Strong introductory guide for the curious
I found this slim volume very helpful in providing ideas and general information about finding a job that can be worked from home. The first couple of chapters deal with the feasibility of working from home in a given job. Some time is spent sort of psyching up the reader about the multitude of benefits in telecommuting or webcommuting. If you are already interesting...
Not even worth the reduces Amazon price frankly
This is a timely book--very timely in that some of the statistical data and such will probably become dated before too long. The resources are good but even websites can come and go so anyone who is serious about working from home needs to hurry to get a copy before the information loses its immediate relevance.
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This is a timely book--very timely in that some of the statistical data and such will probably become dated before too long. The resources are good but even websites can come and go so anyone who is serious about working from home needs to hurry to get a copy before the information loses its immediate relevance.
With that said, there's more than enough good stuff here to almost justify the price. The book by arguing for the many reasons someone might want to work from home without glossing over the reality of it. Not everyone is able to work from home because some people simply prefer the interaction of others, want to get away from the house even if it means facing rush hour traffic, or simply have careers that are not conducive to working from home. And those who may sincerely want to do so are not necessarily equipped to do so in other ways--lacking the technology or maybe even the discipline to do so.
Being home all day with the kids may sound better than having to leave every morning for the office but when you have to be on a conference call you'll still need childcare.
This book does a good job of presenting the arguments both for and against working from home before addressing how to make it happen. No need to work out a way to approach your boss about working from home if after reading the first couple of chapters you realize that you can't (because your professional role won't allow it) or shouldn't (because you really don't have the right home or personal context to do so).
The book devotes one chapter to approaching your current employer with an argument for telecommuting before moving onto another chapter where finding a job that is telecommuting friendly is offered, including some warnings about work from home scams. The last few chapters are devoted to more practical advice regarding freelancing including an overview regarding how to file taxes along with suggested resources if you need more information.
This is a good book. Is it worth $19.99? No. At fewer than 200 pages you're paying too much for not enough information. The same websites are mentioned more than once between chapters if not within the same chapter. If you can spare a couple of hours, go to your local bookstore, buy a cup of coffee and read it while taking notes. It won't take you more than two hours to read this cover to cover and get a list of the resources you may want/need. Or borrow it from the library. But it is not worth the hefty price and that is a shame because it's not a bad book really just not very thorough.
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I found this slim volume very helpful in providing ideas and general information about finding a job that can be worked from home. The first couple of chapters deal with the feasibility of working from home in a given job. Some time is spent sort of psyching up the reader about the multitude of benefits in telecommuting or webcommuting. If you are already interesting in this kind of work, then you probably won't need too much convincing. But it does cover many of the practical issues that are important in deciding whether it is right for you and your lifestyle.
The most useful sections deal with making a proposal for your employer. Convincing your current employer that you can do the same work out of the office can be a tricky issue, especially if your company isn't used to letting workers do that. There are many potential objections that might be raised, and the book offers counter-arguments to prevent your goal from being shot down. Also covered are what types of jobs to look for - and suggestions of where/how to find them - if you are considering a new job that will allow tele/webcommuting.
All in all, despite being less than 200 pages long this book definitely serves it's purpose. It is loaded with tips and advice on issues you might not have even considered. One of those issues is tax ramifications when working from home. I look at this book as almost being in the self-help category as well - offering a great deal of hope for those who want to leave the daily commute behind.
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What I liked about this book was that it provides advice on how to coax your current boss into seeing the light in letting you work from home. Many books on this topic are of the "quit your day job and do something else from home" school of thought. But I like my job a lot and would like to keep it, I just want to know how to approach my boss the day I get pregnant. I like how the book lets you know what points to hit with your boss that will be attractive to him/her. The key is to make it seem like the best answer, and this book shows how you can begin planning to do it.
In addition to this book you should also research your industry and find out what percentage work from home vs. in office. Having hard stats before you approach your boss will let him/her know you are serious. Make sure you are busting a$$ at work and doing really well before you bring it up. The key is to be a comodity they can't afford to lose.
I think this book is a great start!
