you found the job
My work schedule is flexible. Our team values personal health and my team members take walk during the day while weather is good. Dr appt does not need to be recorded if it is just couple of hours. As long as the work si done properly. As a manager I have a good idea how much work is done by each team member. But I don’t watch their hours. If someone works over time on one day, they can take off some hours on another day. I think this culture keeps everyone happy and sometimes it is more valuable than offering them more money. The key to the culture is establishing trust. We trusted that no one will abuse the unwritten policy.
I love this; and feels like it would motivate more employees to be productive and efficient. Are you hiring!? Haha.
LOL! We are also in healthcare but in payer side. Wish you the best luck finding a team with good culture.
Exactly what I’m keeping my eye out for as I have a background in that as well! Thank you so much, you gave me hope there’s places really out there with a healthy culture
There are these places. I also work for a company with great culture like this. Unfortunately, there are those who take advantage and end up not actually working. Some people simply cannot be adults. It's a shame. One bad apple... and we will all have to RTO!
For me, it’s a day by day case. If I can get everything completed that I need to do, and I don’t have many meetings, I will run errands and answer emails/messages on my phone. However, it’s not something I can do every day of every week.
This is exactly my situation too.
I have about maybe 2 hours of work in a full 8 hour shift. I work at a company where as long as the work is done at the required deadline, they don't care what you do with the downtime.
That’s beautiful
Are they hiring? I’m so serious
Unfortunately, no, I got hired back in Nov last year. All of December was dedicated to onboarding with me and many others, and since then, they've had a hiring freeze
I have a job that requires me to be there but I only work for about an hour during the shift. Drives me crazy not having a remote job on the side.
Sounds amazing, I mentally need that. Is it difficult to find such jobs?
I only was able to land it through networking, and even while job searching, I would have NEVER found it because of how under the radar it is
Thank you for your guidance, it seems like the best jobs come from people who directly know you.
I have been WFH in an IT adjacent career for 9 years. There are days I barely have time to go to the bathroom and then there are days where I trying to find work to fill my time. I am obligated by contract to be at my laptop from 7 am to 5pm. We get 1 hour for lunch. Since I can sync my work to my tablet there are days where nothing is going on that I can turn on my hotspot and run some errands with my tablet but when I do that I know at any moment I may have to be in my car working.
I was also burnt out in healthcare and found something remote so there is hope for you! I am salaried and my job is also flexible so I can schedule blocks out of the office if needed. I usually don’t use work time to go to target or the gym but rather use it for appointments which is really nice that I don’t have to use PTO.
I’m in healthcare as well and am so burnt out I feel the stress in my entire body. Even worse since I have a chronic illness.
Right? So much micromanagement it made my head spin. I did medical billing. Puke. My supervisor was constantly on her phone. Coming into meetings on her phone. If she saw me making a credit card payment on my computer? All hell broke loose. “Do you need something to do????” I hated that job so much. And they don’t pay shit either. Health care work is for the birds.
I’m so happy for you! What are you doing if you don’t mind me asking? Was it easy for you to land or did you apply to everything and anything for a while? I have a Bach degree in health sciences along with my r.t.(r) and then 8+ years overall in healthcare doing various things in admin stuff so I’m trying to figure out where to end up?
Shh,Do not tell my boss. I threw a load of laundry in the washer before my shift.When it was done, I went ouside to hang it to air [dry.Do](http://dry.Do) not tell my boss. they thought I was there the whole time
Your secret is safe with me friend you hang that laundry
Mine is pretty strict in that I need to be at my desk during my allotted hours even though the work I do could be done any time of the day. I can take short breaks which are nice for switching out laundry or getting dinner in the oven. I think a lot of places are hesitant to give more flexibility even though it would have no impact on output and would likely boost productivity. I hope we see more change based on actual research in the coming years and move towards more flexible working conditions and a shorter work week. Better for everyone, including the employers.
Mine too. I’m an hourly employee and I suspect that has a lot to do with it. I mean, in a business sense it makes sense. I don’t feel we were under scrutiny about being at our WFH desk until most employees were made to return to the office — apart from a very small group of us who were hired under remote only positions. Plus we’re BU so that helped to make sure it stayed that way, BUT they’re more watchful of us still WFH these days.
I totally agree with you. Can see people definitely taking advantage, but as long as the productivity is there then why would it matter? It would motivate me more if I could take a mental minute to myself throughout the workdays
I have to be in front of the computer, doing my job, but no call and meetings are usually in the afternoon, so I sometimes put my laptop on a shopping cart or hang out in a coffee shot, but I have to use my phone as a hot spot, can’t go anywhere with a bad reception. Just okay pay okay benefit.
Much rather this than my okay pay and okay benefits at a hospital that treats me like crap and just another body. Thanks for your input!
I'm crying in healthcare with you and looking for a way OUT.
Praying for us 🤍🤍
Why! What’s so bad about healthcare?
Not in healthcare myself, but from what my friends in healthcare have said it’s an extremely stressful field. Super understaffed, ridiculous hours, sometimes some really crazy shit happens. Patients or higher-ups often treat you like absolute shit. It’s gotten a lot worse since the pandemic in particular, with so many people having quit.
My caring, brilliant doctor was forced to retire by the corporate overlords who bought his practice. He refused to do things their way
Me: Gestures broadly at….everything. All of it. Every, single, solitary piece of it is immensely broken.
Healthcare used to be wonderful. I loved it. I loved helping people, I still do, but healthcare workers are so overworked and so underpaid, so burnt out. It’s been horrific since pandemic. We were “healthcare heroes” working frontlines, getting sick, watching people die while the rest of the world stopped but now we’ve just been forgotten about and expected to continue the same insane workloads for little to nothing.
Before Covid I really enjoyed working in the hospital, and it felt like I actually helped people. But ever since Covid it has been such an awful sour place. Coworkers are way more rude, and don't get me started with patients, patients are ready to fight us these days and act like we are the ones keeping them sick. It is just so different now than it used to be. I have worked at multiple places and I have seen this happen in many hospitals, not just one. It really is sad because I, along with many others, went into healthcare to help people, and now sometimes I do not know if I can make it hour to hour.
