Work from home
Due to the fact that nearly all of the work you'll do in a semiconductor design job is on a computer, it's a job that's frequently possible to do from your home. Using your home internet connection, you can often use specialized "VPN" (Virtual Private Network) software to connect to your employer's network just like you were sitting at your desk in the office. Once you have the connection established, you can send and receive e-mail, join teleconferences, open applications, and pretty much anything else you'd typically do while wired into the connection at the office desk.
Some semiconductor design companies have official policies regarding working from home. For example, several companies officially allow you to work from home one day per week. Some lucky individuals can even work from home full-time, often due to the fact that they live in a remote location and have skills that are highly desired by the company.
Not every company is generous enough to officially allow employees to work from home even one day per week. In some cases, you can work from home as part of your "flex time" while you're waiting for a service appointment, for example, but that's all. This is still a valuable benefit to have as it enables you to keep-up with your normal work while you are at home for whatever reason.
Common among nearly all semiconductor companies, however, is that they will offer for you to work from home on your own time, which basically becomes unpaid overtime. If you are behind on a project or have a nice bonus riding on the completion of a project, this can be helpful. You'll even find that some co-workers are important enough (or feel they are important enough) that they need to briefly check-up on things throughout their evenings while at home, and for these people, the VPN access is very valuable as well.
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