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Ask HN: Remote Employees Double-Dipping?

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Re: Ask HN: Remote Employees Double-Dipping?

#81

Post by tracker1 »

throwaway46263 wrote: post #79

As a heads up: We have a remote employee (who is on HN). He's not exceptionally fast, and we suspect he is doing this. We'll fire him if we can prove it. From our stand point, we're paying a full time salary but not getting full time results. Pretty much theft. We think...

Had to reread to catch the "not exceptionally fast" ... is s/he fast enough that the work gets done predictably? I find that from a business perspective predictable, and generally accurate time tables are more important than absolute throughput. Now if this person is putting less than half the work than his nearest peer is, then I might have issue.

All said though, if the work is getting done and in a timely manner, then it shouldn't matter. In reading through this thread, I've been thinking, if I could get two mid-level dev positions, I could pretty easily do both at a mid-level quality/pay which combined would be more than my very senior level is currently.

Re: Ask HN: Remote Employees Double-Dipping?

#82

Post by tracker1 »

santoriv wrote: post #11

I did a short term contract once at the same time as my main remote job. I never lied about my hours or got overpaid though. I won't ever do it again as it was a hellish amount of work for a few months. For me the cost of context switching on my productivity was higher than I anticipated. Of course you could probably get away with having two remote jobs at once.... for a while. Unless you're monstrously productive, i…

I was thinking, upon reading the question that it might be possible to do two mid-level jobs at the same time, making more than a single senior level job. It isn't about being at your max level in both jobs... so long as you can match peers for that job/level, and get work done in a timely manner, shouldn't matter.

Re: Ask HN: Remote Employees Double-Dipping?

#83

Post by tracker1 »

ChicagoBoy11 wrote: post #5

I can see how this would go south really quick once skype meetings / in-person events start to collide. I think for the RIGHT type of remote work one may be able to pull this off for a while, but I can't imagine that full-time, well-paying remote dev roles could be juggled like this.

But think of it this way... can a senior person output more than twice what a junior/mid person can? If you take two mid-level FTE roles, putting mid-level throughput would that pay more than a single senior FTE role? It might be worth considering.

Re: Ask HN: Remote Employees Double-Dipping?

#84

Post by tracker1 »

throwaway46263 wrote: post #80
vincagi wrote: post #68

Does it matter? In software engineering you should be judged by the quantity and quality of the code, nothing in those metrics disqualifies double-dipping. If anything contracting on the side gives employees exposure to tech stacks and processes outside their normal day to day.

Quantity and quality are hard to nail down. What is an 'honest day's work' for a developer?

That would be determined in comparison to your peer group for the labelled role..

Re: Ask HN: Remote Employees Double-Dipping?

#85

Post by candiodari »

alexandercrohde wrote: post #51
candiodari wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it wrong for a company to lie about things like remuneration and money too ? Is it okay for companies to pay people they claim internally have the same pay (for the same work), but pay them differently based on things like location ?

That's actually a really interesting parallel to draw. I have certainly seen a non-negligible amount of dishonest management ("Sure we'll promote you, we just need a few more cycles" to a friend who was about to be fired). From a legal perspective I'm sure what's signed in writing makes the difference. But we're not really talking legal here, we're talking ethical. And ethically, I'm not sure why dishonesty on paper…

Given that I keep reading things like that some 90%+ of employees across a wide range of companies would deny their employer a $1 million contract if it got them, personally, $500 ...

Given those I think the norms in our society are very much consistent. It's just that we assume we're all employees here, and therefore there is no need to lie to each other.

But we'll lie to our employer, or at least leave stuff out. And our employer will lie to us, and leave boatloads of stuff out.

This is the norm. It is also the norm to lie about it.

Re: Ask HN: Remote Employees Double-Dipping?

#86

Post by bbcbasic »

MichaelGG wrote: post #8
EduardoBautista wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol I had to negotiate to get about a quarter of that salary. I know Travis CI limits your pay to your region. GitLab as well. Difference from Mexico to San Francisco is about 4x.

