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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?

#21

Post by akhmatova »

skeeter2020 wrote: post #14
akhmatova wrote: post #8

If you're two-timing on clients / employers (that is, plainly working two FT jobs at once) -- you can't expect that to end well. If you're working > 50 hours a week (or whatever your personal limit is) for more than 1-2 months -- that won't end well for your health or business relationships, either. That's the score, basically.

lots of people work far more than 50 hrs/week on a regular basis, this is not a huge deal if that's your jam. If you're working multiple salaried positions, or double-billing your time, that's a different story.

Of course a lot of people do -- but at a cost to productivity (per hour) and as said, their health and and relationships. There's lots and lots and lots of research about this, actually.

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

#22

Post by froaway4job »

I've been working multiple remote jobs for the past 4 years. I'm currently working 4 full time engineering roles and a part time contract. It's been tough but a great experience.

The main struggle is scheduling and making sure you can make all the meetings. It's also tough finding the right job which gives you autonomy to form your schedule.

The main perks are obviously money and not caring about getting laid off. In this market it's pretty hard to get laid off, we shall see how it plays out over the next few years.

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

#23

Post by solenoidalslide »

overemployed wrote: post #12

New account not to dox myself here. I'm doing it. I very recently took on a second full time job. I work as a Release Engineer for both. It hasn't been too bad so far. The biggest thing is managing your calendars to avoid conflicts.

Do you often get into sitcom-like situations where you are in two different meetings at once and have to make sure you avoid any unmute mishaps? I'm specifically thinking a case where you have to respond in a way that would make sense to both calls at once.

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

#24

Post by willio58 »

I could never. If you make enough money at one job working remote then there’s no need. If you don’t make enough then use your spare time beefing up your portfolio and applying to crazy-high paying jobs. Eventually you’ll land one.

For me, working two jobs adds a level of secrecy that’d be difficult for me to maintain long term. Also could be hard to do simple things like take PTO.

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

#25

Post by sdfgdfghj »

froaway4job wrote: post #22

I've been working multiple remote jobs for the past 4 years. I'm currently working 4 full time engineering roles and a part time contract. It's been tough but a great experience. The main struggle is scheduling and making sure you can make all the meetings. It's also tough finding the right job which gives you autonomy to form your schedule. The main perks are obviously money and not caring about getting laid off. In…

is this even legal?

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

#26

Post by im_busy »

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 the toughest part, making sure things don't overlap is difficult. My full time calendar is relatively light, the contracting gig on the other hand is starting to get on my nerves with the amount of meetings they're pushing me to attend.

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

#27

Post by HWR_14 »

MilStdJunkie wrote: post #15

If you do this with direct charge government work, you're within hailing range of felony territory. Granted, you probably won't get caught, but if you do, it's going to be a bridge burner for you in this industry basically forever. Is that entirely a bad thing, though, considering this industry? Discussion ongoing.

Only if you falsify your timecards, right? I'm not doing it, so I don't really care. But the felony would be falsifying billing paperwork?

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

#28

Post by PragmaticPulp »

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 urgency tasks, there was about a 50% chance that he would obviously be not working on it at all until the evening, despite being online all day.

Eventually we let him go for non-performance, which wasn't too hard to document. Now he has a problem where his resume start/end dates don't match what he's claiming on LinkedIn or (presumably) putting on his resume. He also burned the entire team (they figured it out) so he's not getting any positive references from anyway.

It may work if you can find two jobs with two incompetent managers who aren't paying attention, but I don't think it's as easy as people suggest for any reasonably well paying engineering job.

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

#29

Post by sithadmin »

FWIW, a lot of US employers report your current employment status, role and salary to databases like Equifax's 'The Work Number' - and nearly any organization that subscribes can view this data. HR departments DO look at this info and occasionally spot-check it to catch moonlighting employees.

You can request your own data here: https://employees.theworknumber.com/

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

#30

Post by im_busy »

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…

Couple of other important points:

* the full time and contracting gigs are in separate time zones, which helps time management.

* I only actually work ~45-50 hours a week total, but all work is complete.

* I only take on work that aligns. I use several extremely standard tools and ALL gigs are all the same, which lowers my cognitive overhead a lot.

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