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Overemployed – Work Two Remote Jobs

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Re: Overemployed – Work Two Remote Jobs

#81

Post by namelessoracle »

The temptation here is that going from L5 to L6 has a massive increase in what you might be doing in your day to day that isnt comparable to the compensation.

A good L5 in a bog standard enterprise role is likely getting their deliverables done in 2 to 4 hours (in comparison to their teammates), and the rest of the time is meetings and non coding tasks. The rest of your day is yours to spend however you want in the remote world.

When they go to L6 all that "free time" is now gone helping peers, acting as a multiplier, design discussions, and attending more meetings. You are also being pushed outside your comfort zone of just grinding out the code.

Those 4 hours could have instead be used to L4 tier work for another company and the financial incentives are higher to just to do that instead. You also are just expected to grind out code.

The only real thing that makes this untenable is making the multiple meetings that each company host. There is probably an opportunity here for a company that can identify talented L5s who can quickly get well groomed stories done for them as a side hustle.

Re: Overemployed – Work Two Remote Jobs

#82

Post by Liquid_Fire »

988747 wrote: post #71
Untit1ed wrote: post #27

I see a lot of people talking about reputational risk around this, but I'd be more worried about the legal implications. Most of us have contracts that grant IP of what we create to our employer at least during work hours - if you get caught doing this how do the IP implications unwind given that both your employers have the same rights to what you produced? Would it be legally equivalent to selling a bunch of IP tha…

>> Most of us have contracts that grant IP of what we create to our employer at least during work hours That's an American thing. I work in Central European country, and IP that I create belongs to me until I pass the rights to my employer. Conveniently, my contract states that the act of committing my code to employer-hosted git repo is the act of giving up the copyright. You can easily do that for two employers at…

What happens if you are helping a colleague and need to share a code snippet with them? Or you suggest a change to the code during code review? How does your employer get rights to use that code?

Re: Overemployed – Work Two Remote Jobs

#83

Post by engmgrmgr »

When employees have high variance, or some other issue, I expect a good manager to debug it. It’s not that hard to figure out your 35% impact is because of your suboptimal juggling of two jobs. We just let someone go for this (proved of course).

Re: Overemployed – Work Two Remote Jobs

#84

Post by ragnot »

I think the root cause of this boils down to one thing: Smart engineers have been screwed over time and time again by startups who used their talents and didn't reward them.

I've known many early, foundational employees work themselves dead only to get a meager payday while founders and executives (always hired when the risk is gone and who are always given more stock and money) get rich. You don't have to look far on HN to see similar stories.

So enough people experience that/read that and say, "If I'm not going to be rewarded, why not make more money?". So they do this. After all, the only people who could pull this off are the same types of people who would be those essential early engineers.

I'm sure there is some aspect of greed related to this, but I would posit that people who are driven to do this are doing this (deep down) because they feel they want to get back at a class of people who have done them wrong before.

Re: Overemployed – Work Two Remote Jobs

#85

Post by Eldt »

duxup wrote: post #73
tibiapejagala wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I can definitely blame them. It would be great if it worked both ways. Let’s say an employee who is forced to work unpaid overtime (two jobs amount) could use power imbalance to threaten the company into paying one year of their revenue. If his work quality is really that bad, why not fire him already? What if he was simply super lazy but with one job, why not make an example of him for other slackers?

If you’re working unpaid OT and don’t like it, you know it and quit.

Or you do something to get back. Glorious karma. Employers should just pay overtime.

Re: Overemployed – Work Two Remote Jobs

#86

Post by yunohn »

sanjayio wrote: post #76
yunohn wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a really important point. While us salaried workers struggle in a 9-5, the powerful get multiple board positions that each pay more than our annual wages.

To be fair, the 9-5 workers are paid for their hours, the multiple board positioned folks are often paid in equity, sometimes nothing, and have minimal 9-5 obligations. In having fewer 9-5 obligations, often none, it’s less immoral to have multiple board positions. Fwiw, I’m not on a board, just writing it how I see it.

> 9-5 workers are paid for their hours

9-5 workers (in tech atleast) are rarely paid hourly - neither individuals nor managers.

> it’s less immoral to have multiple board positions

I would disagree - I find it immoral that you can be part of multiple decision-making boards, each earning multiples of a yearly wage, and somehow have so little work to do compared to a worker.

Re: Overemployed – Work Two Remote Jobs

#87

Post by DarylZero »

scottiebarnes wrote: post #42
duxup wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a coworker try to pull the two remote jobs at once thing. Thinking a customer was calling he answered the wrong phone and said the wrong company name, but it was actually his bosses boss. Company fired him, and actually went so far as to threaten to sue the guy until he agreed to pay restitution (one year pay), and they told the other company who fired him. I don’t know if the other company did anything else. D…

If the companies that hired him are satisfied with his work (quality, time delivery) and can't even tell the difference on their own, is he really doing them wrong?

No one really assesses work quality.

Re: Overemployed – Work Two Remote Jobs

#88

Post by 62951413 »

namelessoracle wrote: post #81

The temptation here is that going from L5 to L6 has a massive increase in what you might be doing in your day to day that isnt comparable to the compensation. A good L5 in a bog standard enterprise role is likely getting their deliverables done in 2 to 4 hours (in comparison to their teammates), and the rest of the time is meetings and non coding tasks. The rest of your day is yours to spend however you want in the r…

I imagine two SE incomes would result in ~50% marginal tax rate in CA if not AMT. Wouldn't it reduce the incentive?

Re: Overemployed – Work Two Remote Jobs

#89

Post by tehjoker »

machiaweliczny wrote: post #77
tehjoker wrote: post #59

I think if an economist looked at this they would say workers have identified areas of inefficiency in the economy and found a way fill the gap. However, if every person takes two jobs, that means there's 2x competition for jobs and will depress wages over time. Limited arbitrage opportunity. If you actually work two jobs at once at reasonable efficiency, the businesses aren't going to be paying for this, we are.

Currently we are paying for women joining economy as land/house competition ia still same and rich just make more for claims to land. Fuck em, 0 empathy on my end.

I do empathize and am tempted myself, but I think we have to recognize that intensifying competition between workers isn't going to help us in the end. We have to unite against the business class.

Re: Overemployed – Work Two Remote Jobs

#90

Post by duxup »

DarylZero wrote: post #87
scottiebarnes wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the companies that hired him are satisfied with his work (quality, time delivery) and can't even tell the difference on their own, is he really doing them wrong?

No one really assesses work quality.

And I don’t think we like when they try.
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