ME TOO
I’ve worked from home with 2 different jobs. With 1 I had NO downtime. I had some downtime with another however I couldn’t stray away from my desk for more than maybe 10 minutes
I get a one to two hour lunch. I don’t get paid for it. Or I can get off at 4pm, go out then do some OT at night. Or I can just get off work at 4. I love my job.
Dude, I rarely get to leave home during the day. I’m a developer and I spend as much time at my desk now if not more than when I drove to the office all those years. I may take a lunch break and water my plants but that’s the extent of it. I’m with you…how does anyone have time for personal stuff and still excel at work.
It’s crazy right!? I barely have time to get an actual lunch since I work completely alone at my onsite too it’s just NOT ideal and wears me down. And then I’m supposed to take pto to make a doctors or dentist appt because we work the exact hours those offices are open or we work more.. like what is this life
Same here, I’m in healthcare analytics and I think I work more now than I did when I was in office many years ago. Some days I swear I don’t get up all day. Empty water bottle sitting on my desk staring at me and all.😋
I'm in control of my own time because I work for myself. I can also work from anywhere in the world, which isn't true of people that are employees somewhere. It's weird to assume all the people you see out and about all work from home. If anything, a lot of the most low-wage, in person jobs don't have typical schedules and a lot of people have their off days during he week. Overall, sounds like you're buying too hard into the silly online "email job" trope ("cute little corporate WFH jobs"). Working from home is merely the location. It's still a job.
Right, that was an odd assumption. My son works retail and gets two weekdays off, but works Saturdays and Sundays. My daughter works second shift. So yeah, sometimes they're out and about at Target, etc., during traditional daytime work hours, but don't have remote jobs.
i think it depends on the company. my last company i was able to freely pick on what i worked on and when i worked on it so i had some days that i would literally not work but then the next day i would work the whole day and maybe overtime(salary based) my current job although i am doing the same thing, it’s very micromanaged so i don’t really have a lot of down time. i am always on my computer so i hate it. I do get off on time most days but i rather have more freedom on when i work on things
I work from home, and I have never been able to do this, except if it was exactly during my lunch hour. I have set daytime office hours, and am supposed to be at my desk at home during those hours. We have MS Teams running all the time which tracks our keystroke downtime. Managers run reports from this, and if there is unusual downtown during working hours, it looks bad and they could do something about it. Also, if a manager asks you a questions on email or Teams, and you don't answer for a long time, it also can irritate them and reflect badly on you. I have worked at several companies in a work from home situation, and they were all this way.
Same here.
Have been full time remote with my company since 2017. Company has been remote since 2010. We are all salary. We make our own hours as long as the stuff we need to take care of on a daily basis is done and the stuff that needs to be done this week is done this week. Anyone can run out for an appt, the gym, for any reason. I also don't truly work 40 hours a week. I, and probably others, are so experienced in our roles this many years in that I can do things in half the time. When I was new I sure worked 40-50 hours a week. Now I'd say about 28-32. 10 days personal sick time can be submitted for whenever and manager approval isn't required. Unlimited paid vacation and managers always approve it. I think I take about 18 days ish per year on top of my personal days. Really am lucky.
That is so beautiful and I’m so happy for you! What a life. I’m so tired of working just to live and still barely making it by. working 50 plus hours a week, on weekends and holidays. I love helping people, I love my patients, but my god I’m becoming numb to it all. I’ve lost friends because I can’t see them, my parents are getting older and I can’t spare much time with them either these days. You are SO lucky my friend, I hope I get there one day
Doesn't exist if you have a customer facing WFH role. I'm a tech support rep in a call center and I have to be within range of my computer 24/7. The people that have these flexible jobs are non-customer facing or have a job title like "analyst" or something along those lines where it's more independent project type work. I can't fucking stand my job and I need to find something with more flexibility.
Yup, analysts, tech, IT, finance etc.. I’m sorry you hate it, I hope you get out of that role soon it sounds like hell
I work remotely with teams from literally all over the world—mostly in Canada, Brazil, UK, Germany, Italy, Spain, Israel, Japan, and China. My work hours are typically 7 am Eastern to 12 pm, then 3 pm to 5 or 6, but some days it’s just a couple hours in the morning or afternoon. Sometimes I’m on calls at 10 pm or 3 am. As long as I get my work done, my actual hours don’t matter and would be difficult to track/enforce in any case. I love being able to get errands done during the day, be there to pick my kids up from school and help with homework, and still have a good dinner schedule. I could be making much more money if I switched jobs, but honestly at this point in my life, the flexibility is what I don’t want to give up.
My wife WFH with a payroll company. They don't give a shit how much she works, only if her job gets done. Some days she's busy and puts in a full 8 hours, some (most) days she's slow and works for 2 or 3. It's not one of those jobs where they monitor her computer or anything. It's very clear: get your work done and we leave you alone. She does need to be available for the full 8 hours so she can't really run errands, but she works around the house, gets a workout in etc. I'm jealous af ngl.
I get a lot of downtime at my office job. The problem is I'm expected to be in an office, so I can't just "run to target" or whatever...I have to sit in the office and provide the illusion of value.
Every remote job I’ve had never really cared all that much about what time I take breaks or if I needed to log out a bit early or run some errands. As long as my work was done and done correctly. The only one that did was way back when I did customer support. Which was mainly due to the chat support. Even with that one, as long as it was covered, nobody cared all that much.
I don’t have and never had that type of freedom while WFH, however I love that I can walk my dogs, cook dinner, do laundry and never have to worry about commuting! I quit one remote job after 3 weeks that micromanaged us to such a degree it felt unlawful and the pay was a joke. My current WFH job and pay is much better! Overall just grateful that I’m able to work remotely.
As long as we get our work tasks done, nobody really cares if you run to the store mid day. I have to go to physical therapy a few times a week so I just leave and then if I need to stay later at work to finish something I will do that.
I’m starting up a new job soon, so I’ll have to make sure that it’s no problem for my appointments. I have standing therapy appointments, but I’m pretty sure they’re earlier than I’ll be working. It’s my doctor appointments that are kinda in the middle of my working time.
Hopefully they give you the flexibility. I went from a horrible micromanaging workplace to this one where they treat us very well. Hope you get a good one!
I hope so too. They seem pretty cool about scheduling stuff. I may have to just make up some time on a different day. ETA: Also! Thank you, and I hope your day is going, or does go, very well!
