Couldn’t you just pay them enough so that they don’t need a second job?
The article also quotes
to “cheat” the system
As if people working two jobs are stealing and not working in exchange for proper value of money.
It’s because the system is designed to keep us paid just enough to live and keep buying from companies, but not enough to have true independence. Working two jobs is cheating that system by giving you more money and freedom than they want you to have. Once you have financial security you can start to wonder about how fucked up this “system” truly is.
Except they’re not even paying us enough to live anymore
Do you really think anyone out there actually wants you to not have more? Doesn’t seem to me that anyone cares. I think the concern is that you will perform your job halfway, not that you will become too solvent. Having more money to spend is always good for the capitalists. Hurting productivity is the fear (whether right or wrong).
I don’t follow. If you’re claiming you’re putting 40 hours of work in a week, or that is what your contract says, and you’re really only doing 20 because you’re splitting it between two jobs…isn’t that obviously cheating the system?
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t give a shit if people take advantage of a corporation to milk it for cash, but it seems to me to be pretty clearly cheating the system. If you want to get paid on what you produce, and not the time you put in, then you should structure your contracts that I way. I know a lot of my side work I don’t bill hourly precisely because I know it can be done quickly ( for me with experience) but it’s worth more to them.
If you’re salaried, you’re not usually obligated to work a certain number of hours, you’re just obligated to complete tasks on time. If someone holds two salaried positions and works fast enough that they get all obligations for both completed in 40 hours a week, they’re not cheating anyone.
I manage a decent sized team of salaried people and I am 100% behind this.
If I were to have a criticism it would be of management hiring more people than they really need, not paying good wages, and/or not recognizing when one of their people is ready for a bigger role.
It’s never happened on my team that I know of, but if I were to run into that case and my guy was getting his job done properly then zero fucks would be given.
Do all of your team members finish their work at the same time, or are some slower than others? Do some require more help than others, or take up more than your time managing? Do you just fire the worst performing ones? Does anything change if you find out that the worst performing person has another job he’s doing during the same hours he’s working for you and maybe that’s why he’s performing under his peers?
Ive worked many salaried jobs in my life. I’ve never seen a work contract that simply defines your tasks you have to get done. Not saying that it doesn’t happen, but I would be hard pressed to believe it’s common. I don’t even know how you would do that because what tasks I do always shifts, especially in tech. On top of that, how long a task takes is extremely unpredictable. Sometimes I fly through something, sometimes that last 10% takes 90% of the time.
*edit: contract work is very common and definitionally does not define ‘time on the job’, and instead lays out specific metrics of performance related to production. Salaried work is definitely far more common, but to say that’s unusual or impossible is just wrong.
I think this helps elucidate the real issue here, which is the distinction between selling labor and selling your time. One of those is obviously more reasonable and the other shares a conceptual relationship with other types of indentured labor.
It used to be that the distinction didn’t matter since you had to be in a particular place to do a particular work anyway, selling your labor and selling your time looked basically the same and your employer could control and manage how you spent that time. But with remote work, the employer no longer has control over managing your time because they have no (reasonable) way to monitor your production; an employer utilizing monitoring software would (rightly) be seen as an abuse and invasion of privacy. So even though the contract hasn’t changed, people are more aware of how dehumanizing it is not to have sold their labor but control over a certain number of hours of their life.
I obviously have bias here, but I think defining labor by its measure of time is alienating and inhumane.
it definitely happens.
My point is more that salaried employees, by definition, are not required to put in a certain amount of hours. That would make them hourly employees. All salaried employees are required to do is to complete their work by a deadline. What that work is and what the deadline is are usually not defined specifically in their contract, because as you said, both those things constantly change, so it would be impossible to reflect that in some binding agreement.
This is how it works where I live from a legal point of view too. If you “show up” (in-person or remote doesn’t matter) to your full-time job and are “available” for work but they don’t have enough for you, legally you must be paid for your full number of hours (your entire salary). You are paid for your time, not your results. You keep your job by delivering good results, however, since that’s a different matter.
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Not sure why you’re down voted but you are right.
I get paid to do 40 hours of work a week and I feel like I’m cheating the system as I definitely don’t work anywhere close to that.
