I work two days from home and 3 in the DC office. I always work from home on Mondays as the traffic is usually the worst and Friday in the office as that is usually the lightest to save hours from being spent commuting. My days at home are 7:30-4:30. My in-office hours are 7:30-4. I work Monday night, Wednesday night and one weekend night. I am expected to work more than 40 hours a week. I found setting my work nights better for me, otherwise I felt like I should be working every night.

My days in the office are flexible as well and, as a rule, I do not bother to go into the office if I have more than 3 hours of conference calls scheduled, I go in on a more open day. I think it is important to stay connected to the people in my office and I can't really do that with my office door closed and on conference calls all day.

My DCs will start preschool in September. Then I will work a half day on Mondays from home and increase to 9-10 hour days for the rest if the week and eliminate the nights.

I couldn't stay in my job/firm/profession without this flexibility. I am well paid and am willing to work evenings to make it all work. I switched to a flex schedule while at the same job so I haven't had to compromise my salary or lifestyle. I am very lucky.

Good luck, OP. it does take a period of adjustment. Congrats on the new job!

My current job does not have any flexibility and is generally just not family friendly. I'm currently negotiating salary for a new job that would be much more flexible and family friendly (a lot more vacation, lots of flexibility on when/where the work gets done so not using vacation time to cover doctor's appointments, kids' school stuff, waiting for repair people at home, more paid holidays). I would work from home about 2 days per week. I could also work alternate hours (i.e., 4 longer days or a few hours on the weekend and in the evenings) and eliminate or shorten one day a week of child care. It all sounds great, but it will definitely pay less than my current job. I'm trying to decide just how much the flexibility is worth. Currently, while we aren't living a fancy lifestyle, we are comfortable (money for a few simple vacations/trips to see family, nanny, preschool, a few meals out each week, organic/farmer's market food, lots of impulse buys at Target). We can definitely cut some corners, but I'm trying to figure out how much we are willing to cut as a trade off.

I think my question is, if you have flexibility, how much are you willing to trade off in lifestyle to make it work? Also, if you work a non-traditional schedule, what works best to get to about 40 hours? 10 hours a day, 4 days a week? 9 hours a day for 4 days and a half day one day? 8 hours during the day, with an extra hour at night and a half day on the weekends? If this works out, I will want to have a general plan for my own sanity, although it can vary from week to week depending on other factors like weekend plans and kids' events.