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Ask HN: Who here is juggling two or more remote jobs? How is it working out?

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Re: Ask HN: Who here is juggling two or more remote jobs? How is it working out?

#161

Post by hardwaresofton »

throwaway1995v2 wrote: post #64

I do but one of them does know, basically I got a job offer, but my previous(and current employer) really needed me since they have a legacy backend written in a relative niche language and I was the only one left to maintain it while they migrate it to python, so they offer me to switch from full time to part-time with the same salary. so half of the day with my old employer and the rest with the new one. I'm only d…

> so they offer me to switch from full time to part-time with the same salary

I'm not sure of the specifics where you are, but contractors/part timers are usually drastically cheaper to hire than full time employees. Your consulting rate should be 1.5x or more (I'd say 2x+) than your FTE rate.

Re: Ask HN: Who here is juggling two or more remote jobs? How is it working out?

#162

Post by hardwaresofton »

im_busy wrote: post #81
tra3 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for sharing. If you don't mind a couple of questions: - is the compensation worth it? - do you think this is going to be a long term thing for you (burning the candle at both ends)?

Cash comp is around 800K pre tax, to me it's worth it; I'm able to push tons of cash into my retirement accounts and do things like purchase a vacation home. I've been doing it for the past few years, and it hasn't had a negative effect on my mental well being or family relationships. I work extra here and there, sure, but so does everyone, and it has more to do with "we need to do this at this specific time" than an…

Not the person who asked the question but thanks again for sharing this.

I'm in a similar situation but without the full time job -- I can understand the retainer, but with the contracting do you charge per hour? I'd imagine you charge per day/week but that also feels a bit hard to balance evenly with a full time job.

Re: Ask HN: Who here is juggling two or more remote jobs? How is it working out?

#163

Post by rosndo »

nsonha wrote: post #158
altdataseller wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you tell your employer you are looking for a new job?

I do not tell my employer everything, that is a scenario to demonstrate that you doing a second job violates basic trust, or even the contract. That is different than you looking for a new job, which should always be at the back of any manager's mind.

Who cares about this “basic trust”? Except the employer, obviously. Not exactly a balanced power dynamic there.

Re: Ask HN: Who here is juggling two or more remote jobs? How is it working out?

#164

Post by rosndo »

BizarroLand wrote: post #69
filoleg wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having 2 jobs isn't inherently illegal. But pretty much every single full-time employment contract for an SWE that I've seen, stipulated that I am not allowed to have any other full-time job for the period of my employment.

For SWE or other programming/code related positions I can see that making sense. You may only write 30 minutes of code in a day but the other 7.5 hours is spent either cogitating over the problem and creating the environment that allows you to solve the problem or participating in your team to make sure everyone is on the same page. You split that 8 hours between 2 companies and unless you are significantly under-emp…

> you're not going to be able to give your all.

Why would you want to? You’re only working for money.

Re: Ask HN: Who here is juggling two or more remote jobs? How is it working out?

#165

Post by rosndo »

maximus-decimus wrote: post #150
schwartzworld wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe there are many devs in the us working a full 8 hour day. I have children and they take up as much or more bandwidth than a second job would. I totally believe someone could work 2 dev jobs at once.

You could. You just couldn't while having a healthy amount of sleep or a life beside work. And unless the person is on drugs, I just don't believe they are actually productive 16 hours a day.

You don’t need to be productive for 8 hours a day in order to collect a paycheck. Often not for even a single hour.

Re: Ask HN: Who here is juggling two or more remote jobs? How is it working out?

#166

Post by baud147258 »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #75
filoleg wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having 2 jobs isn't inherently illegal. But pretty much every single full-time employment contract for an SWE that I've seen, stipulated that I am not allowed to have any other full-time job for the period of my employment.

To add an opposing anecdote, after 30 years in the biz I've never seen this. Not once.

In both of the contracts I had signed so far, there was an exclusivity clause saying that I would only work (as a software engineer) for the company I was signing with.

Re: Ask HN: Who here is juggling two or more remote jobs? How is it working out?

#167

Post by pcthrowaway »

intellix wrote: post #157

I'm on both sides of this. I've started 2x companies at the same time (one where I work 9-6 and the other which I work around 6-12 and all weekend) so I'm literally working all the time. Initially it made me struggle in my 9-6 because typically when I don't understand something, I'd spend my outside hours reading into things or do some extra work to finish up... but now I appear as a standard developer instead of a 1…

> - Enforced daily pushes - even if you're not yet complete with your work, you should be committing every day, so if we need to investigate, we can see what you're actually doing on a daily basis. We had people who would only push chunks every couple of days or every week and it was hard work reading through it, to see if it looked meaty enough.

I work one job and this scares me. An issue can take more than 3 hours, and I might spend parts of my day investigating, filing new issues that come up from the investigation, writing supporting documentation or cleaning up the backlog.

I otherwise sympathize with your plight, but requiring daily commits seems like it would lead to a lot of half-baked commits and team members who are annoyed by having to push work they're not really finished with yet.

Re: Ask HN: Who here is juggling two or more remote jobs? How is it working out?

#168

Post by Nextgrid »

intellix wrote: post #157

I'm on both sides of this. I've started 2x companies at the same time (one where I work 9-6 and the other which I work around 6-12 and all weekend) so I'm literally working all the time. Initially it made me struggle in my 9-6 because typically when I don't understand something, I'd spend my outside hours reading into things or do some extra work to finish up... but now I appear as a standard developer instead of a 1…

Are you able to hire/retain employees with this? I have no desire to work multiple jobs and I’d still be out of there immediately.

Ultimately software engineering is a seller’s market so I would tread carefully, if there are other places that either pay better or aren’t as restrictive there’s no reason why anyone should stick around.

Re: Ask HN: Who here is juggling two or more remote jobs? How is it working out?

#169

Post by mech422 »

akhmatova wrote: post #143
mech422 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My F500 gig specifically allows outside work as long as its not for a competitor...Why would you assume everyone is lying? Wouldn't it make more sense that some of us just have different (full time) employment contracts ?

If it's a "gig" based on deliverables (rather than hours) that's another matter, of course. But we were speaking of full-time employment in the usual sense. Including the usual sense of "full-time".

sorry - I put this "have different (full time) employment contracts" in my comment to try and make that point clear..

Its full-time employment, salaried. Also, salaried generally means you get paid the same amount regardless of hours worked, which is another thing people seem to overlook.

Anyway, as others have already commented better then I - many big/well known companies do not have issue with moonlighting.

Re: Ask HN: Who here is juggling two or more remote jobs? How is it working out?

#170

Post by nsonha »

rosndo wrote: post #163
nsonha wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not tell my employer everything, that is a scenario to demonstrate that you doing a second job violates basic trust, or even the contract. That is different than you looking for a new job, which should always be at the back of any manager's mind.

Who cares about this “basic trust”? Except the employer, obviously. Not exactly a balanced power dynamic there.

when you are hired they tell you exactly the basis on which you are hired, either to sit in an office/in front on slack at specific hours (FTE) or outcome-based (freelancing or FTE on flex terms).

It's totally cool that we as professionals discuss our commitment and get a flexible working arrangement. It's not cool to say you will be available to respond to incidents and what not and then not do that.

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