What I do and how I work from home

I’ve had a few questions about what I do and what the heck WAHM means.  I figure today is as good as any to give a history of what I do for my job for those that don’t already know.

How I work from home

I graduated from Winthrop with a Computer Science degree.  I think I might have been the only female in all of my programming classes.  If not, then only one of very few.  I ended up being the president of our UPE (geekiest of geek club) and graduated with honors.

My dad is in the programming field and he got me an interview with one of his previous contracting companies.  Because of him and my three years of experience at my internship, I was hired as a programmer for a small shipping company in Charlotte.  I stayed there 6 months working on a Visual Basic application.

After that, I spent several weeks “on the bench” and then got a contract with the large bank I’m still with.  When I first started, I worked 40 hours per week and went into the office.  After I had Emma 3 years later and Scott was in academy, I simply couldn’t handle it all.  I asked to go part-time.  I worked from the office Tues-Fri 7 hours a day.

When June came and we were moved to Columbia.  I was going to quit but we were in the middle of a project and they asked me to finish the project from Columbia at home.  A few weeks went by and the project finished but the working from home thing was working out so well, I just kept doing.  We would travel back to see my parents and I would go into the office when were in town about twice a month.

A year later when we moved back, I was pregnant with Lexi and no one ever made me come into the office.  It’s now been over4 years since we’ve been back.  I now work 6 hours a day Mon-Fri, adjusting my logged-on hours to try to accommodate the kids’ schedule.

It gets tricky when there are conference calls.  I’ve been known to hide in closets, bathroom, bedrooms and the garage to try to get a quiet spot.  I’ve also sat at kids’ tables and on the floor with my laptop to try to multi-task.  It hasn’t always been easy but it’s been worth it and it’s gotten easier.

What I do

As for what I actually do when I’m filling my WAHM shoes…my job has changed over the years as technology has changed. I started out strictly as programming on a specific project with Visual Basic.  Since then, I’ve done ASP, ASP.NET, C#, Java, Oracle, SQL Server, blah, blah, blah to most of you. I’ve moved into more of a production support/technical analyst who gets to program every once in a while.  If you want to get really technical, this is what I actually do…(technical details have changed to protect the company)

I write SQL like this:

INSERT INTO FUMON.EVENT_REQS (SELECT  (SELECT ELEMENT_ID FROM FUMON.RULE_ELEMENTS
WHERE RULE_TYPE_ID = 38 AND RULE_ELEMENT_VALUE = 7 AND RULE_VALUE_DESC = ‘AGE’), EVENT_TYPE_ID, OPERATOR_CODE, CREATE_DATE ,CREATED_BY ,LAST_UPDATE_DATE ,
DELETED_FLAG, LAST_UPDATED_BY FROM FUIMON.EVENT_REQS WHERE ELEMENT_ID IN (99=0)) ;

Process XML files like this:
<AP>
<INDORORG>I</INDORORG>
<LICTYPE>A</LICTYPE>
<RESIDENT>Y</RESIDENT>
<EFFDATE>20020116</EFFDATE>
<PENDINGDATE>20020107</PENDINGDATE>
<TERMINATIONDATE>99991231</TERMINATIONDATE>
<APSTATUS>A</APSTATUS>
<LINEOFINSURANCE>NNYYNYNYNNNNN</LINEOFINSURANCE>
<CLIENTNR>9</CLIENTNR>
<CARRIERNAIC>65005</CARRIERNAIC>
<RENEWALDATE>20090101</RENEWALDATE>
<DONOTRENEW>N</DONOTRENEW>
</AP>

Create pretty pictures like this:

And then write all the programs to make that pretty picture happen.  It’s a very geeky, technical, detailed job but when I actually get to do what I’m supposed to do, I love it.