I think people just are comfortable screwing over companies as they will screw you as often as they can so they don’t see it as cheating in this case, but it’s a rare case where the worker gets more out of it than the business.
why do you assume they don’t work their full hours?
Office workers are productive on average about 3 hours out of an 8 hour workday.
Not sure how that’s an argument that it’s ok to have two jobs. If people can only concentrate on work for 3 out of 8 hours, where are they getting the concentration for another job? More likely that 3 hours get divided to 1.5 to each.
Mainly because I’m not naive, but more concretely because i have followed this movement because it interested me when I wanted to make more money.
But even if we want to pretend that all of these people are actually working 80 hour weeks, the article talks about juggling zoom meetings and falls, so it’s clearly talking about some kind of deception at least as to when you are working.
Most of these people are over paid actually. Making without stock over 150k and then around the same in RSUs or more.
The issue is many folks were only doing like 3 or 4 hr a day and then double dipped to collect another paycheck because they had the time to. I don’t necessarily fault them.
Friend of mine intentionally took a boring bank job making like 50k less than he was making (so around $125k a yr) so he could coast as a high performer there then planned and did find another gig in Pacific time (were east Coast) and then pulled two checks and still only worked like 42 hr a week.
This is the true reason there making work from home optional.
This is why we can’t have nice things.
It’s management’s own damn fault for trying to use butt time in seats as a proxy for productivity.
Huh? If the job can be done this fast and the contract says, you get this money for doing that, why should that be wrong, meaning why should anyone be unhappy?
Except companies are just in for the money and would rather pay you less … Hmmm
All I can say is I agree with you; however, lots of contracts have you agree that you only work for that company while you’re employed by them
Yeah, I think mine has a clause too, that requires me to at least inform my employee
That’s the point of the clause; to fire people who tell them they’re working a second full-time job. When required to be in office everywhere it becomes quite obvious very quickly. They’re upset they can’t tell if you’re two-timing or not if you work from home, so they want to make sure you come in and work for them
Petty tactics from petty people. If someone is doing the job they are paid for, why bother? It’s like the employers are entitled to the 40 hours or something, even if all the work is done.
🎯
and the contract says, you get this money for doing that
Almost certainly the contract doesn’t say this tho.
Mine does. But I’m not working manual labor, so it definitely can and will differ I guess
Is that a job you could get away with working 2 at the same time remotely?
Not really, maybe this one and a half time job or sth, I work 4-8 hours a day depending on what’s happening (I work in it)
No idea why you’re getting down votes.
so they should just sit and stare if they’ve finished their work? don’t be absurd, please. the whole system is way past its due date. our society needs to scrap it and start over. and i mean human society. the world, our species. the one we have now if fast leading us to extinction, along with most of the other creatures on earth. what he says isn’t the way, but it’s better than harassing people for doing more work when they finish their first job.
Are they overpaid, or is every other job underpaid? Seems weird to call them overpaid when the company is making a profit on them anyway.
sad to have to come this far down to see this.
normalizing needing multiple jobs means soon we will be much more overworked…
Why would they ever do that? Only reason they would even consider such thing if if they are forced or if it somehow directly benefits them short-term. Maybe not even short-term because not doing so helps keeping people suppressed and lessens any threats to them.
I mean, yes-ish? My friend has 5 and makes way more than any one job would ever be willing to pay.
More power to him. Is he burning bridges? Probably. Is he banking a ton of money? Yeah. Is anyone getting hurt? Not really, he gets his asks done and that’s that - I’m not about to feel bad for a megacorp grossing hundreds of millions to billions a year.
That smells like BS. No one can work 5 full time jobs and not be committing fraud somehow. Paying someone overseas to do the work, plagiarizing it, submitting the same work to more than 1 of them etc.
Believe what you will, I work multiple myself and could easily pick up more. It’s easy in software engineering at large companies with disorganized practices. I even got “exceeds expectations” at one and a raise recently. I am doing all the work myself, no hiring out. They’re all in very different industries and use different tech platforms, so there is no real copying of work.
Ok, and you’ve never delayed a meeting or communications with 1 company because you were working on another?
If someone is completing what you ask of them, the ONLY reason anyone would ever care about what they do with their time is ego. But muh underlings! But muh meeting attendees! But muh sense of power!
Dinosaur companies will continue to suffer as they should.
