Comment by 9dev | Hacker News Reader

Comment by 9dev | Hacker News Reader

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I live in Germany, a country infamous for its strong employee protections. It’s very hard to fire someone here. Yet, I don’t see how this is in any way unjust. Your employer pays you for putting your skills and time to their use.

If you start working on a side gig, that will take up a chunk of your time and invariably occupy your brain; thus, your employer doesn’t get their full value out of you anymore. Up to a certain degree, employers (have) to tolerate this—in Germany, that would be when your performance at your job starts to suffer from it. But once your commitment to the side gig increases so much that you’re about to become CEO, there’s no reasonable way to claim you can still carry out your contractual duties to your employer.

If your employer then offers you to either step down from that side gig or lose your employment, that is completely reasonable and frankly something you should expect?

Put differently, if you pay me to paint your shed, and after finishing the front side I went off and painted my own house with the rest of the paint, you certainly wouldn’t consider the job done or full payment to be justified.

As you live in Germany, you know that many members of boards and C-Levels serve so in multiple companies. There is a difference in being a regular employee and C-Level/Board level.

There’s a huge difference between c-level and board responsibilities. I think it’s generally not wise for c-levels to be at multiple companies. Board is a totally different role

This is common the world over. Board roles typically aren't meant to be full time. However executive officer (chief or otherwise) roles typically are.

I'm sure people can manage doing one of both (so long as there is no conflicts of interest). Heck, now that I think of it, technically I'm a chief science officer of a startup and a casual employee of a university...

I wish we would hold these standards to politicians with their many side-gigs.

If you do your side gig out of work hours, and it doesn’t affect your work (and you aren’t competing…) then what of it?

Then you are dreaming (because of course running a second demanding company will affect your work, in some way, not necessarily negatively) but, more importantly, people might disagree about the impact and either side would have a hard time proving anything. So probably be upfront about the rules and make a choice, when you have to.

Well in Germany specifically it's a legal issue (and some other EU countries), because there are labour market laws stipulating the maximum amount of time someone can work per week (48hrs).

Sure, you can fly under the radar if you're working on your own business/start-up by simply lying about the hours worked, but if you're doing paid work for another employer it will be obvious, and they would not be legally able to employ you if total working time goes above 48hrs/week.

That may work if you’re coding in you’re spare time on a side project that may turn into a business at some point. But even then, you’re going to be more tired and drained at your main job—humans just aren’t capable of working two jobs for a prolonged amount of time without one of them being negatively affected. Sure, you might be the one out of thousands that manages. But most are not.

And we’re not talking about creating a small online T-shirt store, but being CEO of a venture backed organisation to evolve the state of AI. There’s just no way to pull that off.

> If you start working on a side gig, that will take up a chunk of your time and invariably occupy your brain; thus, your employer doesn’t get their full value out of you anymore.

It's the same if you have a family, an interest, or any semblance of a life really.

That’s true, but a generally accepted fact of life employers have to cope with. They don’t have to cope with employees taking on another responsibility next to their existing job and family.

What if someone doesn't have a family? Can they take a second job then?

As long as it doesn’t interfere with you performing your contractual duties to your employer? Sure. Although that can include showing up to work tired because you spent your night tending a bar, using knowledge acquired at your primary job for your side gig, or being unfocused in meetings because you constantly think about the other venture.

So instead, you might just want to check with your employer beforehand and talk about what they’re cool with. Something Sams could have chosen to do, but did not, apparently.

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