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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?

#171

Post by rosndo »

nsonha wrote: post #170
rosndo wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Most people do not need to be available to respond to incidents.

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

#172

Post by akhmatova »

mech422 wrote: post #169
akhmatova wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

Except the spirit of that agreement to not worry about the variance of working, say, 35 hours one week, 45 the next. They still quite definitely expect you to work an average of about 40 hours -- and usually provide language in the employment/consulting stating exactly that. In fact, if your agreement mentions the phrase "full-time" it is universally understood to mean exactly that.

Many big/well known companies do not have issue with moonlighting.

Even when outside employment/consulting is allowed (1) the vast majority expect you to inform them of such arrangements and (2) they do not expect you to shorten your commitments of time + focus to the role they are providing you a ... full-time salary and benefits for.

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

#173

Post by brianmcc »

b20000 wrote: post #60
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #28

I was on the other side of this: We had a remote worker who got a new job but then tried to hide it, collecting paychecks as long as possible. For any manager paying attention, it wasn't difficult to spot. He would swing between being eager to please and virtually unreachable. We didn't have many meetings or phone calls, but he had more scheduling conflicts than anyone else. On the rare occasion that we had high urge…

so why didn’t you pay him more so he would not need to juggle jobs?

"You're massively underperforming and we can never contact you - have a substantial pay rise" isn't really how these things work...

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

#174

Post by [deleted] »

filoleg wrote: post #136
Apocryphon wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe in only some states?

Why would it vary by state, if it isn't a legal requirement in any of them. It is purely on the employer's end, and I cannot find a legal restriction against it in any state. So it would only vary by employer.

[deleted]

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

#175

Post by thfuran »

SauciestGNU wrote: post #66
gdfgjhs wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My current Fortune 500 tech company's contract explicitly said that if I moonlight, I cannot work for their competitors. And if I get a second job or contract work, I should discuss it with my manager or HR. It does't say anywhere that I cannot have second job at all. I know 2 SWE in the company who actually discussed this with their managers and got okay in writing for their consulting businesses. EDIT: Really curio…

I moonlighted for a while, and I checked my primary job's employment agreement first. All it said is that I can't be simultaneously engaged by competitors. No requirement to inform my manager or the company. Lots of people in my company have side businesses (some rebuild and sell laboratory instrumentation, others contract, etc). I was surprised when I discovered the permissive nature of my company, but I've never se…

That's how mine is as well.

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

#177

Post by msarrel »

Not an answer to the question, but pertinent. I'm hiring and I recently extended an offer to someone and that person responded by saying it wasn't enough money. Our HR department and I went through all the different salary surveys and we determined our offer was fair. The person countered by saying That was the amount of money that they needed. I said okay please submit a consulting contract. They submitted a consulting contract with someone else's name on it. I called them and they said "oh yeah, you caught me, I was trying to bill two different companies for full time."

Not hired.

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

#178

Post by adamsmith143 »

b20000 wrote: post #141
adamsmith143 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the client is a Corporation that might be totally appropriate. If that lawyer then goes on to say how expensive his Latte has gotten then you might have an argument.

do you think that lawyers make 200k per year?

The vast majority make less than that. At large law firms 1st year law school grads routinely make that. A lawyer billing 800/hr might bill 2000 hours in a year for over 1M per year. Not sure you have a point?

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

#179

Post by im_busy »

hardwaresofton wrote: post #162
im_busy wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I charge a flat retainer every 2 weeks that gives a client the ability to give me work if they need stuff done, and the ability to call me in the middle of the night if things go down.

I've never had an issue balancing it; after the initial work of bringing a client on board the infrastructure handles itself. I've put a lot of work into automation and tooling, so the engineering teams I work for are able to self service on 90% of the things they need, and only need things directly from me rarely.

This isn't software engineering, it's infrastructure, which means I'm not on the hook to work on new product features sprint to sprint. There are times when I only have to do an hour or so worth of work for a client.

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

#180

Post by im_busy »

paulkon wrote: post #146
im_busy wrote: post #26

I currently have 1 full time job, 1 full time contracting, and 4 clients that pay me a retainer for a set amount of hours they can use week to week. It's going fine; I measure that based on my performance reviews all being excellent, my clients all paying the bills on time, and all work is done in a timely fashion. I do individual contributor infrastructure engineering at the senior+ level. Managing the calendar is t…

Thanks for sharing. Do you find the clients and contract work through your network or from your full time job? I'm at a startup that has some customers which need extra work that I can do but the optics of it might look bad if coworkers find out.

All my clients come from my network, not through my full time job.
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