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Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

If you are able to work from home

147 replies

Beansprout30 · 29/04/2020 23:04

Can I ask what you do for a living? I’m school admin and I’m able to do most of my job from a laptop but I can’t get my head around how many jobs can be done from home?!

OP posts:
Marmite27 · 30/04/2020 08:07

I write instruction manuals.

IsAnybodyListening · 30/04/2020 08:09

Commercial finance, for a household name bank. I look after about 65 clients. The role is constantly manic. I'm looking to change!

EmbarrassedUser · 30/04/2020 08:09

MOD. I’m a spy 🕵️‍♀️

No, sadly nothing as exciting as that! I’m a management consultant.

Polkadotties · 30/04/2020 08:11

Pension admin

Tulipstulips · 30/04/2020 08:11

Publishing. DH is in IT/infrastructure. Both of us already worked from home part of the week anyway - I was only in the office 2 days a week. The challenge now is homeschooling at the same time, and fighting over who gets to use the study and who has to sit at the dining table.

HotCrossBungle · 30/04/2020 08:21

@biglouis123 lovely! Is that your sole household income? I have dabbled a bit but am stumped how I would manage on this income alone

Tulipstulips · 30/04/2020 08:23

And you'd need a degree for both roles. I and lots of my colleagues have further degree(s) too.

Kahlua4me · 30/04/2020 08:27

I run a business with dh and work from home anyway as I do all the paperwork/admin. However we currently have no work as people can’t have renovations or upgrades in their homes at the moment and businesses have put all their work on hold..

ChokkaBlock · 30/04/2020 08:27

DH works from home working in IT. He does have a computing degree. I'd love to work from home as I don't particularly like an office environment or the chit chat or politics that goes with it. I would be much happier working alone at home!

ItWasntMyFault · 30/04/2020 08:31

Housing Officer, but there is quite a bit of my job that I'm not doing, but getting most of it done is better than none of it.

5foot5 · 30/04/2020 08:31

Software developer. I work as part of a small team and we have a skype meeting every day and other ad hoc ones whenever required to make sure everyone is on track.
DH also working from home. He is an IT manager for a small building society. They have some staff that are still going in to the office occasionally but he has been able to do all of his work remotely.

NotMeNoNo · 30/04/2020 08:32

I'm a chartered geotechnical engineer. About 80% of my job can be done from anywhere with a computer but I'm really missing being able to visit site and have design meetings/ workshops in person. Its exhausting being on Teams all day.

Cottagepieandpeas · 30/04/2020 08:34

Student Services Manager at a university. Students being 'seen' by phone or Skype. Everything else (e.g. managing / admin) is easily done from home as long as the systems are all working.

lastqueenofscotland · 30/04/2020 08:34

Conveyancing. Hopefully this encourages some of the dinosaurs in this profession to move away from posting things. It’s worked really well on an operational level. People not being able to move... not so much.

DecadentDeity · 30/04/2020 08:36

Management consultancy - busy enough at the moment but going forward it may not be so easy to sell work remotely. Projects are moving at a slower than normal pace, hard to keep team momentum up.

Inconnu · 30/04/2020 08:37

I'm a university lecturer. I wouldn't normally be able to work from home (except on days when I have no lectures timetabled), but face to face teaching has been cancelled so it's all online at the moment.

User202004 · 30/04/2020 08:38

Civil service agency, working in compliance. Our whole organisation has shifted to home working, we had the equipment already. We research and provide evidence for government so barring "being in the field" everything else just requires a laptop and a headset. We have offices across the country, I'm remote from my staff and manager usually so no different for me, most of my meetings are through Skype/teams. I write policies, answer compliance enquiries etc, all of which can be done remotely. I think my company will stay like this a long time.

PineappleDanish · 30/04/2020 08:42

I don’t know what half of these jobs are though, like, what is it you all do

I'm a freelance writer which is more self-explanatory than many. I work for a range of different clients, mostly writing content for their websites. Wide range of topics - in the last six months I've written about all aspects of car ownership for a website which helps you compare repair costs at local garages, travel insurance, DBS checks (lots of this), interior design, water testing/safety and things like Legionnaire's disease, travel... huge range of things. Also write for a quiz company - last project was 3000 questions on Brazil.

I got into it by accident really, the company I worked for when I was pregnant with my first baby went into liquidation when I was on maternity so I started doing bits and pieces like mystery shopping, and adhoc projects for a company I'd worked with previously (admin for professional courses in the oil industry). Then I worked for a company where you could text in questions and someone would answer them - in pre-smartphone days. Then when that work started to decline I picked up more writing gigs, started on Odesk and Freelancer, progressed onto People Per Hour and now most people contact me direct.

I work from home all the time, this lockdown is nothing new for me at all. It's just I don't usually have to work with three kids and a husband bouncing around the house.

FishOnPillows · 30/04/2020 08:47

I’m a senior analyst in a scientific industry. I’m managing 2-3 days a week from home, then back in the office/labs the other 2-3 days. It’s working well for me, because I can spend my time at home doing validation/qualification/compliance work (things I really need to concentrate on uninterrupted), then when I’m back in I can check other people’s work and do the odd practical lab-based thing.

everybodysang · 30/04/2020 08:48

Editorial manager for a publishing company. Worked from home a little anyway, had a very long commute so it's quite nice to ditch that for a while. I do really miss the office though. My colleagues are lovely and most of them are furloughed so we are working very hard with a skeleton team. The publishing side is easy to move to WFH but we also do events so that's been trickier. We have done a couple of online ones and will do more.

thatmustbenigelwiththebrie · 30/04/2020 08:49

I do comms for a university. Technically my job can be done from home but it's hard not being in the same physical space as colleagues to talk through news strategies etc and everything is much slower.

beautifulmonument · 30/04/2020 08:51

Engineer. As long as I don't need to be on site (which I don't too often) I can work from home.

PhilCornwall1 · 30/04/2020 08:55

I don’t know what half of these jobs are though, like, what is it you all do ? Does it require a soul crushing 3 year qualification? Does it take 8+ hours of your life, five days a week?

I did go to University back in the early 90s. You don't need a degree to do the job, just a large amount of experience. When I WFH it's generally at least an 8 hour day, if I travel, it's anything between 12 to 18 hours a day, but I do live hours away from any of our offices or client sites.

LemonBreeland · 30/04/2020 08:55

I work for a pharmaceutical company. Our entire office works easily from home, apart from the finance department who had to take a load of files home with them.

Inconnu · 30/04/2020 09:17

DH works for a large insurance company. All 7000 employees are currently working from home.

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