At home at work — but no time to play

For those who work from their residences, discipline is the key

Wednesday, Dec. 7, 2005

Click here to enlarge this photo Dan Gross⁄The Gazette Fred Pulliam (left) replaces the hood emblem on Silver Spring resident Louis Varella’s Mercedes-Benz Tuesday morning in Pulliam’s repair shop that is attached to his Colesville home.

Pulliam decided to strike out on his own, building up his part-time garage business to a full-time service and repair shop for Mercedes-Benz vehicles. Nowadays, he serves several hundred regular customers a year, and he is his own boss.

However, like many others who start their own businesses and work from home, Pulliam faced daunting challenges.

‘‘It’s scary,” he said. ‘‘The licensing and permitting process is relatively convoluted, and there is no central location to call to find out what you need.”

Fortunately, his earlier work with the garage meant he already had the facilities. Just as important, he also had loyal customers. And working at home gave Pulliam the chance to be closer to his family.

‘‘I could be around and see who my son’s friends were, what was going on,” he said. ‘‘In elementary school, if he was sick or forgot his lunch, I was only 10 minutes away.”

Pulliam’s story is typical for many who work from home. These professionals tend to be older, as they have worked in companies and have built up a network of customers. They also tend to have spouses who are employed in more conventional work — Pulliam said he shared his wife’s benefits package when she worked with Montgomery County Public Schools.

After her death, he has had to provide his own benefits, which are much more expensive for a self-employed professional.

‘‘Now, I’m paying a lot more and getting less coverage,” he said. ‘‘Typically, with private-pay insurance, the costs are higher — and to keep it affordable, you end up with higher deductibles and higher co-pays.”

A boost when raising children

Working from home naturally makes for a shorter commute and greater convenience, especially where child-raising is concerned.

Steve Drake, a Colesville resident and self-employed consultant, gets to help at his daughter Katherine’s school and contributes more to household chores now that he spends most of his day at home.

‘‘I’ll be picking Katherine up from school and taking her to choir practice at her church,” he said — a change from the days when he used to commute to a job in Baltimore.

However, Drake said working at home is not for everyone. He credits his 20 years in the corporate sector with helping him develop the contacts and independence to succeed on his own.

‘‘In my longest stint with a firm, I was working in Beijing, China, for four years,” he said. ‘‘My boss was stationed in San Francisco, so he was asleep when I was working ... that gave me the entrepreneurial spirit.”

Although many dream of being their own bosses, Drake believes it’s best to leave this dream for later on the career path, after learning management skills.

‘‘If I was a twentysomething, I wouldn’t have all the experience I have now,” he said. ‘‘During the Internet bubble, there were a lot of younger people who said, ‘I can do this!’ and took the dive. Now, a lot of them are back working for larger firms.”

One necessary skill for the self-employed worker is good accounting. Drake said taxes are much more complicated, even though he has no staff and doesn’t rent a building. With nobody withholding taxes from paychecks, he must calculate his own taxes and send governments a check every quarter — an exercise that also has made him more interested in how his tax dollars are being spent.

Drake also pays about $800 per month for insurance, with a four-figure deductible. But being self-employed comes with some financial perks, such as savings accounts for retirement and health spending.

‘‘As a self-employed person, I can put away funds into an SEP IRA account per year ... more than twice what the government allows in the standard 401(k) plan,” he said. He also uses a Health Savings Account, which allows him to put aside money for use in medical expenses, tax-free.

Drake can take time to make his own lunch, go for an afternoon jog during a slow workday, or run errands. However, even though he is his own boss, Drake actually ends up taking much less vacation.

‘‘The good news is, you can take off whenever you want, but the bad news is it’s all unpaid,” he said. ‘‘I got away for a week this summer, and we’ll probably do some long weekend things in winter ... but when you’re self-employed, it’s entirely different.”

The importanceof self-discipline

As technology becomes more sophisticated, some industries are shifting their focus away from the office cubicle and toward telecommuting employees who can work from anywhere in the world.

In the case of Silver Spring resident Ben Supnik, a software programmer in his late 20s, he still has to meet his boss’ deadlines and coordinate with his colleagues, but he does it all from his home computer.

‘‘Our whole company is built around telecommuting,” he said. ‘‘There’s no way around it — no two employees even live in the same city, and altogether we span seven time zones.”

Supnik writes computer code and his work is very project-based, he said. He keeps to a fairly strict regimen of 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., only taking time out to cook lunch and dinner. His boss, who works in South Carolina, keeps a noon-to-4 a.m. schedule, and the company’s graphics programmers — who live and work in Italy — keep earlier schedules.

Communication consists of e-mail and instant messaging, and although it may look precarious to have each employee relatively unsupervised, Supnik said everyone keeps up with projects.

‘‘In a small company, self-motivation is important,” he said. ‘‘We only have one company support engineer — and if one day he felt like not taking any calls, we wouldn’t have any support at all.”

Also, when projects approach deadline, employees often sacrifice sleep and recreation time. In this situation, keeping a previously tight schedule means you generally have less pressure to deliver, Supnik said.

As a contracted employee, Supnik doesn’t get paid vacation, but companies typically let employees have a few days off after deadline to decompress.

Supnik’s favorite aspect of working at home is the food, which makes for high morale during high-pressure deadlines.

‘‘I’ve got access to a whole kitchen now,” he said. ‘‘Before, I’ve worked at companies with good food options, but also at those with no food options — so when you’re dealing with the pressure of crunch time, you’re also eating nothing but junk food.”

However, working at home can also lead to distractions. Pulliam chooses to stay in the garage until closing time. As the boss in his own workplace, Pulliam said it’s important to set an example for a man who works for him in the shop.

‘‘He brings his lunch and heats it up in the microwave each day, and so do I,” Pulliam said. ‘‘The most important thing is to keep your work and your home life separate.”