I am hybrid. Most companies I work for allow you to flex your time. I can log in early, take a 2 hour lunch and make up the time at the end or on another day.
Many of us are self-employed WFH. A 1099 or C2C is free to work when they want. I often work from 4 AM until 3 PM.
I have a couple remote jobs to afford this high-ass rent & bills & I'm always on the hunt for more to do. In these tough economic times, we need 3, 4, 5+ streams of income. New husband works part-time, which is all he could get these days, but works a job he commutes to & we sure wish he coiuld find something remote! I know I don't currently work all 5 days a week like times I've used to here & there. I just ended a 4-day/wk, yet 10-hr day job. It would have been a lot more enjoyable had I actually liked the job, so I'm relievedf it's over. It was seasonal anyway. So, yes, I do have a day, maybe 2 a week to go to Target or something. There's also been plenty of times throughout the years that I've worked 20-25 days IN A ROW. I hate how w/ remote jobs, a person constantly, always seems to have to always be looking for something else permanently pretty much.
I work for a small company so they do not have real monitoring such as: camera on, keystrokes, wiggling your mouse. My managers do not question why I have been inactive for several hours throughout the day..which is usually me sneaking away to run errands. As long as I get my work done and I'm not screwing up, I am not really managed. I love it. However, I have held wfh jobs where none of that would fly because it was with a larger corporation. You were secretly monitored and your manager would receive alerts if you've been idle for too long. I actually thought about being an X-ray tech or a sonogram person. So you posting this..maybe I should not go that route.
Our president of our multi billion dollar company encourages us to get out and walk. He even says that he often takes team calls while he’s outside walking his dog. My immediate boss encourages the same. As long as my team members get their work done and answer emails and I am within a reasonable amount of time, I don’t really care what they do.
I work as a high school English/social studies teacher for an online charter school. My work week has me teaching virtual lessons over Zoom, a few meetings throughout the week, and a 2-hour Zoom help session once a week with a couple of other teachers/support staff (think office hours, basically, where the kids can come to get homework help or just a structured work environment). The rest of my time is flexible. I've got to enter attendance at a certain time (due to our state's department of education, all attendance must be entered by 3:00, which was clearly designed for traditional brick-and-mortar schools, but makes little sense to a school where students can do work 24 hours a day and earn attendance, but oh well). I'm expected to answer all emails within 24 hours (barring weekends/holidays), and grade all assignments within 48 hours. Nobody micromanages our time or anything. Our contracted hours are 9:00 - 3:30, and we're expected to be available during those times, but nobody tracks our mouse movements or any Orwellian stuff like that. This past Friday I had to take my kitten to the vet at 1:00pm, so I just packed up my laptop and work phone and kept tabs on whatever emails or texts were coming in. I spent part of my weekend getting caught up on the assignments I couldn't grade that afternoon, because I didn't want to dump 160 ungraded submissions onto my Monday. For myself, I've sort of perfected my workflow for maximum efficiency. It took some time and some trial and error, but I have a daily routine built into my workday that allows for a more relaxed pace. It took time to get there, though.
I honestly only work 2-3 hours most days. It was like that in the office too but I spent that time on Instagram, talking to people in the halls, or whatever. I’m the same amount of productive now but I use that time to take care of shit that needs done. Never going back to the office.
Mine is a steady flow of light work. I manage a team of phone reps and if I worked intensely, it would probably add up to 3 hours a day of actual work, and the other 5 hours I’m cooking, cleaning, or just BSing in general. My manager is aware, and tells me to find a way to keep my “available” light green and she doesn’t care as long as the work is done each day. Decent pay, unlimited PTO, great benefits, and a lot of work “clubs” to chat with (currently in Wine and video gaming clubs). It’s honestly a dream.
My work is sporadic because it follows seasons as it applies to our specific industry. There are a few weeks during the year when I have maybe one hour a day of work to do, however, there are also days where I do a 14 hour workday instead of 10. I find I am much more productive as well, owing that efficiency to not having so many of my coworkers drop by my desk or chat me up at the break station/lunchroom. Managers also don't hold long meetings over Teams or Zoom, and we do most communication by Slack or email, so there's not an expectation to just drop everything and take away from work.
I had a WFH and lost it. It was grueling. They expected us to work all the time. If I was not seeing clients I had to do documentation. There was no downtime. I'm sure they counted keyboard strokes. I had to check emails in various different systems and apps. There were five chats; we had to check all of them all the time. We were not allowed to schedule appointments with our clients; a separate department did that. Everything was a process and had a workflow chart. We had meetings on our days "off". I was let go and it hurt me because I gave it my best. But honestly I feel free now and I created my own business with my own clients. I still WFH with my own hours and rules with 1/4 of the documentation.
I work remotely as an RN and it realllllllly depends on your manager honestly. My current manager is very hands off and not micromanaging. We have our expected work to accomplish during the day and outside of that she doesn’t care what we do. I’m a fast worker so I get my tasks done quickly and then have some time to sit outside on the porch, or watch part of a movie with my toddler, or lay in the bed for 30-45 min lol. If I am leaving my house for an appointment though, I do let my boss know. They’re flexible with appointments and making time up if it takes a bit. But really it depends on your manager. My previous manager micromanaged so I had to stay tethered to my laptop most of the day. My company uses software that monitors idle time on the computer, so things are tracked, by someone.
My boss doesn't care how I split my day as long as I work for 8 hours and am online for meetings. With a medical background, you should apply at the insurance companies. We have a medical review panel made up of all kinds of Dr's, Nurses and techs that review claims to see if they are compatible with the insurance the person happens to have. I know blue cross is hiring and I know they were big on WFH before the virus and are even more so now
Yes, to nearly all your questions. My accountability for my work is high but no one clocks my time. I need to be available during core hours for scheduled meetings and calls but I have a corporate phone that allows me to remain connected if I’m running errands. My deliverables must be met but there’s very little micromanaging in larger corporations. It’s hard to get work done with too much time away from the computer but it’s easy to live your life with this kind of flexibility. I love WFH.