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This book piqued my curiosity mainly because I myself have had a full-time telecommuting job for the past three years developing e-commerce software from the comfort of my own house. While I do thoroughly enjoy the 10-second commute times to my home office (especially when it is snowing outside and all the roads are clogged with rush-hour traffic) and every weekday is a bring-your-pet/child-to-work day, there are times when I miss the camaraderie of mingling with co-workers in an office environment (e.g. going out to lunch together and after-work happy hour get-togethers). Of course, if your work experiences have involved disliking your fellow co-workers, telecommuting would distance them more and make communication and having to work with them more tolerable :-D
I gave the book 4 stars instead of 5 stars mainly because while over half of the book discusses strategizing the transition to telecommuting and considering some legal aspects of telecommuting (after all, both the author and publisher are in the legal trade), not enough attention and consideration is given to the home office infrastructure in Chapter 3's "Can You Do Your Job At Home?" Some of this feasibility analysis is performed in Chapter 4's "Making Your Case", but it is also incomplete. A telecommuter's "toolbox" should also include online conferencing, sending Voice Over IP via IP telephones to the company's PBX, using VPNs, remote access to files and company servers, video conferencing, screen sharing tools, collaborative software, as well as heavy use of instant messaging, and possibly taking advantage of Web-based calendar, project planning, and time tracking applications. None of this is discussed. The book also does not consider the various aspects of creating a fault-tolerant home office such as, for example, the increased importance of creating back-up copies of all work-related files residing on your local home computer in case of disk or computer failure, buying a UPS (uninterruptible power supply) in case of a power outage, contingency plans in case of computer hardware failures (do you have a back-up computer or do you have the option to drive into the company's office to continue to work), and contingency plans in case of loss of your Internet connection.
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You should read this book if you are even considering the idea of working from home. It gives you suggestions for you to pass along to your boss, suggestions to convince him to let you do it. More and more businesses are letting people work at home because they are more productive. If you are the type who works all day without taking a lot of breaks for coffee, communicating with those around you, then working at home is good (if you don't become a regular workaholic). Usually work at home people get paid less, but then the office benefits too by not having to provide space for you. Some people think they could work better from home but probably in reality couldn't because they would get distracted easily...by kids, pets, people calling, soap opera time, etc. You need to consider everything before taking this big step. Some people don't like being cut off from their co-workers either and don't find that out until they have taken the big step. The book suggests that you take it slower in the beginning by working part time at home and part time at the office. Also that if you have a problem getting started in the mornings at home, that you dress as if going to work, set a time to begin and end and treat it as a regular day at the office. Also people working at home don't get promoted as much as the ones at the office. That is something to think about if you are trying to climb the ladder to a better position. The book covers about every question you could come up with and you would benefit from reading it before you take the "plunge". Sure, you would save on gas, see your family more, work at your own speed, but can you do it alone without the support of your co-workers? It is well written and easy to read and more in depth than I thought it would be. A great little book.
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There are four primary audiences for this book:
*) Employees that would like to telecommute to a job they currently have
*) Employers that are considering or will be asked to consider allowing their employees to telecommute
*) People who would like to work out of their home on a free-lance basis
*) People who are currently working at home
All four of these groups will be well served by reading this book, although the primary focus is on the employee side. Telecommuting is something that has an enormous initial appeal; the idea that you can work while never leaving your home has many obvious advantages to both employer and employee. However, like so many solutions with obvious benefits, there are many subtle and sometimes considerable downsides. As someone who "dropped out" to work independently years ago, dropped back in to work full-time and now has "dropped out" again, I can attest that it is not as easy as it first appears. You must be extremely disciplined and realistic. Everyone, including myself, who has made the work-at-home decision worked harder while at home than they did while being employed. That is above the time saved by not leaving the house to commute to work. To succeed in this area, you have to have the right kind of work, right mentality and occasional nerves of steel when the work seems to dry up.
Even after over a decade of successfully working out of my home, seven full-time and three part-time, and having read other books about how to do it right, I still learned valuable information from reading this book. And that is the highest compliment I can give it.
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...when I was writing my own proposal to work from home. Many of the suggestions and tips in the book are spot on! Like most NOLO publications, the advice and suggestions that they give are written in a very concise and easy to follow manner.
They have chapters on how to write a proposal to work from home. Many of the things that I did in my proposal were the same suggestions but there were also some suggestions that I didn't add that were just as helpful. Another great chapter is the section on working from home as a freelancer with suggestions on the kinds of jobs that you can do as well as a very useful section on how to avoid those work from home scams!
Another useful part of the book is that they tell you where to go if you need numbers and statistics to back up your arguments. They list various sources and web sites that you can consult for information, and there's even a sample proposal so you have a guide for fashioning your own.