Reminds me of the CEO who said working for a company should be viewed as a team sport and you should not help out another team. All while he is on the board of another company. Can’t remember which CEO it was.
I think it sounds way worse when you distill it.
They want the power to take away your livelihood
If you do everything you need to, are responsive to all communication, participate in group meetings, contribute to the business like everyone else I wouldn’t know you have a second job and therefore wouldn’t care. But this is a fake narrative because it’s impossible to do that for two jobs at once. If it’s not my company it’s the other one that’s being neglected. For certain projects work can be divided evenly, but when there are deadlines some people end up doing more otherwise we miss the deadline. So if one worker is slower the only alternative is fire them and that’s not really something I want to do just because someone isn’t as fast as something if they turn in good work. However if the reason it takes them so long is they are taking other work that’s a completely different story.
FWIW, Microsoft explicitly allows having multiple jobs. Their policy basically amounts to “don’t cross the streams”.
Their employees doing the absolute minimum would explain some things
I would like it if Microsoft employees would do the absolute minimum. Every time they get an idea we end up with Cortana on desktop or moving the start button.
Really? Brb, getting job at Microsoft…
Finally someone with authority says it!
Nobody would complain about a freelancer with multiple clients, even at the same time, provided they got their work done on time and on budget. Why isn’t it the same for employees? Why do bosses get to treat them like clients from hell?
I’m not saying they’re justified in this, because frankly if someone is getting their work done, what they do outside of work hours isnt their boss’s business, but I can kinda imagine why a company might not like their employees to have a second job; people only have so much effort to give (consider all those stats people bring up whenever people talk about shortening the workweek, to the effect that working more hours diminishes productivity per hour and gives diminishing or even negative returns compared to fewer hours in many cases) and so a company might decide that an employee with a second job might not be as productive for them as they would be otherwise, due to being exhausted. Though really, if they do it’s honestly the company’s fault for paying so little as for someone to need a second job in the first place.
CEOs and executives do this regularly, so unless their jobs are a lot simpler than they’re claiming the “attention” argument is moot. They pay me to do a thing. I do the thing. They pay me what they’d say they’d pay. That’s it.
Frankly I don’t imagine CEOs and executives take a whole lot of effort, at least for sufficiently large companies (small business are a whole different animal of course). I can’t speak to how complicated it is to do those jobs, or how easy or difficult they are, but the mere fact that people who are so rich as to not need to work at all to live a lavish life, will often still take on jobs like that, speaks volumes I think.
Considering that it is apparently possible to be in charge of like 6 different companies at once and still spend your entire day shitposting on Twitter, corporate fatcats obviously aren’t actually supposed to do anything productive as part of their day-to-day tasks.
CEOs and executives do this regularly,
But that’s different, because…
I think the main difference is the time scale for their responsibilities.
For your average worker, they generally have daily tasks or responsibilities. Your c-levels generally “solve” the larger problems. The timeline for those isn’t daily but probably quarterly or longer. This would allow them to take on another role because of how the deadlines work.
Not saying it’s right, but just trying to explain it.
they aren’t “double dipping.” that phrase means “taking more than you are allowed.” having a second job is just having a second job. the person writing the title either is tone def or doesn’t agree with the article.
The double dipping is referring to doing both jobs simultaneously. Like two remote jobs and you have both work laptops open, so between two jobs you can work 40 hours per week but be paid for 80. It’s distinctly different from clocking in for one job, then clocking out and going to another job and clocking in for that job.
If both sets of 40 hours are meeting goals then the company can shut the fuck up, morally speaking.
You’re basically just criticizing capitalism for being stupid and inefficient, and I 100% agree with you.
But are they? Generally in tech, it’s really hard to gauge people’s performance and most companies are conservative with firing people for performance reasons. So you could coast by on mediocre performance. You team won’t be happy with you, but you probably will keep your job simply because you’re given the benefit of doubt. Tech is one of those areas where someone can actually be 10x as effective as another person, because so much of the job can be spent on stuff like debugging and dealing with weird issues, where one person might spend all day on an issue that another person can resolve in minutes.