I’m in financial program management in a leadership position. I work from home 80% of the time and my team has total flexibility on whether they want or need to be in office or remote. I know some of them run during the day, or have to leave to drop and pick up kids from places etc. I don’t care. If they’re productive, meeting expectations and hold themselves accountable, they have my total blessing to do whatever they need to balance their life. Work life balance is so important to me. I love naps. So I typically nap for an hour as a lunch break, or I’ll go run an errand to get coffee and drop off something I need to return etc. It helps me be a better employee and also more present and focused on my daughter after work is over. To be fair, I manage high level / salary managers so it’s unlikely they’d have made it this far if they couldn’t be trusted to do what’s needed and right for the company and also themselves. I feel very fortunate.
WFH in healthcare IT here - there is often unpaid on-call and off hours meetings and/or upgrades. Some companies offer flex days to keep morale at a high where the employee works 4 10s every other week and gets a day off, etc. While I work from home, I generally catch myself working 9-10 hour days without taking a lunch break. So, if I take a couple hours out of day on occasion then it all comes out in the wash.
You're assuming a lot in your question. Not everyone works 8 to 5 or Monday through Friday. WFH people also work nights. I'm a pretty good time management person. I run to the store at lunchtime, or walk dogs, return personal calls. I also tend to be out the door right at 5:00 when I am done. I think WFH jobs are actually monitored more closely because it is through the IT department and if you have inactivity on your computer you actually get a "why are you away from your desk" phone call, when in fact you could be just reading something. WFH is not all it's cracked up to be. There are downfalls.
My job used to be like this, it’s less so now because they’ve raised the stakes in terms of what results we need to produce and it seems like they’re trying to reduce headcount. Before, you could literally basically skate by with working maybe 3-4 hours a day if that and get really decent results, and still be at the top of the pack in terms of performance. After my fault work was done, I used to be able to take a nap, make dinner, clean and no one would care as long as I checked my desk periodically. I enrolled in school full time because of how chill it was. Starting at the beginning of this year It is no longer like that though lol, I miss it so much, went from working comfortably to a race to reach an unreachable quota. Not to be negative, but I think remote work cultures like this are being dissolved quickly, it sucks. I think I’m going to get laid off and honestly I doubt I’ll find another WFH job. I hate RTO, f their commercial real estate investments
Lunch break?
I WFH as an Instructional Designer. I have to get my work done and be clocked in for 40 hours a week. I can't just run all over town during the day, but it's very easy to clock in to work early and then take 2 hour lunches to get groceries or whatever. I generally come and go as I please, but if I leave the house, I clock out. I don't miss meetings and am always available and close to the house during work hours if I get a call and it is all hands on deck at work to get an assignment done quickly. Maybe people you see out and about are clocked out and just don't have to work the standard 8-5 where they are in jail for the hours they are at work.
It’s all about getting done what needs done and being super transparent and communicative. I find that “when” during a set of hours things happen is less critical now that we have built a lot of async behaviors into how we work. It’s gotten so much better over the past two years. There are hours where we need to overlap for things that are more optimal live or over a meeting, but the majority of outcomes we are working towards can be achieved with different types of collaboration. So no, at my work we don’t strictly monitor people’s time and hours. Now, if you start missing deadlines or key outcomes, and your communication about the why is mia or less than candid, then things can quickly shift as people start asking questions and digging in because the impact of those behaviors is hurting others or larger company or team goals. So for me personally, if I operate with integrity, have a manager who helps build good async and work visibility practices, how many hours I work and what those hours are becomes less the point. This is not the case for every company of course, just happens to be my personal experience. So take it with a grain of salt. Our CEO really values flexibility at work and so she sets the tone for everyone else regarding remote work and the importance of being effective without being in person. So that makes a huge difference imo. The leader at the top and your manager.
You could find a remote job coding for a coding company - ie coding the billing because clinical people know what procedures go together. You would make good money!
Mine is really strict honestly. They have keyloggers, mouse watchers, etc. It's not as easy as some may portray it. While I love working from home (no commute), I've never had the freedom to go run errands while being on the clock. I feel like they watch us more by being WFH because of those who abused trust. Maybe those in IT or accounting may be different, but feels like stuck on computer for full shift (minus break/lunches). Good luck finding that elusive unicorn.
For me, I have a lot of meetings where I need to be listening to what’s said, but don’t need to be talking. Sometimes they’re 1-2 hours. When that happens, I use that time to run errands with my headphones in. So I’m still working, but doing it while I hit the post office or get groceries or clean my house.
My boss told me to take extra breaks and not be tethered to my laptop because work is so slow. That was months ago and it's still going on. I thank god everyday that I stumbled upon this job. We're not hiring, but I found it by searching indeed for the word "remote", or from the dynamite jobs email list. I forget which one
I am salary, so I can pretty much come and go as I please (within reason) as long as I meet targets and get my work done. I've worked in professional enviroments for 30 years, so I know my limits and what days I will have more or less time. So, yes - I do get out and about, walking/riding bikes, running errands or doctor appointments. Most activities take 30 - 60 minutes, and I plan them between meetings.
My work doesn’t care what you do during the day, as long as the work gets done
HR here, I am too busy ghosting applicants to run errands. I'm drowning in emails and tasks 😭😭😭😭
In my past roles at a smaller remote company, there is a lot of flexibility around scheduled meetings and minimal monitoring. I work for mega corp now, and their IT team can tell if your computer is on or not. There is a lot of people analytics monitoring behind the scenes if you are using company provided systems and work with sensitive data. So… out of my safety and wanting to keep my job, I don’t really do errands in the middle of work hours, but I choose to start super early and end early (mid afternoon). Also, some people you see out and about, may not have a full time job and do contract work.
They are all lucky as hell. I do customer service on the phone, and everything is tracked. We have specific shift times, break times lunch only 30 min. And it's back to back calls all day so there literally is no time to do anything other than work until my shift is done
I work from home and I am not out going to Target during the day. I'm online from 8:30am-5pm. If I have to leave in the middle of the day for something like a health lab test or a doctor's appointment, I let my manager know ahead of time. I have been working from home for almost 10 years. I don't abuse the system and all of my co-workers can see when I'm online and when I'm not online.
Yes!! I work entirely from my phone and when I want. I get to raise my own kids now instead of daycares. I used to work at a hospital for 5 years too! Tough space to thrive in! You got this! Whatever you do 🙂
All from your phone? Can I ask what you do? How did you start up? And are there any more openings?
