Comment on Overemployed.com And Subreddit: Working Multiple Remote Jobs To Maximize Gains
iamtanmay@wolfballs.com 3 years agoIt would be unethical if you charge by the hour. If you are paid a fixed monthly salary and have to turn in a list of deliverables every two weeks, then the employer gets what they paid for.
Regarding your scenario, you would have to schedule the meetings at different times, otherwise it would not be ethical. If you sit in two meetings at the same time, where your feedback is required, naturally that's wrong. Unless its one of those mandatory "speech" meetings where the CTO or someone makes an hour long speech that has nothing to do with your actual work. I just ignore those and do my work during the speech anyway.
You could work 16 hours per day, 0700 to 1500 and 1500 to 2300. That would fall in line with your "ethical code". Europe and US are 8 hours apart. A job on each continent.
sj_zero@lotide.fbxl.net 3 years ago
Yes, if you are getting paid for 16 hours a day and you actually work 16 hours a day, that's fine (although you might want to adjust your life priorities). The problems spring up if you're working 8 hours a day (or less) and billing for 16 hours a day. I said that in my last post.
Salary I think would be a grey area, it depends on the situation.
If you're just getting paid X to to the equivalent of churning out Y widgets a week and that's in your contract and you meet the contract, then as long as you're not charging anyone else for the time you spend churning out widgets, that's fine. You could have three salaries to churn out Y1, Y2, and Y3 widgets and do so and you'd be charging solely for the output you're contractually obligated to provide.
OTOH, if I was a boss dynamically setting requirements for the week and I'm setting those priorities based on your previous work performance and I found out your previous work performance was being reduced by your doing salaried work for a second company during the time I expected you to be working for my company, I know what my next 2 phone calls would be.
I don't know why you put "ethical code" in quotes, double billing is a clear violation of many official professional codes of ethics for different professions in different countries around the world.
iamtanmay@wolfballs.com 3 years ago
“ethical code” because I didn't fully understand what you meant. Yes, I agree with everything you said.
Regarding a boss dynamically setting requirements.... I assumed 100% work load in a team, which means <100% individual load due to interdependencies.
I wasn't advocating cheating your employer. If they ask, you can tell them the truth, and find someone who wouldn't mind. Plenty of vacancies right now.
But like I said, I think its better to start a side business. Even something small like repairing laptops. I just don't like salaried work.
sj_zero@lotide.fbxl.net 3 years ago
If you have multiple clients and everyone knows what's going on and everyone's okay with it then obviously we're in a completely different zone. I've had contractors that I was paying and they asked politely if they could spend a little bit of time working on another customers immediate problem and I gave them the okay to do that. It's much like an open relationship: it's only cheating if you're breaking the rules.
I would say, be very careful if you are in a full-time position and you start a side business. Depending what it is, you could end up in a situation where your employer ends up owning your work. When I wrote my book, I made absolutely sure not to do it on company time or to use company equipment, because if you're not careful they can end up owning the copyright to a work you've put a lot of time in. A little side thing like that probably wouldn't be so bad though, particularly if it's something where you're your own boss and you can put it all down the moment that you need to if the quiet moment passes and you need to get back to work.
iamtanmay@wolfballs.com 3 years ago
Yes, but all these discussions revolve around "employer time". The employer would be correct in claiming ownership of any work done on "their" time. This is why as you suggested, it would be fraud to two time an employer when they already pay you for a "certain time". I understand and agree with you.
However, in remote work, a lot of the time, this concept doesn't exist. You are flexible in moving your hours around the day or week as you see fit, exceptions being meetings. Because of this, its on the employee to honor the 40 hour week. Whether they work 20 hours in one and 60 the next, is upto them. In this situation, the only way you void "employer time" is if you don't deliver your normal list of tasks.
It would be an uphill battle for a company to prove the side business was on "employer time", especially since I do my business in the privacy of my home, when I am done with company work for the day.