whats managable commute time for you?

[SlipTheJab]

I get my best sleep on the train. In fact, my 45-50 min commute feels like 5 mins cos I'm sleeping the rest of it.

Not missed my stop yet. Had one or two close shaves though.

Sleeping on the train is one thing, trimming your whiskers is another, I draw the line at that

[dx4100]

I had that once. Really pissed you off to have to spend it.

What else are you going to do with the money ? What other purpose can it have other than maybe retirement savings ?

What is left behind in my business is my warchest. Its there to allow me to have an enjoyable and relaxed existence. I don't have to worry (to much anyway) about where the next gig is coming from and it doesn't force me to take gigs I don't like.

Seriously I wouldn't worry about spending it. Its why you have it surely ?

[psychocandy]

She is at Group Director level... We don't "need" that level of incomes its more of a "want". We just gone through the process of having a couple of kids, lower income during maternity leave, extending the house and having a few nice family holidays. We now want to get rid of the mortgage, move to a bigger house and get rid of that mortgage, and do a few more big family holidays to the likes of Disney World etc.

Ride the wave while we can

Well picked on the wife front then!

[psychocandy]

What else are you going to do with the money ? What other purpose can it have other than maybe retirement savings ?

What is left behind in my business is my warchest. Its there to allow me to have an enjoyable and relaxed existence. I don't have to worry (to much anyway) about where the next gig is coming from and it doesn't force me to take gigs I don't like.

Seriously I wouldn't worry about spending it. Its why you have it surely ?

What I mean is it takes time to build up then its annoying when you havent got a contract and you see it disappearing (although JSA helps!)

Good to be in that position of not being bothered about the next gig mind. My warchest is OK these days but I'd rather not go 3 months without a gig - would make a BIG dent.

[dx4100]

What I mean is it takes time to build up then its annoying when you havent got a contract and you see it disappearing (although JSA helps!)

Good to be in that position of not being bothered about the next gig mind. My warchest is OK these days but I'd rather not go 3 months without a gig - would make a BIG dent.

I wouldn't want to be without for 3 months either. I don't want to get all about it though

[ShandyDrinker]

If you only aim to pull out the £40k (or whatever the exact number is to avoid HR) a year then, depending on the rates you work towards, it isn't all that hard to build it back up again surely ?

Suppose it depends on your fixed outgoings...

I always try to keep within the HR and outgoings aren't massive such as a 500k+ mortgage for example. However, the outgoings aren't as small as I'd like them to be.

While I agree with the sentiment, what if you exhaust the warchest to say only have 3 months left... then you're left in the position of having to spend months/years building it back up again as you may have little choice but to take some poorly paid contracts to keep the money coming in.

My original post missed the bold part above. As you exhaust the warchest you can afford to be less and less choosy meaning you may have to take what's out there as opposed to necessarily the right contract. The lower the rate, the longer to rebuild the warchest and so on. It can be a vicious circle.

[Cirrus]

9.5/10 hour working day = MUG.

Sorry but 6am to 8pm every day is going to kill you eventually. Do you have family?

My working day is actually 8:10 - 5:10. I may be on trains for 5-7 per day hours but I don't do any work. No laptop out for me.

I did retire but decided that what I liked was sleeping and reading books. The best way to do that is get a job in the City.

I live 100 miles from London. The same from Manchester. More from Newcastle, Exeter, Ashford etc etc. If you want to be a contractor you will have a choice: work close to home (limited opportunities), live in the dreadful urban sprawls of big cities, stay in seedy hotels, or do long commutes.

Where I live, the people I mix with are used to the alarm going off at 5 am or earlier. No big deal.

I have worked at home but often that is inefficient. I have seven projects across different businesses in different locations. There are tons and tons of stakeholders. Half of them I don't know who they are at any given moment. Nothing beats sitting at someone's desk and when they mention a key person you can walk three yards and meet them.

[sasguru]

Nothing beats sitting at someone's desk and when they mention a key person you can walk three yards and meet them.

Which century do you live in? Your projects must be small if all the stakeholders are in one location or even in one country.

I work from home, sometimes for European clients, including doing some PMing on multiple projects with pan-European workers.
When I want to talk to a key person I simply dial them up on Skype for business (previously known as Lync) and talk to them wherever they are in the world.
Its completely free and just as effective.

[Drei]

Contractors need to be ... tough!



I leave my house at 06:00 and arrive at my desk in the City at 08:10

Prompt!

Every day!!

Then I catch the 18:00 and arrive back at 20:00

Prompt!

Every day!!

When I go to the Essex office, it's three-and-a-half hours each way.

Working from home? You must be some loser programmer/techie.

Or maybe a BA!

Or simply not essential

Project Managers : have to be there.

Pressing the flesh...

Hmm is this client expectation or you teaching them that all contractors should do so many extra hours for free?

At one point you need to realise that the commute is part of your work day, so if you do 1:30 hours each way that's 3 hours every day of WORK, not sure but I sure as hell don't have any fun during my commute, nor have my family with me. I would say 10 to 14 hours is max anyone should do (inc commute and lunch), look at the French they are more productive and work less hours than us. I would actually go for 30 minutes lunch times or eat at my desk whilst doing work so I can do my job and avoid unnecessary overtime.

Oh and there are plenty of Project Managers, Programme Managers that DON'T need to be present in the office, especially since you will probably work with team based offsite or even international. As a EMEA PM I can tell you 100% that you DO NOT need to be THERE. If I need to have conf calls with India, Australia, China, Manila the US etc. I will do so from home considering they work in different time zones. I might not do 9 to 5 that day and will take a longer lunch or pop outside and do my personal bits but will work to 10Pm or later depending on the project and what's being delivered.

If you a Tech PM or do software development, implementations etc you will not be on client site or make any difference when the Dev/Infrastructure team is in India.

Project Managers : have to be there. Biggest pile of crap I have ever heard. You will need to be there or be on call once the project is close to delivery date, if you do that every day throughout the life of the project I would say you are either a bad PM or you kiss a$$ and want to be seen as putting massive over-time when you don't need to. I really do hate people that do 7 to 7 yet 4 5 hours of that time is spent fluffing pillows. Makes other look lazy, uncommitted or clock watchers when in fact they do a lot more work than the so called 10 12 hours a day people fluffing the time.

As a manager I would question anyone doing too much overtime, either they are doing so for the sake of adding quantity not quality, they are bad at their job and need additional time to perform basic tasks or they are being burned out and I should really look at adding extra resources before this resource packs it in.

My working day is actually 8:10 - 5:10. I may be on trains for 5-7 per day hours but I don't do any work. No laptop out for me.

Nothing beats sitting at someone's desk and when they mention a key person you can walk three yards and meet them.

Cirrus I will say this as respectable as I can but your mentality is the reason why so many people in the Government more specifically the NHS and some private sectors such as BHS or JLL have massive issues tackling change, again not to sound ageist but over 50s tend to be adamant to change and embracing today's technology. This is the biggest issue I usually have as a PM trying to implement something new or change processes. The people that have been there 30 40 years doing the same thing because it worked... back then.

[LondonManc]

yeah that stop start traffic is killing me. Im travelling from manchester to clientco through liverpool city centre. on the top of that , every week or so there's highly congested part of either motorway or town for one reason or another.

If you're going to the north side of Liverpool from Manchester, look at using the A580 instead of the M602/M62.