He ended up getting busted by all 3 companies at once, and all 3 fired him.
Hopefully he can find a new job that doesn’t check references. If you care about your reputation, or if you have the slightest moral compass, don’t do this.
But, the sort of industry pearl-clutching about holding 2 jobs is interesting, when employers think nothing of making you work extra hours without comp, or be "on call" without comp, intellectual property clauses for stuff done on personal time, non-compete clauses, etc.
My father worked two full-time jobs to raise my siblings and his reputation and moral compass is just fine. Many middle class families do it for survival.
There is no shame in working hard.
The post I replied to projected that (for some reason) into being a bad idea because of some story deceptive, poor-performing, contracting violating, three concurrent jobs.
I stand by my statement. It is not wrong to work two jobs. That was the original claim despite what this other guy wanted to make it about.
No - my dad worked one job during the day and the other at night. Why would you by default assume the worst in people? The original post was always about two jobs. Most people that work two jobs do so legally and ethically.
What on Earth are you all on about adding all these extra conditions to prove the original poster wrong. He never said - get two jobs, work them at the same, make sure this violates your contract, do a poor job, and lie about it.
You all trying to poison the water of this topic by equating it to something else entirely.
> It is not wrong to work two jobs.
2 jobs vs. 3 jobs doesn't make much of a difference. It is wrong to work 2 jobs if you explicitly tell each company that you are their sole employer.
The thing I don't understand is if someone really wants to work 2 or 3 jobs... why not do it by looking for 1099 contract work rather than chasing W2 roles?
The original idea was about a 2nd job. Thats all. You are saying that shows bad reputation and moral compass and then trying to shoe horn in the idea that people with multiple jobs are liars and poor performers.
Have you ever had to work two jobs? As someone that did and whose parents also did, I dont equate it with the worst in people. You do. I think that says something about the classes we each grew up in.
I think is perfectly acceptable to work 6-2pm and 2pm-8pm for 2 employers.
But I don’t think it’s ethical to work 2 jobs where the hours are overlapping not on a staggered schedule.
> Have you ever had to work two jobs
Yes, when starting my startup. I woke up at 5am, worked until 9am on my startup, went to my day job and worked a full 8 hours, then came home and worked 6-10pm on the startup. After a couple weeks doing this, I let the CEO of my day job know, and requested they sign a contract saying anything I develop outside of regular business hours is owned by me and not my day job. They approved and signed the agreement. I left to build the startup full time 9 months later.
The key here is just being honest and transparent. You can work 2 jobs, that alone isn’t the problem, the problem is working 2 jobs and going to great lengths hiding it from your employers, calling out sick for fake doctor appointments, fabricating stories as to why you aren’t getting your work done, claiming you have fake medical conditions that prevent you from joining meetings.
The sad part is a few bad apples will ruin it for the rest of us. Remote is easy to abuse. The more it’s abused, the less likely companies are to continue embracing WFH post-COVID. The more it’s abused, the more companies will be compelled to do things like install remote monitoring software, etc.
> the classes we each grew up in
Not that it’s relevant, but I grew up with parents who wouldn’t even pay for a $25/mo gym membership, and told me to go find a job. Same with buying my first car as a teenager and paying gas/insurance. Thank god I dropped out of private college after 3 semesters, all of my loans were in my name, no help from the parents.
I guess that blows my mind, you have a great origin story. It seems we agree on more than I realize, we just assumed very different things.
Congrats on all the success you have had with starting your own business and the hard work it took to make it.
You've helped me to reflect on my own biases with your posts and replies.
The take away that I’m trying to communicate (and clearly not doing a good job at) is pretty simple: have integrity, be honest, and act ethically.
Avoid exploiting, lying, and misleading.
If your employer is cool with you working multiple jobs and you’re honest about it with everyone involved, by all means, go for it!
Just my opinion. Pretty simple. I’m just advocating for people to act ethically.
I mean just read this blog post on Overemployed, having been on the other end of that as an employer, it’s infuriating seeing people jeopardizing their whole career and reputation for a few extra bucks: https://overemployed.com/overemployed-journal-week-2-elhapo8...
No it doesn’t. That’s completely dependent on what’s in the employment contract.
If I’m working multiple jobs yet still finishing my work and probably even doing better than some of the employees working for the company exclusively, I doubt you would be so quick to fire me.
It’s no ones fucking business how many jobs I work. Focus on results. This is the remote work equivalent of on-site managers who want to see asses in chairs.
Instead, put that extra focus into side work and side projects. If you’re good enough you can even be honest with people. When taking on a contract you can say “I have another commitment and will be working between X and X on X days for you” as long as you get all the work done for your primary job it’s not immoral.
His output was horrendous. I would have fired him anyway based just on that, but discovering he had multiple jobs expedited the firing (and clearly explained why his output was so poor).
It's impossible to trust someone with AWS production keys and access to customer data when they lie to you about something as simple as who they work for. People secretly working multiple jobs are looking for an easy way to make a lot of money. If it's within their ability to secretly work 2 jobs, is it also in their ability to download proprietary company info and sell it to a competitor?
Most employment agreements pay for 40 hours per week.
What employees do with the rest of their time is none of the employer's business.
They could be spending all that time driving an Uber, developing an open-source project, do contract/consultant work for a friend's startup, or just play video games.
As long as the work is getting done, the employer has no recourse unless it gets outright stipulated in the actual contract.
Your conflating of "working two software engineering jobs" and "stealing company data and selling it" doesn't make logical sense.
Working multiple jobs is not an easy way to make a lot of money. It takes time and effort.
Measuring employee productivity over "hours in chair" is the way to go.
The bottom line is working for two companies full time concurrently is abnormal and it’s not a stretch to imagine you’re not getting 100% of your employee while they juggle two jobs.
I’d also fire the report if I discovered them working two jobs.
Whether that's developing open-source projects, running a YouTube channel or working 40 hours a week for another team.
If they are competing with the company or not getting a reasonable amount of work consistently done, then that would be an issue.
I doubt anyone will reveal the how because it is becoming a cat and mouse game in my organization.
2. His output was horrible. He was an obviously a good senior level developer. But it would take him a week to do something a -junior- engineer couple do in 2 days.
3. Lots of strange and unexpected absences.
4. On a number of occasions I asked how he solved a problem at a prior company, and he spoke about the company in present tense rather than past tense. (A slip up on his part)
There were people a few other signs that were more subtle than the ones above... but ultimately I became suspicious about how such a good engineer's output was so bad, and had a theory he had multiple jobs. So I simply emailed his prior employer to make sure they were aware that he had resigned to work for our company. The CEO of his prior company (where he had been for 5+ years) was shocked to find out he worked for us.
The 3rd company he found through YC Work at a Startup, and through that uncovered he had been applying for a 3rd job and actually accepted an offer from one of them and had begun work.
There are whole blogs dedicated to how to pull this scam off (google it). But morals aside, I wouldn't recommend it simply because the stress of juggling remote meetings, standups, sprints between 3 companies is not easy.
Laws are generally not written for the average, decent person, but to stop the degenerates who would try to murder, destroy, etc, and wouldn't be punished otherwise.
People cheat on remote tests and interviews, for example.
The industry is full of engineers working 9-5 then going home and spending 4 hours on a side-hustle or open-source project (plus another 10 hours on Saturday/Sunday).
Those people can hold down two 40 hour a week software engineering positions. Timezone shifted, yes, but they can get their work done.