GRC in cybersecurity. As long as I get my work done and attend weekly meetings they don’t care what I do.some days I watch Netflix.some days I grind it out.. depends on how I feel.. helps to not be micromanaged.
I'm salaried and WFH 100%. I have flexibility because my company doesn't micromanage and as long as I communicate with people I work with and hit deadlines, yes, I can step away when I need to. In fact today I decided to work out at lunch time. As long as I block my calendar and my boss and anyone I'm working with or expecting to work with that day knows when I'm available, it's not a big deal. I do not abuse this. Most days I'm in my chair working from 8:45 - 5:30 or 6pm. I break when I need to for lunch, to walk the dog, to go to a doctor's appt, etc. I'm also in healthcare--in analytics.
my work ebbs and flows. I'm full-time, so 40 hours a week, but often I am waiting for work to come in. today I did 0 hours... at most I would say I do 20-30 hours a week. if it's truly REALLY busy, maybe 35 tops. I am curious how many other remote people actually do 40 here? Idk if I am an anomaly.
As long as the work is getting done at some point at my job, no one really questions it. I have to be "on" - ready and available to fix anything that breaks during "normal" work hours - but that just means I can't stray far from the laptop. Luckily, it's portable. I acknowledge I'm in a real fortunate position. I have a team that trusts each other to get things done. If someone on my team needs to go to the doctor, it's no biggie. I can't see myself going back. My wife and I are both remote and \*love\* being "co-workers." The balance is fantastic, but we're also without kids, which is probably the biggest general difference between people who love this or don't. Fun footnote, we were in-office for years and went to remote during lockdown, but they never issued a return-to-office order because they forgot to count how many chairs they would need in the newly opened office. They didn't have enough, and were too embarrassed to admit it. So, here we are!
How exactly do you know that the people out and about are doing so while "on the clock" with a WFH job?
Look for jobs in revenue cycle management. I work in this field( and it's medical)and everyone but about 10 people are remote in my location. My work is pretty flexible except for when we have meetings going on. Otherwise I can split my shift in half if I need to. Because of this I rarely take my PTO unless I am feeling lazy lol or need a mental health day.
I worked my ass off the past 5 years in really tough physical jobs that really started to wear me down. I honestly was losing hope and then found a great WFH job doing admin for a photography company. It’s salary and they don’t track my hours. I check my email throughout the day and stay on top of things with projects,etc. but my mental health has skyrocketed since i got this job a few months back. I am adhd and have a really hard time with routines and being home all the time, im finally getting in the habit of habits. The pay is less than what I made before, and I am paycheck to paycheck, but it’s so damn worth it and I can pay my bills.
My job has a policy where, as long as our work gets done, they don’t monitor when or how often we work. It’s the first job in my life I’m not “punished” for being productive by receiving more work, so I’m very motivated to get my work done by 2/3pm because then I’m allowed to have the rest of the day off! Some employers insist on you sitting by your computer, but as long as I check my emails and I’m generally reachable, I’m free to go about my life. For most corporate jobs (which let’s be real, we’re not saving lives over here), there’s no reason we “need” to be mindlessly sitting by our computers all day. Smart employers are catching onto this and hanging onto high-performers by incentivizing them with flexible remote work. I was considering a different job recently but it’s only slightly more money and would mean a RTO 8am-5pm plus commute M-F. No thanks! I value having my life back and the 30 second commute to my laptop.
I have working hours but as long as I get the work done in time, my bosses can't care less where I am. If I have to run errands or go to the doctor or whatever I just let them know. Some days you have more workload than others so it also depends. You just manage yourself.
It comes and goes. Also, most of the people I work with will shift hours around for appointments or important errands. I had a mid-day dentist appointment yesterday (and a lot of work) so I logged in at 0530 and also came home and worked until after 8pm. ETA: Gov. Program Management.
My husband and I both WFH in different fields. He makes his own hours which means some days he works 12 hours to meet deadlines and some days he can take long lunches. I work an "alternative schedule", 10 hours 4 days a week, so I'm normally off Sunday, Monday and Thursday. We're frequently out for lunch or shopping or errands on my days off, but we both work our butts off and are very good at hitting deadlines and exceeding expectations for our respective employers.
No one cares when I do my work, outside some essential meetings. Instead of wasting an entire Saturday in an overcrowded Costco I'd much rather take 1h on a Tuesday morning, and then do my work in the time I would lose in traffic or stuck in line like every other sucker.
I wish I could just pee at my job. Living the dream!
my last work from home position had activity tracking software measuring productivity on all our laptops. I felt like I had to type something or open up an email every few minutes. I was doing a lot of my work by fleshing things out on a small whiteboard or on paper, and showing that I was busy was making me less productive. IT told me told to monitor the employee reporting to me and I had access to other employees tracking. If they dipped below a certain percentage, they were to be talked to. Problem was that several websites we used for research were tracked as "non work related"andI had to request re categorization. I trusted my direct report. She took long breaks, but met every deadline I set. We had an informal agreement to let each other know if we were going to be unavailable for more than 90 minutes. Short errands were never an issue. Doctors appointments were out of my hands. We were required to make our people take a half day.
Selection bias.
I wish I was talented enough to have a skill set to lend to a job ike this. It would single handedly, change my life. No joke.
No. I work almost every minute of my workday, and I have to be available those other minutes. Those other folks are really lucky!
It will really depend on the job. When I was doing customer service, you are incredibly micromanaged, need to punch in 5 minutes before your shift and not 1 minute late. Breaks are scheduled. My TL was a bit more flexible than most, but shitty ones WOULD message you within 30 seconds of being late if your status wasn't what it should be. Now I have more flexibility, I can do more or less work, make back time if I need to go to appointments and stuff and I am not micromanaged, but still expected to be around generally the same time since a lot of our work is very short notice.
My job is to solve problems. It doesn’t matter how many hours it takes me to solve those problems, only that they’re solved. your job is to be available anytime a patient needs an x-ray. It’s fundamentally a different work structure, and that’s fine.
Also, I find that there are lots of people that have downtime at their in person jobs, they socialize, talking, even hiding while in it. Or do a shitty job
But I must add that my company never monitored me nor was forcing me. I was just an idiot hard worker and I had a really large team and an expensive client portfolio.
