What jobs in technology enable you to work remotely?

I completely agree with Lisa's answer. I have worked at Dell Technologies for 5 years now. In that time I have been a Technical Sales Representative (selling technology equipment to small and medium businesses over the phone), a Hyperscale Specialist (concentrating on providing customers and employees with resources and information about the cloud, big data and large scale infrastructure deployments), and a Senior Technical Trainer. All but the last of these jobs have allowed at least some work from home capabilities.

For me, cutting out the commute is awesome, and also i find when I am at home I also tend to work longer hours. I live in a small space so I usually end up working as soon as I get up, I work a bit through lunch, and then find myself working beyond my normal business hours because my setup is right in front of me. I will say though, I personally only prefer to work from home about one or two days a week, but that is because I am a very social personality and I enjoy being around coworkers and being able to throw ideas off of them, or just talk to someone every few hours.

As far as the type of jobs that allow work from home, you can get many different jobs in the tech industry. To Lisa's point, if your job involves directly interfacing with customers, or with a specific set of hardware or software that can only be accessed locally, you will have a harder time working from home. I hope that helps, but if not, feel free to ask any follow ups!

Hi Anina!

My name is Lisa, and I'm currently a Technology Risk project manager. I work from home 3 days per week, and go into the office 2 days per week. I like the mix, because I do find it is good to get out of my home office and interact face to face with my colleagues. I have 2 set days I usually go into the office, so people know what to expect. However, if I have an important meeting that comes up and is more appropriate to do face to face, then I will adjust my schedule to accommodate that. I guess to get flexibility, I feel I also need to give flexibility.

More and more companies are implementing work from home polices to help people balance work / life / family. There are many technology jobs that can be done remotely, i.e. project management, application development, business analyst, and more. Each company will have different work from home policies, but the possibilities do exist.

Any jobs that require customer facing, would be difficult to do remotely. i.e. desktop support, some support activities can be done remotely, but not all.

Working from home certainly has it's pluses. For me, the biggest is cutting out my long commute on the days I work remotely. I will say, you need to be very disciplined to continue to be productive from home. You need to have a space that is private and quiet enough to allow you to focus, take business calls, etc, and when working from home, you also need to manage your work schedule to ensure you don't end up filling it with personal or home activiites. You also need to ensure you are setup with appropriate technology, i.e. I have a large monitor at home so I can easily work on presentations and spreadsheets, which would be difficult.

I would recommend doing research on companies that have strong work from home policies, and then you can target those companies when looking for jobs. There is a lot you can find on the internet about the top 100 best companies to work for or companies with work from home policies. You can then search for job openings from those companies, do some networking to see if yo know anyone who has a connection to the companies you're interested in, etc.

Good luck in you future endeavors!
Best,
Lisa

I work with Alicia and she is correct. I would also encourage you to think about what industries you are interested in so you can then narrow your search, Working remotely definitely has benefits, but also potential downsides. For example, you won't get to experience spontatneous hallway or water cooler conversations or pick up on non-verbal cues during meetings. I think the best scenario is one in which you get to decide how often you work remotely.

Hi Anina,

I think it is getting easier to find remote jobs - I would suggest looking for what is it that you want to do first and then look for a company that offers or enables remote employment. I have been working remote for over the past 4 years - most of them were doing Project Management and now Corporate Responsibility. I think the more global the company the easier it is to find these opportunities since sometimes your customers will be all over the globe and not in a single location. Good Luck!

Hi,
There are many jobs, especially at Dell, where you can work remotely...I work 100% remotely in our partner program and work with our internal sales people and external partners and customers. Many sales people @ Dell work remotely too. There are a lot of jobs in programming, technical support and other areas where you can work remotely. Also, there are many companies like Dell that have it set up where almost any job can be remote.
Good luck!

Good Morning-
I currently work at Dell as a remote sales employee. I have worked for Dell in various sales roles over the past 10 years and have had the opportunity to work remote a couple of days a week. I currently am a full time remote employee. As much as I love not commuting to work and working in my PJs many mornings, it can be somewhat isolating, so keep that in mind should you decide to pursue a full time remote career. It is good to be able to be face to face at times with your peers at times. Collaboration is something that can help you to advance and if you are not in the room with your boss on occasion it is easy to be overlooked for promotion. Remote work is great, but there can be a downside. You will also have to network in different ways, which is a totally viable solution to advancement! Best of Luck! RB