Travis - like any job the hours depend on the customer and the demand. I unless i have conference calls with my team, contractors, customers or bosses, I am very flexible. I can fish in the morning and start work at 10am if I want, or kick off early in the afternoon. If I have meetings in the evenings with Japan I usualy cut out early and take my kids to sports or dinner. It realy is a great job, a lot of pressure (don't let Tex make it sound too easy) and responsility. I manage a $15-20 million budget, have anywhere from 10-20 direct reports, plus a few managers working for me and a bunch of contractors. My performance is measure on delivering on-time, on-budget and meeting customer expectations. If me or my team can do that at different hours, it works. I have folks who have to work some weekends deploying production software and they take time off during the week to be with their familys.
Heck i'll be working on the way to the rally, doing a conf. call with my customers from the US and Europe while I drive.
But it took good grades in HS, very good grades in College and a lot of time/effort at the right jobs to build the skills that IBM finds valuable. I have worked for 6 other companies in the last 15 years, one other (GTE) allowed me to work/manage from home.
what's MOST important is studying and working hard for something YOU enjoy, don't just do it for the $$ or the perks. My wife, a structural engineer, took a job that EVERYONE thought would be perfect. She went from designing/building office buildings/docks to inspecting those things during construction. She had NO office, they gave her a Nextel phone/walkietalkie and a fax machine. Every morning she got a fax with the mornings schedule and off she headed in her Dodge Ram. No dress clothes, no BOSS telling you what to do, and they paid her mileage! she HATED IT!!! She is a VERY creative person and got bored very quickly telling the same constructions contractors where to fix their shoddy work! Not challenging enough for her.
So, study hard, try different things and find something that YOU love and can get paid for - Trep
PS - It also takes a certain kind of personality to work from home. I hired a young technical guy from GTE in Tampa when I joined IBM. I gave him a $10k increase in salary, paid for his home office furniture and set him up with all the technolgy. He lasted 6 months and quit to go back to his old job at his old salary. He was single and with no "work" friends to see all day, he felt lonely and not realy "part of a team". For me, my family is my touchpoint, I see my team maybe 1-2 times a year. Heck in my last IBM job I didn't see my boss or my employees' for the first 6 months on the job. Becareful what you wish for!!!