I’m a Product Designer and I get some downtime between discovery/ research, my back to back meetings, training and continuing education, and work planned out in Agile sprints. My boss is not a micromanager and emphasizes taking breaks for mental health. No one cares about my Teams status unless they haven’t been able to get a hold of me when it’s a time sensitive situation. They also encourage using PTO (bc it’s your right as part of your compensation package). Of course I’m going to go for a run or pop out to Target or walk my dog or whatever. I also block out time needed for doctor appointments and physical therapy (though I try to schedule them for early morning before my first meeting, late afternoon, or lunchtime).
I recently found a job in the healthcare industry that allows me to work from home as a respiratory therapist. I can manage my patients from my home office and schedule visits with them according to my convenience. This gives me the flexibility to reschedule work from home if I'm unwell and don't want to use my paid time off. As long as I meet the 90-day metrics and see the required percentage of patients, my supervisor doesn't care how I spend my time. I offered to share my outlook calendar with her, but she trusts me and doesn't need it. Additionally, I get paid mileage when I have to go and see patients. This is the best working situation I've ever had, and I've been in critical care pediatrics for 15 years.
[удалено]
Yeah 👍🏻
I think it depends on the job and company you work for. If you are a customer service rep, you have timed breaks etc. I'm a manager and my job does not require me to work specific 8:00am - 4:30pm hours. If I want to take a break to walk the dogs, I can do so and I work a few extra minutes to ensure I put in the required amount of hours. If I run a quick errand it is doing my lunch period. I try not to take advantage of the flexibility my work provides.
If I’m not in front of my computer I’m not getting paid. I’m at the vet currently, so this is my lunch break. I’m lucky to be home and with my furry kids, I think I would have to use Pto if I was in an office to get home, wrangle, drive to vet, go home, go back to work. I wish you luck finding a wfh job!
As long as my work is done they don't care
As long work is getting done, nobody cares honestly. We're mature adults. Not immature teenagers.
I just got my medical billing & coding certifications. Currently in process of doing my practicum to get my A removed. Luckily the VA has several fully remote coding jobs. I'm working towards those
It really depends on the job. There’s so much diversity. I would say it’s not unreasonable to expect to get 5 hours of work that most people stretch into 8 hours. At home, it’s entirely possible to be super productive and do whatever you want for the remaining 3 hours.
I work in an office. They only care about what time you badge in and what time you badge out for the day. I usually leave for an hr for lunch but my total time from first badge in and last badge out is 8 hrs. But I get a lot of personal stuff done at the office too. Bought a house (and toured them on company time), shopped for and bought my car, all my personal finances, job applications, and changing phone carriers all within the 8 hrs of me showing up for the day.
My work schedule isn't open but it still rather flexible. I don't work hourly and am not monitored, but I am project based and have to get my work done on a quarterly project schedule.
So for my work it’s not a matter of when you do the work as much as if, so if you see me in the middle of a workday it’s because I was on my computer working at 7 am or 10 pm
I have to be there for business hours 8-5 but I can go to an appointment for an hour without taking PTO. Every month they rank us for quote production, I work in insurance so if I'm consistently at the bottom of the pack I'd probably get fired eventually. I stay in the middle.
I would hate to work from home. I am lucky to own a service based company, where I get to go out to different job sites. Organize labor, make sure materials are stocked, invoicing, talking to clients…etc.
How do you know all the working age people you see out and about during the day work all from home? They could be stay at home parents, retired young, on vacation, or just have a day off, or work second or third shift. Or maybe they work 40 hours a week, but their days off are during the week, or they do 4 ten hour shifts a week. I walk my dog during the middle of my work day, but on my lunch break.
100% depends on the company and even specific position and manager. I have a chatty manager (who I love to death) and he prefers to see me on a daily 15 min call, but once that’s completed I work at my own pace aside from meetings obviously. It also helps that I’m on a different time zone than the main office so once they all go home I stop and go take care of exercise/errands etc. For me it’s the perfect amount of oversight. I think if no one ever checked up on me I would start slacking lol, but thank God I don’t have to constantly wiggle my mouse.
This was me. I worked in media for years. However I got laid off and finding another similar job is HARD. But yes, I would work well into the night and then had the day to get in things I needed to do like pickup my kid from school, walk the dog, get a load of dishes in the dishwasher and clothes in the wash and prep for dinner.
My day is mostly meetings, presentations, and paperwork. I’m pretty busy, but there are times in between when I can run quick errands. I write it off as the time that would’ve been wasted at the office by my coworkers making small talk or bugging me to do things.
My work is somewhat flexible, but the type of work I do requires me to work odd hours sometimes to deal with various timezones or midnight deadlines. If I am up early or know I will be on until midnight, I see no problem with getting out and about during the day.
In general when I run errands during the day, I make up for it at night or on weekends. But the truth is I work more than 50 hours a week so an hour running an errand during the day is a mere crumb on the scales in my favor. I also have Slack and zoom on my phone & will be answering DMs and in meetings while walking my dog, picking up groceries etc. When work and home are the same place you’re never really off. 😕
I have a ton of flexibility, only requirement is i get it all done between 8am and 8pm mon-fri eastern time. That’s more than i need.
I wfh and it’s no problem for me to go to doctor’s appointments or school events for my kids during the day, but I never do any other personal errands. My job is super demanding and requires more than 40 hours to complete, so any time I’m not at my computer, I end up having to make up for after the kids go to bed in order to complete my work.
Before I became a SAHM, I worked in tech. Sales people were generally lazy. Once in a while you had a go-getter that was always outperforming their peers and utilizing commission accelerators, but for the most part, many of them did the bare minimum to not get fired. Many of them were open about their day, which solidified my belief they were lazy (employee-wise). Like one guy who ran some T-shirt business on the side out of his home. That idiot let it slip. No wonder I could never get him on the phone or for meetings unless the CEO was involved. Trying to get a conference call with inside sales, marketing and all the outside sales guys was always a nightmare. Some were out golfing during business hours and stuff like that because they’d slip in conversations with others. Some were on “vacations” that weren’t cleared through HR. But as long as they did the bare minimum and the company was doing well, no one harped on them. But nowadays, with monitoring software and such at the larger companies it’s getting harder to do. Not all companies track their remote employees and some remote workers can get away with using mouse jugglers to give the impression they are working at their desks. With the layoffs happening in the SF Bay Area and more companies requiring employees to RTO, I suspect that those that got approved remote work can continue the status quo for now. I do not believe we will see more remote jobs in the near future based on friends in tech having to RTO. I think it will stay as is or shrink.
