To Work or Not to Work

That is the question...

I recently received a call from a former co-worker at Quintiles who left the company about a year after I had started there. He wanted me to apply for an opening at his new company, but I passed because it was a full-time position and I am not at all willing to work full-time. He then asked me if he could pass my name along to his brother who works at another company in the same line of work (the statistical programming aspect of clinical trials) but that offers a lot of flexibility. I gave my permission and his brother contacted me a few days later.

I met with the brother today for lunch and learned more about the company and my options for working there. It sounds like a dream come true. If I work there, I can:

choose my own schedule (and it doesn't have to be consistent from week to week)
choose how many hours I work each week
choose if I will work at all on any given day
work at home or in the office
turn down or accept projects that come along depending on my interests

Before I met with this guy he told me that they are looking for someone to work about 10 hours a week on a flexible schedule. That is exactly what I've been thinking that I'd like to do, but I didn't think it was possible.

Over the past several months I've thought a lot about my future job needs/desires/prospects. I worked 20-30 hours a week from home after Sally was born and had a mostly bad experience with it (I was only supposed to work 20, sometimes I did more than 30). It was stressful and not very flexible, and I was frustrated with my manager and co-workers much of the time. The management team had put me in a position that they admitted to me was really supposed to be held by a full-time office-based employee. They overloaded me and while they were apologetic about it, they didn't do much to ease my load. What I did like about it was that I was bringing in some income and keeping up/expanding my skills.

Keeping up my skills and having some avenue for my time and energy outside of what I do at home and church are the main motives for me to go back to work. Salary is somewhat of a factor, but much less so. When I talked to this guy briefly about salary, he asked me what I would ask and then told me that I would get at least quite a bit more than what I had requested.

So...where is the catch? It seems too good to be true. I'm going to have a trial period with this company to see if I want to become an employee, but so far I see nothing bad about it. Some of my former Quintiles peers now work at this company and love it. I'll let everyone know what comes of this opportunity.