That's messed up. Unless there's a separate component like local-cost-of-living-adjustment where you get extra for living in a high-rent area.

Easily hacked. As long as you stay in the timezone, start off in expensive city, then quietly move to cheap city.

Re: Ask HN: Remote Employees Double-Dipping?

#87

Post by oliwarner »

I'm on retainer for a few people. Different situation because they all know my service has a contention, they just care that I'm available when they need it.

Sounds like you're trying to get paid a full time salary for part time work. Unless you're actually going to moonlight, you're depriving one or both companies of the time they're paying for.

It's stuff like this that makes it hard for remote workers. Stop it.

Re: Ask HN: Remote Employees Double-Dipping?

#88

Post by ghshephard »

cylinder wrote: post #67
ghshephard wrote: post #22

I had a DBA, very senior, who was working for me on contract while maintaining a full time job at another Silicon Valley company. I was paying him $50K/Year to ensure that none of our Oracle Systems ever had an issue, and in the event of a problem, he would fix it. What I liked about this arrangement is that he was highly incentivized to ensure that he would have to do the least amount of work, so his deployments wer…

What happened if you​ did have an issue? Did you mandate service credits into the contract?

In the 2 1/2 years he worked for us, we had a total of two issues. First time it was a storage array went down, and our regular DBAs were having difficulty bringing the dataguard replica back online - Our Senior DBA resolved it within 5 minutes. Second issue was an application corruption that we got stuck into the weeds with until, once again, Our Senior DBA just stepped in, restored a backup and then rolled us forward just before corruption occurred.

And no service credits, he was just an extraordinarily talented DBA - we were happy to have him set our architecture/monitoring/database deployment mechanisms. I'm guessing he worked around 100 hours for that 50K over a year, or about $500/hour, which, if you think about it, for someone at the very, very top of their Oracle (or Cisco, or Java, or Hadoop, etc..) technical game is really quite reasonable - particularly when you are only paying them when they are absolutely needed, and the rest of the time your staff DBAs can handle the day-to-day.

Re: Ask HN: Remote Employees Double-Dipping?

#89

Post by Dunan »

VLM wrote: post #25
rb808 wrote: post #15

I knew of a guy who worked two jobs on-site - was about 3 months before he was caught. I think he worked as a contractor and billed through two different agencies. Started early on one job, late at the other on a different floor and lots of meetings away from desk inbetween. :)

"worked two jobs on-site" I did that twice, once at a dying company when a coworker quit until I lined up a new job in a couple weeks, and another time was a horizontal transfer where two engineering managers were rather vocal about my working solely for them. In both cases I just kinda did what I wanted, knowing there was nothing they could do. I suspect the question they meant to ask was who was getting paid for tw…

"I have a really boring story about that revolving around a company that paid out severance gradually instead of lump sum"

Here in Japan, where I live, this is one of the reasons that people can't take all their accrued vacation, even when quitting their jobs. When you leave a job, your accrued days are paid out as if you were still working. So if your last day in the office is June 30, but you have 30 days saved, your last day as an employee is ~August 15.

This sometimes means you can't start your new job until after that, and because employers typically want people to start ASAP, people end up forfeiting the vacation time they never got to take while working. The new employer wants them on July 7, so they take just the one week and then start at the new place.

And given how hard it is to take time off, the typical employee has lots and lots of unused PTO. My workplace has a cap of 40 and I am always at the cap.

Re: Ask HN: Remote Employees Double-Dipping?

#90

Post by [deleted] »

logfromblammo wrote: post #45
rubidium wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most salaried positions require you don't have any other paying jobs.

Most of my salaried positions have been "at will" with no employment contract in place, so the only thing that corporate policy tells me in the employee manual is that I may be fired if they find out. But as an "at will", I could also be fired for any reason, or no reason at all. As an "at will" employee, the one and only consequence I have to fear is being fired. There is no contract to breach. And in that situation…

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