There are also practical tips on how to be more productive, things you can do to make working from home more fun, and other useful ideas. If you're looking to work from home or already are, you will certainly find this book useful.
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For years I've made the argument with many people that if people were allowed to work in an environment where they felt comfortable, and were not disturbed every five minutes, their productivity would soar. As energy prices rise and our lives become busier there are many out there questioning the mentality of people driving to an office building to do work they could just as easily do from home. Perhaps you are one of them, or perhaps you want to be one of them. In this USA Today handbook you'll find all sorts of tips and tricks to not only being productive in a home office arrangement, but also how to sell it to your boss to make it happen (and what to do if it they aren't buying).
Let's face it, does it really matter if you sit at a desk in an office building doing your work versus sitting at a desk at home doing it? Chances are, unless you deal with customers walking in the door every five minutes, it doesn't matter a hill of beans. Then why do so many of us get up every morning, sit in traffic, spend huge sums of our income on gas and car maintenance just to move our rear ends from home to work?
In this handbook you won't find all the answers, but you will find a lot of practical ideas and tips to help you achieve your goal of working from home, or to making your existing work at home arrangement more productive. The book itself is a very easy read and gives you a roadmap to help make working at home happen.
Your boss skeptical? Included is tips and ideas on how to propose a work at home arrangement to your boss that he or she can buy into. What kind of metrics can you produce? What benefits will it have for the company? How are you going to be available for necessary meetings, etc?
Perhaps your boss just isn't buying it. The handbook then goes into detail about how you can find other jobs that might be a better fit for you that do allow (and encourage) you to work from home. While it's by no means a complete guide to finding a new job, it can give you pointers to keep in mind and ideas to explore that could lead to you achieving the results you want in getting a work at home solution setup.
In today's computerized, modernized, networked and 24/7 offices there really is little reason many employees can't work at least part-time from home. In this handbook you have the ideas to help you start putting together the foundation for an effective work at home program for your company or organization.
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This short book is organized into 4 core sections:
1) Chapters 1-4 cover coverting your current job into telework for at least some of the time.
2) Chapter 5 covers finding an alternate teleworkable job.
3) Chapter 6 looks at self employment.
4) Chapters 7-8 cover practical details like taxation and ensuring good visible work practices.
As with all nolo books the advice is very practical and immediately useful. However some important topics are covered superficially. For example 30 pages covering self employment is a good introduction but doesn't cover the various legal entities that can be used or how to handle issues of IP in work agreements. The 8 pages on taxation barely skims the surface of the 20,000 pages of the US tax code and therefore such things as the implications of claiming part of your home when you sell.
A $20 book should have a bit more meat.
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So you're thinking of working from home and you've come across this title thinking that some advice from an expert might help. Chances are if you sit down and think about the issues really hard, you will come up with something as insightful as this book...in about an hour.
The main problem with a "Work From Home Handbook" is that home is a location, not a career. When I picked up this book, I did not realize that it was going to try to be a career advice guide. Unfortunately the Work From Home Handbook wastes space with bland, vague information on things like freelancing, just because freelancing can be done at home. If you want to do freelancing go get a book on a particular type of freelancing. If the information in this book enlightens you on freelancing--you are not ready for freelancing.
One would think that a guide to working at home would contain information on resources that the home worker can draw on, ways to make a home office run smoothly without the resources of an office building such as finding good computer support, shipping, outsourcing printing and administrative help, using various websites to make working at home hassle free for both you and your employer. It could include ways to set up a home telephone system including voice mail, phone trees and even an answering service. This guide includes nothing like that, nor does it contain any research on the problems and concerns of those who work from home.
Instead we have general information which seems to come from people who are imagining what the issues are going to be. There is common sense stuff on whether you are "ready" for life without the watercooler, and there is a section on writing a proposal to convince your boss you can telework. This proposal section leaves out the most obvious issue which is 1) if you are not already doing a stellar job onsite don't waste your time with this proposal 2)if you are brand new at your job and your boss barely knows you, wait until they know you well enough to consider it.
Lastly the book includes some general information on taxes. If you need information on taxes, consult an accountant. I have consulted accountants over the years and not only do home office tax rules change, the possiblity that a deduction will trigger an audit, also changes. Save yourself some grief and find an expert before you file.
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