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Comment by jstx1 | Hacker News Reader

I don't think they have a right to limit the employees' income but they do have a right to demand full time work when they're paying for it.

It's a tricky problem that I don't necessarily have an answer to. My point was that it's misleading to compare people who have to work multiple jobs to survive with people who are making hundreds of thousands at each job.

Example from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29784608:

> As far as the money goes, my math goes like this:

> - 1 job: 250-300K cash, 250-300K equity (at the high end, higher if I moved to management)

> - 4 jobs: My current situation is 225K avg cash (including bonuses) per job, 100K avg equity per job

You can't look at this and say (like the GP comment did) "how about paying employees adequately".

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The employer can reasonably expect to get the work they pay for. Professional and creative employees usually get paid for results and meeting goals, not for warming a chair for eight hours. The employer can use cameras and keystroke loggers to make sure they get their eight hours a day — Upwork offers this “service” and I’ve heard of employers doing it. That would be a big morale booster and show of trust from the employer.

It’s up to the employer to set clear performance expectations and measurements, then handle employees who don’t meet those expectations as a job performance problem. If the employer can’t do that basic management work, preferring to pry and control and intimidate their employees into submission, they deserve what they get.

I don’t understand the argument “They are already well-paid so they shouldn’t look to make more money.” Try that on the C-suite execs who sit on multiple corporate boards.

> It’s up to the employer to set clear performance expectations and measurements, then handle employees who don’t meet those expectations as a job performance problem.

Yes, and that's the question that OP is asking - how do you set those expectations and measurements. It's a starting point for the whole conversation, not the end of it.

> I don’t understand the argument “They are already well-paid so they shouldn’t look to make more money.”

I've never made this argument or seen anyone else in the thread make this argument.

The OP didn’t ask how to measure employee performance or set expectations and goals. They asked how to identify employees who had multiple jobs.

> First of all, I'd like to figure out how we can identify someone working more than we are aware of. Generally it would be fine for me (/us) what people do in their non-work time, but if it affects our work, then it's not acceptable. So how can we identify such a situation?

The question indicates the OP doesn’t have a way to measure performance, and instead focuses on identifying employees who might have other jobs.

> I've never made this argument or seen anyone else in the thread make this argument.

I must have misunderstood what you meant by this:

> We aren't talking about people holding mulitple low-paying jobs to make ends meet. It's mostly people in well payed positions taking advantage of being remote.

One could read “taking advantage of being remote” more than one way, but in the context I read it as people already paid well taking advantage of their employer.

> The OP didn’t ask how to measure employee performance or set expectations and goals. They asked how to identify employees who had multiple jobs.

While this statement is true, I'm nonetheless interested in a good ways to measure and agree on performance metrics. But please metrics that do not affect (especially the remote) in a negative way. Personally I'm not so much of a fan to put number of people's performances, especially in development, which makes it really hard some times.

I have an idea of a metric. Upon regular schedule working hours, percentage of calls missed (i.e. you wanted to call them to have a meeting, but it failed, they weren't available)

That’s surveillance, not performance measurement.

If they promise you 8 hours per day but you can't contact them, they're not really there so they don't keep up their promise. I'm not saying it's a good solution though

Committing to eight hours a day is what Walmart and McDonalds expect of their employees. We’re talking about programmers, who should get measured and paid based on delivering value to the employer, whether that takes eight hours or four, and whether it happens during normal business hours or at 3 am. Interrupting creative and technical employees randomly during the day to check that they will answer only confirms they have their phone nearby, not that they are working, or working for you.

If your performance metric comes down to “Employee has blocked out eight hours per day exclusively to me” then you’re a terrible manager and employer.

I would almost play along with bullshit check-in calls like you describe if I could call my manager and the company executives randomly to check if they’re actually working too, and not golfing or buying NFTs with my withheld taxes.

I didn't say it was a good idea. I am arguing that either you give full freedom for employees but they have to commit to one job, or you do freelancing with very specific measurements and they can have multiple jobs. Read my others comments. I was suggesting a new measurement that is less worse than others. Not saying it is good in the absolute sense

   whether that takes eight hours or four, and whether it happens during normal business hours or at 3 am

So they could very well only work 2 hours and say that's all they can work and call it done, work 3 others jobs

   I could call my manager and the company executives randomly to check if they’re actually working too

I didn't say it was random calls

The only measurement that matters is, does the employee deliver the expected work on time? Checking up on them with phone calls is just a little less oppressive than using cameras and keyloggers. But surveillance doesn’t measure productivity, it enforces presence or the appearance of work. The employer could monitor heart rates but that doesn’t tell them anything about productivity. If the only measure of productivity the employer can manage is counting people at their desks eight hours a day that’s just terrible management.

Employers can’t give employees “full freedom.” Nor can they prohibit the employee doing whatever they want on their own time. Forcing employees to commit to one job is just coercion unless there’s some clear business rationale behind it, not just control and an attitude that the employer owns the employee.

the definition of "expected work" is up to the manager. I'm not talking about prohibiting but voluntary agreements

I was writing in the context of Europe as OP mentioned the company is located in Europe.

In that context you can take your math and divide by 10 to get the mainland EU average for software engineer salary (~40k). With up to 50% tax rate gives incentive to have multiple jobs if your diet consists more than of plain yogurt and bread.

I do believe your estimation is more correct than the numbers usually thrown around (80k-100k). Those are for shiny new job openings, and the majority of SWE in EU (just my gut feeling from personal observation) do not like to (or cant) switch jobs very frequently, driving the effective average much closer to 40k gross income per year.

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