There’s also something to be said about the fact that companies are usually paying for your time, not output. Contractors are the ones who are paid for output, not employees. It’s also straight up expected in tech that you’re looking for ways to automate some tasks so they don’t have to be done anymore. It’s not like some mindless office job where you’re expected to do X reports per day. There’s a never ending list of bugs to fix and features requested. You’re generally paid to find ways to increase productivity, not merely do the same thing over and over.
At any rate, tech is usually also paid well enough for it. There’s still massive income disparity between regular workers and C-suite, but at least the pay is always well, well above living wages, stock options are commonly given to regular workers, and high performers often are rewarded for doing better than average. IMO, tech jobs aren’t really an area to focus on the kinda mindset you have, since it does so much better than most (not perfect, but still far better). Most jobs don’t get anything close to what tech jobs offer to regular employees.
I have a buddy working for redacted ultra mega corpo company, he works remote and regularly places 1st in all metrics they measure. He also finishes his whole work day in about 45 minutes. Getting good at your job can 100% mean you’re doing the same amount of work as someone less skilled in half or less the time.
It is quite hard to get fired from a lot of corporate jobs. Mostly because they rely on metrics and don’t actually pay attention to the people. As long as you’re hitting the metrics they have no reason to look any deeper.
It’s kind of depressing that they treat you like that but also sort of relieving.
It’s not just Tech. Two people I work with, One can format a Word document 5x faster. With the logic of some of these people, the slower person should be fired for it? I don’t get it.
What if a compile job takes a long time? Would that be a good reason to context switch?
Are you being honest with your second job that you’re only going to do your job during the stretches of job #1 that require long compile times?
It’s like dating two people but pretending to be monogamous with each. It might work for a bit but at some point you will need to choose one over the other.
at some point you will need to choose one over the other.
Maybe, maybe not. I’ve heard of people doing this stuff for a LONG time.
But it doesn’t matter, does it? If you are forced to choose one over the other, you’ve still made a lot of extra money on all the double-dipped hours you’ve accrued up to that point.
That’s true but that reflects more on how bloated and inefficient the tech sector is. And now the other shoe is dropping with mass layoffs.
The layoffs are a power grab against wage increases. Companies have been reporting record profits for years, inefficient my ass.
If you can do your allotted work in less time you’re just more productive, if a company gave a shit about this they could solve the problem by having a direct compensation increase for work load increase. After all, the employment negotiation happened in the interview. Responsibilities and compensation are already decided upon, it’s insane that you can just be handed more work because you’re too good to do the work they gave you slow enough. If the workers actually had power in the negotiation like free market morons think they do, they’d be able to adjust their own salary when the employer adjusts their workload. Since they can’t, the balance of power is obviously squarely in the employers court.
Want them to do more? Pay them more and then give them more responsibilities. It’s so easy to solve, but companies think they can just extract more effort for the same dollar they agreed upon when the employee was hired. Ludicrous.
Want them to do more? Pay them more and then give them more responsibilities.
The article cites tech workers double-dipping on $250,000 salaries. It’s clearly not about not getting paid enough.
It’s like dating two people but pretending to be monogamous with each.
That’s a great analogy.
If you’re getting the work done you’re getting the work done.
Bottom line is that companies don’t pay you for being more productive, so you have to pay yourself by working two at the same time and getting both done. If you fail to perform, sure, get fired. As long as the product is there, it’s just a worker ensuring they are getting the money they deserve for their production capacity.
The company is paying you for your time, therefore that time is theirs. If you have two companies paying for the same 40 hours, whose time is it and which gets priority when there is an urgent matter? You’re stealing the time resource that they’re paying for if you’re double dipping. It’s greedy and unethical.
If you want to be paid for your production capacity, go independent and pick up jobs where they pay you on job completion.
Unless you are hourly, they are paying you for your work. Salary does not mean you work a consistent 40 hours. Some salary positions require more than 40 hours to do and some are highly variable. It does not seem like you have had any jobs with measurable KPIs.
It’s absolutely insane to me how many people think this is ok. I don’t know if it’s just the particular demographic of Lemmy or not, but god damn. People like that are in for a rude awakening when their jobs are outsourced. Because if companies are going to deal with people working two jobs at the same time, why not pay a fraction for it and deal with it in India.