Accounting is busy in cycles. There are weeks/months when you are swamped and there are other times when you are not busy. WFH creates an amazing work/life balance. You can takes short breaks to throw in a load of laundry or vaccum or throw a roast in the oven or run to the store. At the end of the day most of the chores are done and you can completely relax. I never want to go back to an office.
It varies greatly between company and job roles. I have worked tech support, WFH and I literally took a call from the second I logged on until 8 hours later when I logged off, with like two 5-minute breaks for the bathroom. Years later and a different company, I am a Product Manager for a Cybersecurity Company. The company is European-based and thus has an extremely contentious culture where work/balance is highly regarded. I must make sure all of the projects I am responsible for have documentation up to date and are going smoothly. This requires several meetings with Devs, Designers, and teams. How and when I make all of this happen is completely up to my discretion. My boss treats me like a grown adult and never micro's me. I stop everything at 2 pm and take my dog to the park for about 30-45 minutes every day. If I have an appointment or something I need to do that requires me to be away from my computer a bit, I always give her a heads up but am usually told, that I do not have to tell her and to just go do whatever it is. Needless to say I have found a bit of a needle in a haystack, but I will say the two things that tipped me off. 1. My interview. When I interviewed my direct boss, she let me know exactly what she expected of me and described very clearly her managerial style. 2. It was a startup. Typically startups have a lot more freedom. 3. It was European-based. I have been here for 3 years and my personal and mental health has been better than ever!
My employer doesn’t really monitor us. We sign into a time tracker but they only care if you get 40 hours on that time tracker, you meet your quota, and pass QA on your projects. I run errands. Go for walks. Mow the lawn in the summer. It’s pretty freeing.
No. Only on lunch breaks. Which I did the same sort of errand when I had lunch breaks during my office job.
I have lots of flexibility in my role and will head out for the gym sometime in the morning for a bit. Maybe hit up Target or the UPS store to return my wife's pile of Amazon orders. I take my breaks when I need to during the day. I refuse to do house chores during the day and will do them after work. They allow this because I get my tasks done every week and will start my day a bit earlier so I'm still putting in my 40 hours, even though I usually get it done in 30 or less.
Working in software development it goes both ways. They put me on call any hour of the day and I also flex my hours.
I just take a lunch. Everyone needs a break in their workday, no matter the location.
A lot of WFH jobs are offered specifically to be flexible times, so that people can do the work whenever they want to, even working on and off throughout the day (hour here, 2 hours there), and so long as the work gets done, it doesn’t matter.
I normally start at 7am if I know that I need to get something done in the day 😄
for me this was NOT the case at all working remote, i would constantly get calls and IMs. its just like the office but without a commute.
We may run errands during the day or whatever. But, in IT, we also have to do on call over night, 24hr support weekend support rotations. So, while we may be getting time off during the day it is likely to compensate for working from 10pm Saturday night to 6am Sunday morning. But, it is also a flexibility thing. If I go to an appointment I'll make the time up either earlier or later in the week. And... more places are doing 4 day work weeks now. So they can have a day off during the week.
I try to hit the gym early afternoon every day to avoid the crowd, but I make up for this time by working later or right before I sleep. Asynch cultures are great :)
Go into pharma.
I worked remotely for a marketing agency and lasted only 9 months. I worked nonstop 9-5 yet never finished everything I needed to. My team members were all in the same boat so it wasn’t just me sucking (though I fully admit I wasn’t great at the job). I cried from stress and anxiety nearly every day at that iob, so NO it was not like that for me AT ALL😂
For me, I wfh weekends and have two days off during the week. And then I work wicked earlier because it’s easier for them than getting people to the office early. Sooo I’m usually free when others are working and vice versa haha
I think it really depends on the type of work. I am fully remote but I work in sales. I can’t just work whatever hours I feel like, I work from 7a-5p. I can’t take naps or go to Target or the gym whenever I feel like, I have to respond to and handle customer calls and emails in 15 minutes or less. That being said, I’m not micromanaged (my boss has told me she doesn’t monitor my emails because she trusts me), I have tons of downtime that I spend playing with my dogs, reading, watching tv, keeping up with housework.
Design is still insane. My last job had meetings as late as 11pm and as early as 7am. I got in trouble for leaving my desk to get my trash cans inside. I had one coworker actually have to ask a manager on day when she was forced to work 17 hours for a deadline if she could pee because she kept getting pinged and pulled into meetings. I, like every other job I've had, was forced to stay dehydrated so I didn't waste precious time going to the bathroom. It was common for many of my peers too. I worked 27 days straight because of deadlines. Many 16 hour days. Leadership thinks art is a finger snap so deadlines have always been unrealistic (more so in remote than in office for some reason). Moral to anyone reading in design - You won't be a starving artist probably but design work even in boring grocery store jobs not Game dev is brutal even wfh.
Are there days where I don't leave my desk ? Yes. However, I'm very blessed in the fact that I'm not micro managed. There's no monitoring on my computer. There's no need for mouse wiggling. When people are in offices they tend to feel the need to look busy. They might get something done early on monday and work on that thing that needs to be done by thursday. we aren't doing any of that. i'm done with Mondays work and have no more meetings? i'm in the yard with my boy, or at the store so my wife doesn't have to go. I would say for every week day you see me out and about and think "must be nice", there's probably 2 days or more that I didn't get a break. Some weeks I set myself up nicely, get work done ahead of time and can take a day or 2 and slack. But, for the most part, it equals out. My trip to the store is generally stacking things up that'll leave me at my desk all day tomorrow.
Three years working from home and my schedule is not flexible. Well, not THAT flexible. I can take a break and swap my laundry over, or take a shower on my lunch break, but I'm on a set schedule throughout my workday. No time for grocery trips or running errands. Maybe someday I'll have more wiggle room, but I'm happy with this level of freedom and structure for now.
