[fdim]

Working from home may sound good only to those who haven't done it for a longer period of time. Having flexible hours is good to have, but only when you really need it (e.g. family visit, some delivery, some time off). Cut itself makes no sense, at least here in Denmark (Lithuanian here) if you work at the office you don't have to worry about food and coffee - at home you would.

[NDizzle]

I've worked from home for 6 years now.

Maybe my situation is a little different - I have 3 kids and my wife is a stay at home mom.

It's been great and I highly recommend it if at some point you realize you are a family man (or woman).

[mdip]

It's kind of amazing what it does for your marriage. I've seen both sides of it, myself. In both cases, my wife was also stay-at-home.

My first marriage was actually damaged by working at home. My wife was an introvert and I think having me around all the time hurt things (we were not particularly compatible to begin with which was exacerbated when I went from working 50-60 hours a week away to working most days at home).

My current marriage is greatly helped by it. There's nobody I'd rather share my time with than my wife and she feels the same. A lot of people will say what I said in the last paragraph applies to them -- they'd hate their spouse if they had to spend every waking minute with them and couldn't get away from time to time, but her and I thrive in the situation. I think it helps that her dad and mom were both small business owners who ran things out of their home and worked together on everything. It helps me because my wife is non-technical and by being around while I'm working/talking on conference calls, she understands more about what I do and the things I struggle with at work so she can offer more support/understanding to me than if I had to explain it all to her (it also avoids me having to spend hours explaining things). My four children love that I'm at home at all times. Even though they're respectful of the fact that I have to work and try not to bother me while I'm busy, they know I'm there if something important comes up. This is especially important since two of my children are step-'s and we're blending a family. The complexity of emotions that kids go through is helped by the stability of the fact that I'm seen as "always present" in the moment and at the time.

[NDizzle]

Yep, I understand your situation. Somehow I lucked into the second situation that you outlined. I think I'm exceedingly lucky that I missed the first situation - it seems to be the common case these days.

[fdim]

Good point. I am yet to reach that state though. Working at work involves more communication as well

[mdip]

I'm a little surprised at the down-voting. Your feelings on the subject are completely valid and shared by many. I've written enough comments on the subject within this thread that I won't repeat myself yet again, but briefly: a lot of extroverts dislike working at home -- I can name several off the top of my head that share your opinion and prefer an office job[0]. Additionally, introverts run the risk of being less successful working at home unless they extend themselves and force continual communication rather than fall into a natural pattern of putting their head down and getting work done. So the environment that may appeal most to introverts can be one of the more difficult for them to achieve success career-wise and the environment that may work well for an extrovert may not appeal to them at all.

[0] Though I think this is the first time I've heard "food and coffee" be a major factor. Perhaps it's something not understood by me as an American, but working at home means I can prepare a hot meal in 10 minutes for lunch with the wealth of food in my cupboard rather than eating out at fast food or enjoying whatever thing I managed to throw in a bag while I was rushing out the door in the morning that often doesn't appeal to me by noon.

[raesene9]

I've worked from home for about 5 years now, my wife has worked from home for about 10 years and we think it's great.

We get flexibility about where we live (so can choose a nice rural area) and cutting out the hours wasted on commuting time means we can fit in a nice 60 mins of excercise (in our case hillwalking) before starting work.

Personally I wouldn't want to revert to office based life...