Broadly speaking, I'm willing to work on-site, a hybrid schedule or remotely. I am well equipped with fast and redundant network resources in my home office.
I try to limit any commuting to around 4 hours per week total. I don't particularly care whether it's 2 hours each way once a week or 20 minutes each way 5 days a week.
I prefer to work remote only when the entire team is working remotely. I find that "the remote guy" is isolated from the team interactions that make for successful work. I would also prefer to avoid long-term isolated work - even as a strong introvert, reasonable doses of team interaction help motivate me.
If asked to work fully onsite, I may ask you for a private office: four walls and a door. Over the past three decades, I've found this offers me the optimal balance between collaborative accessibility to my teammates and mental distance from my teammates facilitating focus and concentration. You'll be paying me a lot of money. I would arrange my work space to help me deliver a quality of workmanship which justifies it, and I'd rather you equip me with a nice office than squeeze out a few extra pennies for my salary.
If a government contractor, I expect to be stationed at the contractor's offices, not a government facility. Lovely people in the government but your office space is just awful and contractors are at the bottom rung.
I am willing to relocate at the employer's risk. Generally speaking, that means both paid relocation expenses and a term employment contract of sufficient value over the course of several years to make it worth my while to relocate. Such a contract would be terminable early only for voluntary separation or a for-cause firing involving actual malfeasance. I will not relocate for "at-will" employment.
Given the risk of a term contract, I'm willing to work for up to a 3-month trial period "on travel" at your site. You cover the travel costs including regular trips home. At the conclusion of the trial we can make a mutual decision on relocation.
I'm willing to travel in service of work for which travel is not a core component. I can go do a site survey to figure out how to fit our system to the customer's need. I can go back later to help install it. No problem. But I wouldn't want either of those things to be "the" job. "The" job is designing and building that system from the comfort of my office surrounded by the tools of my trade.
Due to peripheral neuropathy in my legs, I require a wide airplane seat with ample leg room on flights longer than about an hour. That usually means business or first class. This is an ADA accommodation. Don't be surprised when I ask you for it.
I have no strong preference for which core hours I work save that they do not put me in peak local traffic. I'm as happy working nights as days, any day of the week, but I will not work a "rotating schedule" that routinely changes times of day.
While I'm happy to work full time I would actually prefer a part-time schedule. If you need someone like me but only really have enough work to fill 10 or 20 hours each week, let's talk.
For full-time employment, I expect to work about 1900 hours per year. That's 40 hours per week for 47 5-day weeks: 3 weeks vacation and 10 paid holidays. When you need me to work 60 hours this week, I'm happy to step up and meet the need. Do keep in mind that I will even it out over the year so that I average about 40 hours a week. If you're looking for someone who will average 50 to 60 hours every week, please keep looking.
I'm happy to be on-call to resolve faults which occur after-hours and have done work which requires me to be on-call many times in my career. In the days following an on-call incident, I expect full authority and discretion to pause other assigned work, chase down the fault which led to the incident, and resolve it in the manner I see fit. You don't have to ask me to be on-call but if you do, that's my price.
Last updated Wednesday, August 06, 2025 02:19 PM.