Yeah but the alternative is that I spend the rest of the time on on here. If the company aren’t keeping me busy that’s their problem
The real question is why do people need 2 jobs? If its just ambition or wtv then ok, but if its out of the need to pay the bills and just get by, why is it happening? Or course its convenient for this mfers to say that. Better have people working multiple jobs to get by and keep their mouth shut then having them rebeling, joinin unions, protesting and so on.
He is specifically talking about people who are able to work from home who are generally employed full time. However he does point to workers who absolutely need to work two jobs to make ends meet as a reason why it should be viewed as okay. That is definitely problematic. Those people working two jobs just to live would definitely prefer to work just one.
I have a job where the unspoken agreement is they under pay you but you get to underwork proportionally to your favor. I’m more ambitious so I spend the free time on more work. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is more of a benefit to software people than most workers
They underpay you knowing you won’t work as hard for them? I don’t understand business owners.
Lol it’s the government. But to be honest, it’s a pretty good deal. If you’re not ambitious, you have an easy safe cushy life. If you are ambitious, you have time and security to try things your way
The type of worker that article is talking about don’t. They are making $250,000 per job. People making too little to live off largely don’t have jobs that you would lie about working 2 at the same time.
Sounds like there is a very easy solution to this : pay people more so they don’t have to take a second job ?
double dipper
I wanna laser focus in on this phrase in particular because I think it’s bullshit. No one is double dipping, no one’s getting paid twice to do one job. You do a job, it’s to the satisfaction of your employer, they pay you. That is and has always been the deal. If I can do two jobs to the satisfaction of two employers I deserve and am entitled to two paychecks.
Yeah but employers want to be the only party who can have their cake and eat it by giving one person the work of three people and calling them ‘cross-trained.’
The way employers work. There is no such thing as satisfied. By definition they want every single ounce of your existence to be spent on their enrichment. I’m pretty certain salaries were invented as a mental wedge to expect more and more for the same money.
I think there are two different scenarios being conflated here. Having two jobs where you work 1, then work the other is overall fine. The issue is when you have two jobs that you work during the same time, in other words you work for both companies from 9-5 unbeknownst to those employers. If you’d like to do that you need to be an independent contractor or form your own company and do contracted work where the terms are entirely different between you and the company you do work for.
If you’re getting the work done for both jobs, what’s the problem? If they want to double your workload, they can pay you double.
If I have to wait for you to do something to do part of my job, and the reason I have to wait is you have another job, then that’s a problem. The vast majority of salaried jobs involve collaboration.
Then hire more people? Never heard a complaint when a CEO manages multiple companies.
This argument is dumb. End of the day people are free to do as they like. So are employers. If both parties are satisfied with the work getting done then end of story.
Are you serious? I’m talking about an Employer that isn’t ok with it.
Then there is normal recourse. Derr.
But you would rather the employers have some sort of special rights, huh?
What in the hell are you on about? They can just fire you for cause.
Im not conflating anything. A job is an expectation of work to be done for a wage. I do the work, I get the wage. If the expectation is outlined at the beginning as the job monopolizing my time and me doing whatever work comes along when I’m on the clock, then that’s the job I took and I need to be available to them. But in a lot of jobs the expectation is just to meet certain targets of work to be completed. If I meet those targets, the employer owes me the agreed upon wage. To imply that doing anything less than as much as humanly possible is some sort of fraud normalizes exploitation and abuse.
If I pay the grocery store a dollar for an apple, am I entitled to as many apples as they can possibly deliver me? Obviously not.
If I pay a worker a dollar for a task, am I entitled to as many tasks as they can possibly deliver me? A lot of employers seem to think so.
If the expectation is outlined at the beginning as the job monopolizing my time and me doing whatever work comes along when I’m on the clock, then that’s the job I took and I need to be available to them.
Yes. THAT is the expectation we are talking about. If a company doesn’t expect that, then there is no issue.
in a lot of jobs the expectation is just to meet certain targets of work to be completed. If I meet those targets, the employer owes me the agreed upon wage.
Great. If that’s what your employment agreement says there isn’t a problem. Congrats on finding a white collar salaried job that involves no collaboration or expectations on availability.
If I pay the grocery store a dollar for an apple, am I entitled to as many apples as they can possibly deliver me? Obviously not.