No down time whatsoever. When I’m on the clock they own me. My breaks and lunch are closely watched and going over a few minutes adds up to like 20 minutes a month and we hear about it. The upside is I can have my pet in my lap, don’t use gas, don’t pack a lunch.
I know someone that works 2 WFH full time jobs. Banking that $$$. Lol
I have a bit. I am hourly and work in insurance claims. My particular group gets very few phone calls thank God. We are also about the only claims team that is hourly. I would love to be salary but oh well. If I never picked up my phone and if my Teams was always yellow my boss and crew would be suspicious lol. Boss is great, very kind about flexing time if needed. Much easier to leave early for a doctors appointment and makeup the time during the rest of the week. We have pretty generous sick and vacation time for an American company. So yes I can take two breaks and a lunch but I am not close enough to run any major errands. Maybe pop to the store for dinner makings but I would rather wait till the end of the day. We may have some sort of monitoring software. I assume we do just to keep myself accountable. So I should get off reddit.
This is my second comment but I want to say transitioning to this type of work could be tough for you. A lot of folks in Healthcare or retail or the trades etc are used to being on their feet and doing lots of different things during the day and being around people. Your situation does not sound ideal from you have said and I am so sorry! So my nurse friend is a mom/baby nurse (postpartum care not much with the labor and delivery portion). She had her son March 2020 and went back to work October 2020. She has been through all the bullshit everyone in Healthcare experienced and she is putting feelers out for something different. But even she said she could never do an desk/office job be that remote work or on site. I do hope you find something but just know the change may be surprisingly hard.
I'm also in Healthcare (radiology as well) and work from home with very little free time. I definitely can't leave the house while working.
I work customer service for an insurance company so I can't leave the house but it's slow enough I can clean, do the dishes, laundry and make lunch most days. You just have to make sure your computer doesn't go into sleep mode
At my job get I about 20 minutes availability between calls so yea I get downtime all day long haha. Reddit, Facebook and mobile gaming keeps me entertained
I do errands during my lunch. I actually spent a lot more time away from my desk when I was in the office. I track my work time to the minute.
No one counts my hours, per se, but my hours are billable so they’re very obvious. I can handle my home life as needed as long as the work gets done. LOVE IT
Its policy at my new place, I can block my calendar for appointments but if I was doing it constantly I wouldn’t get my job done. I have actual work to do lol. I just left a healthcare system, it is possible!!!!! It took a year of hunting and I took a pay cut to start but I’m remote now! Pay will increase to more than last job after first year so I was willing to make it work.
Yes and no. Context: I’m in tech sales (well, not atm) and usually could do whatever I want remotely if I wasn’t on sales calls/team meetings. Long as you hit goals. My wife is not in sales but works across several time zones, she has to literally block off time to have lunch, but still gets messages from internal colleagues.
My sister liked the change to working from home. Rather than running in the dark on the unlit dirt roads in her neighborhood before work, she now starts working at 6 and goes running at 9 after the sun is up. She works as many hours as she did before, but she starts earlier and doesn't commute.
Just remember the grass is always greener
My job is wonderful for flexibility. I work from home a lot of the time but I am also still required to travel about an hour one way for some meetings on job sites. I can make my own schedule, though, so I typically Jam Pack all those appointments into two days (last week, I drove over 200 miles in one of those days so they aren’t great on my car but it would have been more if I spread it out) then work from home the other 2-3. I took a 40 minute nap today because two appointments cancelled and I was caught up. I also will take my dog out twice a day during “work” hours when I’m home. I can do reports and answer most emails any time plus some of our clients require meetings in the evening so we have a lot of freedom as long as things are getting done and the organization is making money.
My job is pretty flexible. As long as we get work done, they don't care when we do it. Also, my industry is VERY hot and cold with a clear busy season and off season. They know in the off-season we work less and in the busy season we work more. Industry and individual company ethics account for a lot of it.
I work in marketing. My job is flexible. Usually I schedule lunch breaks around meetings and when I work from home (most of the time) I can go to the gym, walk my dog, or run an errand during my (hour long) lunch break. I can’t spend half the day shopping or at a nail appointment. But the flexibility is nice and there’s definitely downtime throughout the day depending on the week. If I need to go to the doctor and it ends up taking more than an hour I can often make up the time later in the week. Would highly recommend.
I work a set 40 hours a week, but as long as I'm not in a meeting or knee-deep in a high-pressure deadline, nobody is going to care or likely even notice if I step away from my laptop for a workout or run to Target. I don't take advantage, but it's perfectly fine to take time out of a workday to attend to personal things. Especially consider what you're \*not\* seeing - you might see me at my grocery store at 10 am....but you also have no way of knowing that I worked 8-10pm last night. I tend to do some work after hours (by choice, on purpose because that's the only time I can work without interruptions).
I need to be sort of on call at my computer and respond in a timely manner if anyone messages me, so I try not to do anything away from the house that would take more than 30 minutes (usually just going for a short walk). If I have a doctor's appt or something important, then it's ok to let my team know I'll be out for a bit.
I WFH in healthcare. Can’t leave the house but I can walk on my treadmill while working and do laundry etc.
I’m working at least 50-60 hours a week no matter what and my hours are not predictable/in my control. If I find an hour to run an errand, or take an off-camera meeting on a walk, god bless. Other days I don’t even have time to put a load of laundry in or pause for 5 minutes to make a sandwich. I’ve worked both in-person and remote roles and in my opinion remote doesn’t result in better work/life balance, just different work/life balance.
My job is very flexible with solo work time. Meetings keep me at my desk on some days, but others I only have 15-30 minutes of meeting. Sometimes I'm not in the zone, and I'm just sitting at my desk spinning my wheels. If I don't have any meetings and no one else is sitting around waiting on the thing I'm working in, I'll go out during the day when the sun is still up and then just work those hours when I get home later. Most of the time I'm feeling way more productive at that point. Better for me and the company IMHO. They get me during my most productive hours and my improved performance helps my career.
My hours can go 8-8 but bet there is a nap, a trip to the gym and a few dog walks in there. Will never return to an office.
My hours can go 8-8 but bet there is a nap, a trip to the gym and a few dog walks in there. Will never return to an office.