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This article is literally a PR based advertisement for 'overemployed.com'
Every couple of months it seems like this person pitches the article for a different news organization.
August WSJ (https://www.wsj.com/articles/these-people-who-work-from-home...)
September Fox Business (https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/workers-moonlighting-two...)
Now the Guardian.
Reminds me of a PG essay a while back talking about getting your product out to news organizations.
Thanks to user gruez for reminding me what the article was called. I couldn’t remember. [1]
submarine?
Yup, the WSJ article was discussed here:
Probably over 50% of hn is this kind of shilling. Why don't dang and company do anything about it? Because "if you're getting something for free then you're the product".
So if you're getting second salary for the same working hours, you're the product? Does product earn money?..
A lot of employment history is sold by the employer to "identity" services like Equifax, which runs a product they call 'The Work Number'[0] to allow other corporations to run background checks on you and see exactly where you worked and how much you were paid every month. While not all employers currently sell employee data to Equifax et. al, more and more will in the future and there's no guarantee they won't sell past data.
So I think it's going to get increasingly difficult to secretly work two jobs.
OTOH, I've negotiated to have two jobs at the same time, bringing one from full-time to part-time and joining the other part-time. Then I was able to work both jobs for 35 hours/week and make nearly double money. Both companies were okay with this arrangement, although neither knew that I was working both jobs nearly full-time. An open-source tool to sync just free/busy status between the two outlook calendars allowed people to schedule meetings with me as-usual, as events from the either company would be automatically copied to the other -- but only as "busy", nothing potentially confidential. [1][2]
It's interesting, because I would have been happy to be paid hourly to work 60 hours/week at either one of the jobs but neither would let me do that.
I do feel this is something that should be made illegal. In many countries it is a breach of your employment contract to diverge your pay, unionise, etc. However it is ok for employers to share data with each other, even if they don't have a business relationship other than keeping your wage down. It makes it hard to negotiate pay rises, change jobs, and get a fair market price for your wage. Doesn't feel fair to me.
The biggest issue for me with doing this is the fact that If I get a second job, I can never put it on my resume.
Say I get a second job, which is better then my current job which is likely because that's how career progression works, and then I decide that I don't want my initial job. Then there is overlapping jobs and I would either have to leave the job of my resume and lose that career progression or explain the overlap to my future employers. Something I would not expect employers to be okay with.
So, I would be careful with doing this as there could be short term gains, but at the cost to long term career growth.
The only way I would think about doing this would be if I would a low requirements job and picked up a short term contract job, that paid highly, but didn't look great on a resume.
Right, this is the sort of thing that can really hurt your career progression. At this rate, you'll never be able to work three simultaneous jobs.
Or you could just quit your primary job on your resume, but keep working there so you can collect a paycheck.
The issue is most companies do a background check where everything listed on your resume is verified, so the dates of employment will be listed and overlapping dates would be a red flag
In my experience, most companies I've worked at are pretty slim with the background checks (in fact, having been given out as a primary reference on many of my friends/coworker's resumes), I get almost no contacts/calls following up and checking that reference.
In theory, this is something most companies would do, but anecdotally, it feels like nobody ever has the time.
You could just pick the one you want to present to the new prospective employer. This seems like a non-issue. It's like complaining about having a back pains, because you have to carry your wallet flush with cash.
Yikes. Perfect example of "this is why we can't have nice things", a la people who ruin it for everyone. When companies reel back on remote work, you know who to thank.
Agreed, but it almost feels like a media campaign by big co’s to show they need to bring us back to the office.
Why do I keep seeing articles about working two jobs?! Surely the percent of people doing it is so low that this is being blown way out of proportion
I think it's blog self promotion for over employed.com
I have talked with my friends about the possibility of doing the inverse: multiple people taking on a single high paying job.
There was a guy that got caught outsourcing his job to a team in China a few years back.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2013/01/16/169528579...
As an employer, I have caught people paying someone else to do the job they were hired to do. This is literally fraud... The company believes it is paying for a highly qualified individual while someone not qualified is doing the work. This can result in serious quality or quantity problems. Not to mention legal issues from someone doing the work who has not signed the NDA and invention assignment. Be very careful doing this as it could result in prison time.
I do have an employee who has another job as well. As long as they are not working on the second job during the first job shift, I'm okay with it.
We use a tool called Time Doctor that lots of employees complain about being overly intrusive as it takes screenshots and webcam shots of the employee. We have to use it is there are lots of people like those in the article above.
Are your employees required to have their webcam uncovered? How do you monitor the screenshots of your employees, assuming you have many and they are all doing various tasks (possibly taking breaks) all throughout the day?
I find this all this fascinating, coming from my own managerial standpoint that as long as my employees are getting their work done on time, there isn't really a problem.
Yes, employees need to have their webcam uncovered. The purpose of the webcam is to make sure that the person we are paying to do the work is the one actually doing the work.
Screenshots are not checked in depth unless someone is having productivity issues. Screenshots are actually a protection for the employee who is not getting work done as they should. Sometimes it turns out that they've been working very hard at a specific problem, but may just not have been able to make progress against it at this point.
I also come at it from a different point of view. I don't have a specific number of widgets per day a person is supposed to turn out. That is not what I am paying for. I am paying for that person's expertise and time and it is up to me to direct it in a way that is profitable for the company. If I direct the person to do a test that is not profitable for the company and they do it to their best of their ability, that is my fault, not theirs. I never ask for overtime, but I do require that people work their allocated hours.
I have 200 full-time employees doing a very wide range of tasks and judging productivity is challenging even though we have many KPIs for measuring it. Time is far easier to manage. I do give incentive pay based on productivity to try to encourage not just butt in the chair time, but productive work.
Back when I was a line employee, I wish that there was a way to pay purely based on productivity. Productivity. As a manager, I have seen it is incredibly challenging to devise a proper system to do so. I have spent years and years working on this and still only have systems that are okay at it. Time just makes sense to measure from an employee standpoint and from a business standpoint, that's why most businesses do it.
You should include in your job listings that you screen record and take photos of them while they work, so that no one that isn't desperate for a job has to waste their time applying.
Who would want to ever work under those conditions, it's practically spending all your working hours dealing with the Stasi just to pay your bills.
> I have 200 full-time employees
This is not a criticism, but are you offshoring jobs? This sounds like an issue which I have experienced many times for jobs which have been off shored.
It's called outsourcing, like that thing that horrible management does to their loyal employees. Surprised you have not heard about it