Mysterious Night Shift Job At Home
May 17, 2014 3:00 PM   Subscribe

What jobs might fit this description: telework and only in the evenings for a major telecomm company?

Hi everyone,

A few weeks ago through some mutual acquaintances, a friend and I met someone at a bar who casually mentioned that he had a second job in addition to his 9-5. He said its with a big telecomm company (I'm guessing Verizon? AT&T?) and it was an evenings only job and it was also work from home (all of it). I'm remembering that this person mentioned having an IT or IS bachelor's degree but nothing beyond that and if not IT/IS, it definitely wasn't as technical as say, engineering/compsci.

I probably should have asked him what the position was but oh well, I didn't. So my friend and I are curious, what job might this be or did we get a fast one pulled over us? I wish I could remember more details of what he did but it was so long ago that we're having hard time remembering.
posted by driedmango to Work & Money (8 answers total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
Customer Service? Either phone or chat?
posted by magnetsphere at 3:02 PM on May 17, 2014


We run a 24/7 Help Desk / Network Operations Center and some of our guys work from home. Mostly people whose main function is to respond to trouble tickets and tweak settings or servers or services to fix things that go awry. Our first level call center is outsourced by the customer to a different company, but that work could also be done from home.
posted by Lame_username at 3:14 PM on May 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


There are a number of virtual call centers that route calls to agents homes. Not sure how accurate or timely it is, but here's a list of companies using VCC.
posted by 26.2 at 3:18 PM on May 17, 2014


When I read telephone and late at night, the first thing that sprung to mind was phone sex operator. So there's that.
posted by Solomon at 4:03 PM on May 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


In NYC there are lots of office/computer jobs available at night. Call Centers, law offices and offices that work with medicare or gov't money often have people working into the wee hours of the night/morning. I work for a 24 hour temp agency where there's always someone available from our company to answer the phone even at 3 am in the morning on Christmas day! And I don't mean one of those answering services- I mean a real recruiter will answer the phone.

We send temps to offices at 12 midnight where their shift doesn't end until 7 in the morning. As a recruiter I have often worked the graveyard shift from home as well. Sometimes a client will call late at night because someone they need the next morning is unable to make it and they need someone to fill the spot for the day.

I don't think that this is the norm in most states. Whenever people from other parts of the US find out I'm working these late hours they get confused. People who grew up in NYC don't see to have this problem in my experience. I think people think that NY is "The city that never sleeps" because of the restaurants and clubs open all the time, but that's a silly way to think about it because lots of cities have this. However to my knowledge NYC is the only place where it's not uncommon to have an office full of cubicles can have people working in them at any hour of the night or day- and if people can get away with doing that work at home they often do. THAT'S the real reason NYC is the city that never sleeps.
posted by manderin at 4:15 PM on May 17, 2014


Given his IT-but-not-too-technical background, my bet would be on technical support, either chatting or on the phone. Both of those things can be routed virtually, so that support staff need not actually be in the office, and they are often offered 24/7.
posted by jacquilynne at 5:46 PM on May 17, 2014


AT&T (my employer) has multiple 24-7 Network Operations Centers as well as Customer Care Centers. Some (AT&T is big, I don't know all the rules for all the places) have people who work from home, either on shift or on an on-call basis.

AT&T being ginormous (roughly 0.1% of the population of the US is an active-service AT&T employee), there are lots of teams that aren't physically together and many positions that can be done from a laptop and a phone. Verizon is also large.

Our local IT department has people who work specifically from home at nights/weekends/1 day a week. Usually those are people who used to have the 9-5 shift and know everyone. I can think of a couple guys who meet that description.
posted by Mad_Carew at 7:34 PM on May 17, 2014


TDD operator? Sort of like someone who does closed captioning transcriptions from home, but for phone calls?
posted by jferg at 7:04 AM on May 18, 2014


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