That’s akin to hourly pay. You work an hour you get $10. You buy an Apple you pay $1. Salary is like an all you can eat buffet. You pay $20 you eat 1 Apple, 2 Apples, 3 Apples, etc. But also there are rules; Can’t take anything home, can’t share your food with a non-paying person, you’ll probably get cut off at some point if you eat too much or waste food etc.
If I pay a worker a dollar for a task, am I entitled to as many tasks as they can possibly deliver me?
I think this is the big misconception. You’re describing contract work, not salaried employment.
Working multiple jobs is a part of the fabric of the working world
is this guy for real? is this a common thought in America?
Does it sound fucking dystopic only to me?!
It’s commonly accepted but not commonly enjoyed.
I have met very few people in the USA that worked 2 jobs. I have never had more than one job at a time.
Additionally, I have spent a couple decades in poverty and hanging around people of similar means while those conditions were true.
That or start paying a lot more.
I’ve been a lifelong student of management and a leader for over 40 years
A leader is someone people choose to follow… not a corporate lapdog with a fancy title that has been imposed on them.
lifelong student
So he’s an eternal amateur, with all theory but no practical experience?
Shit it’s a good thing all the people this person was ever in charge of chose to quit instead of following them, right? Otherwise your semi-though-out comeback would be worthless.
charge of chose
Riiiight… because nobody is coerced to do anything in a capitalist society because starvation and homelessness is easy, isn’t that so, genius?
hey there, I suggest you do yourself a favor and stop talking to this skates person. you’ll live longer.
I cant tell if they are just trying to argue or they’re running interference for a system that actively harms their interests, but either way, you will not convince this person of anything and they will just make you feel disheartened regarding humanity in general
So you’re saying everyone under this person was coerced to take and keep their job? Sounds pretty wild. Can I see some data to support that?
Because if not, all those who weren’t coerced made a choice. Which by your reasoning means they’re following a leader.
imagine not having to pay bills.
Not everyone wants to live with 10+ other people in a single apartment in San Francisco
A real CEO should make absolutely sure, that no employee has to work more than one job to be able to afford to live.
The US is just absolutely fucked in the head.
I don’t know a single other country (to be fair i don’t know many) where you couldnt survive if you had only one fulltime job.There’s a difference between has to work a second job, and decides to. Some people preffer having more money at the cost of their free time.
Jesse what are you talking about? That is not what the article is about. How is that relevant?
While a problem, this one is covering high paid tech workers who are pulling $250,000 per job.
Undertone: We don’t pay enough for one job to be enough. The correct response is to raise wages so people have free time.
I only read to the break, but it sounds more like this is a case of someone WFH for multiple big tech companies to maximize income - someone who isn’t interested in free time when they could be puling down multiple 6-figure jobs. There are several internet accounts of people working for MS and FB at the same time, pulling $200k+ from each.
The implication of a double dipper is that they’re really only giving 1/2 effort to each job, which is a reasonable assumption for the average person. Most people aren’t productive more than 30-35 hours a week, regardless of the number of hours they mold a chair in the shape of their ass. This seems to be a “hey, maybe the employee isn’t the problem” take - that you’re paying for production, and if the products targets are hit you’re getting your money’s worth. Now, if they’re not getting hit, or the management doesn’t have enough experience to know how much effort (in work-hours/work-years) are needed on a job, that’s a different problem which isn’t a function of the WFH laborer.
Lol you think anyone gives 100% effort to their job? Not even the CEO cares that much.
Its this, and especially with WFH there are is a pretty large spectrum of “productivity” among users. Some people are much slower than others, but we don’t fire them because of it. People that think it’s ok to have 2 jobs at once as long as they “meet their expectations” seem to be applying hourly assembly line or warehouse performance metrics to much more subjective work. It just doesn’t work that way. If my less productive employee does good work, albeit slower I don’t think he should be fired. If I find out the reason he does it slower is he’s working a second job while I wait for him, then that’s a different story.
they’re really only giving 1/2 effort to each job
total possible effort from an employee is a shitty, exploitative way to measure job performance. is someone who sucks at 100% effort a better employee than someone who does an amazing job at 50% effort? better to measure it based on whether the job’s requirements are being met. if they are, you get paid. if they are not, you get fired. as you said yourself: if the targets are being hit the employer is getting what they pay for, and they’re entitled to no more than that.
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