Should I go back to work? If so, doing what? (City/IT)

[NotQuiteCockney]

I keep getting stuck thinking about this. DS2 starts school next September, so I will have 9am to 3pmish free, at least in term time.

Before having kids, I worked in the City, doing IT things. I liked the actual coding work, and liked working with bright people, but found the hours mad, and some of the people insane.

I like doing coding, I really do. I think it suits me, and I'd like to get back into it. (I was pretty good at it, last job was v blue chip.) I'm reasonably personable, but I don't think I want to work With People.

I'm starting a creative writing course with the OU later this month (shhh, don't tell anyone, I'm a bit funny about it all ), so I am trying something different, but I think making money at that sort of thing is kinda unlikely.

I don't really need to make money, I guess, but it would be good to, I think.

I guess, in theory, I want a coding job that's flexible or shorter hours. I don't mind the City (the DSes school is there, anyway!). But I like picking the boys up from school and biking them home, and still would want to do that, at least a few times per week. I wouldn't mind working from home, I don't think.

Any ideas or insights?

Well, you have nothing to lose by giving it a whirl and seeing how you feel about it...

If it's coding I should imagine you would be able to get something on the contracting side and am sure you would be able to negotiate your hours/daily rate to suit the school drop-offs & pick-ups. Advantage of contracting is that you can drop in and out to suit (though if you are good you will end up getting 'caught' by a company before long). IME there are so many IT people clamourign to work WITH people that you won't have a problem if you are keen to just concentrate on the programming side.

I'd just ring round the agencies and ask... maybe try Hudson IT and Project Partners. And the working mums website that's advertised here on MN might be worth a look too. Depending on how specialised/experienced you are, you might want to take a look at the Sapphire Partnership who do placements at the senior level.

I used to do C/C++/Java. Financial markets stuff.

Retraining as a web developper type person is somewhat tempting, although it means I'd never make the same ££ as before. (WTF is Ruby on Rails? Will google.) Web stuff does look more freelance-friendly than the City ...

I used to be a contractor, but generally had very busy hours. I worry that people have a set headcount, and won't be interested in a part-time or part-timeish person, as what wouuld that count for? I know JP Morgan has a special program for getting people back into work after breaks like this, though ...

I'll look at the working mums site - haven't seen that one around.

Goldman Sachs also have what they call their 'roll-on, roll-off' scheme for mums if you are looking for a permanant role..

I've not anything useful to add NQC but I am in a similar position myself, doing an OU MSc in Psychology and desparately trying to think what to do with it and what I want to do with my time when DS2 starts school next September. I don't want to work f/t as I want to be around for the children when they get home from school - they will still be young after all and I want a good work life balance but it is very hard.

If I were you I think I would go contracting for a while. The right hours are unlikely to be available by applying for jobs. It is more likely you will get a foot in the door by temping and then will be able to negotiate something when the company know you and what you can do.

My DH did something similar. He is an accountant and wanted to set up his own practice but had to keep earning the money until he had enough clients to go it alone. He ended up working for a blue-chip company on a contract that was supposed to last 4 months but in the end he was there over a year and was able to work 3 days a week at quiet times (he did mainly quarter end stuff) so he could spend the other 2 on his practice. It worked well but there was no way such a job would have come up as a proper p/t job to begin with, not at a senior well paid level anyway.

If you could think of something different would you be keen to try it? Is it worth doing one of those career assessments to see what you like and are good at. If you haven't worked for a while you may well find what you can do/want to do/like to do has changed a bit and things that you would never have considered before are now more appealing.

Sorry, long post considering I had nothing useful to add.

NQC -- I was much in the same situation as you, but DS doesn't start full-time until a year from now. But out of the blue got a call from my old employer. Make a long story short, I've negotiated a schedule which allows me to pick up kids from school 4 days a week. I start 29 Oct (AHHHHHHH!!!)

Thus, have you kept in contact with any of your old employeers/collegues? If they liked you, you might be able to find some felxibility that way. A friend of mine also set up a web consulting business (in the US) and she was able to work that around her DC quite well. But that would involve people contact. Also another mum at school works for Microsoft 20 hrs a week, but from HOME!! Worth a shot.

Good luck.

(neglected to mention that I'm an IT bod too.)

I'm not opposed to working with people! I just don't want a job where that is most of what I do. (Or at least I don't think I do.) I found, in the City techie teams I was in, I ended up doing a lot of the dealing-with-people thing, what with being surrounded by people with (undiagnosed) autistic-spectrum disorders.

I hadn't known GS did something in that line. The only people who I still know there, I think, are traders - and not my favourite traders, either. Still ...

I need to dig up some old colleagues, really. My GS people seem to have scattered to the four winds, but I'll see what I can dig up.

My DS2 starts school full time in a year, too. So it really is just theoretical right now ...

Yeah it is difficult. I had actually started doing a course on Indexing (for books) that I could do from home when this call came in. Ideally, it would be a year from now, but you can't look a gift horse in the month.

I just did a quick search on WorkingMums IT London Jobs one is part-time.

My DH needs a good C++ coder and is really struggling to find a decent one. But it is just south of Cambridge, so probably too far.

And once I settle into my new job (Head of Application Architecture and Development) and see how good / bad my staff are I might be looking

I'm in East London, so south of Cambridge not v tempting. If I wanted to work near there, I'd apply at EMBL, anyway.

I need to recultivate my old work colleagues, I think, and see what comes up. DH isn't badly connected, either. Well, he's about a billion times better connected than I ever was, anyway ...

I think connections is def. the way to go. ...Good luck networking.