These People Who Work From Home Have a Secret: They Have Two Jobs

August 18, 2021 1:45 PM

“It’s 100% overwhelming, and my wife’s like, ‘How long can you do this?’ ” he says. But “every other Friday, when those paychecks drop, I am reinvigorated.” Holding two jobs isn’t illegal, says Richard Greenberg, an employment attorney with Jackson Lewis PC in New York. “It’s more of a contract issue. You’re jeopardizing your employment. There’s very few things that rise to criminal violations,” he says.

Related: "Why are Knowledge Workers Quitting?"

posted by mecran01 (67 comments total)

This seems like patently tendentious, anti-worker, pro-corporate garbage
posted by clockzero at 1:49 PM on August 18, 2021 [24 favorites]

The UK version of this was much easier - get a second job whilst on furlough from your first, get paid two salaries and still only do one job!

Of course that strategy has a time limit, but "easy" money nonetheless.
posted by stillnocturnal at 1:56 PM on August 18, 2021

Why be good at one job, they thought, when they could be mediocre amazing at two zero?

I am currently 13 years away from being eligible for early retirement years old. Retirement is, and basically always has been, my only career objective, so I'm way ahead of the zeitgeist on the whole career downsizing, voluntarily reducing work hours to emphasize other aspects of life thing.
posted by The Card Cheat at 1:56 PM on August 18, 2021 [18 favorites]

I agree, a lot of these articles make managers smile, sit back and go "I told you so!" and also seemingly scare us into thinking it might be illegal? Wtf? Why would it be illegal? I work in an at-will state so the corporation can fire me for any reason, I can also do anything anytime. If they choose to employ me that's on them.

So just to be clear, if a corporation takes on multiple contracts that's called "growing the busienss" or "increasing YOY revenue." If employees do multiple jobs they're stealing from employers, got it.

Funny how efficiency goes one way.
posted by geoff. at 1:58 PM on August 18, 2021 [72 favorites]

Even taking it at face value, it's hard to work up any outrage. The gig economy is all about taking on two or three jobs and juggling them. As is self-employment, in many cases. If the employer is (a) happy that you're worth paying for what you achieve, or (b) unaware of what you do or what they pay you, then that's capitalism, I suppose.

In the UK, if you have two employers, there's more likely to be suspicion because of tax codes, national insurance etc.

I have a fairly easy job and work remotely. But I've no intention of wasting that free time on more work. Are you kidding? Nice to have the choice, of course. But seems like most of these people do.
posted by pipeski at 2:01 PM on August 18, 2021 [10 favorites]

This seems like patently tendentious, anti-worker, pro-corporate garbage

It's the Wall Street Journal, so... yeah.
posted by axiom at 2:01 PM on August 18, 2021 [45 favorites]

1. Who are these motherfuckers getting unlimited time off???

2. The pandemic has given us new opportunities to shirk and fib.

Shirk and Fib are my two best work friends, without whom I would have succumbed to despair years ago.

Let’s take a minute and think about how companies have been cutting costs and increasing productivity by letting jobs go unfilled, offering menial-job wages for professional and/or specialized-skill jobs, requiring a college degree for a job that doesn’t require academic aptitude, overworking too few employees, outsourcing jobs overseas, or forgoing employees in favor of “contractors,” who have even less job security than do staff in “at will” states. It’s about time these greedy pig bastards got a little of it back. (That fluttering sound you hear is the chickens coming home to roost.)
posted by scratch at 2:20 PM on August 18, 2021 [68 favorites]

I see this article as an unintentional invitation to expand our income opportunities.
posted by mecran01 at 2:24 PM on August 18, 2021 [17 favorites]

I am a Senior Partner at Shirk & Fib
posted by Kabanos at 2:29 PM on August 18, 2021 [71 favorites]

Someone I know's employer caught a manager doing this, but with three jobs at once. They were performing kind of badly, but the company was giving people a lot of leeway because the pandemic and working from home was hard for people, and they got caught through a dumb slip-up. After the jig was up, it became clear they'd been doing a bunch of stuff that was bad for the company but good for keeping more jobs.

Who are these motherfuckers getting unlimited time off???

Unlimited time off is, IMO, a worker-unfriendly policy that Netflix started and has been going around the tech industry. You still need manager approval, but it's not formally tracked and you don't have like a set amount that's expected. And there's always stuff to do, so IMO it rewards the people willing to abuse it, and penalizes the people who have imposter syndrome or take on ambitious projects etc. The companies like it, because accrued vacation is basically debt, and if the employee leaves they have to pay it out, but making it the minimum of "manager discretion" and "what the employee feels they deserve/can justify" and "it's not formally tracked" is a perfect recipe for inequality and general shittiness.
posted by aubilenon at 2:29 PM on August 18, 2021 [63 favorites]

Aside from the whole corporate-aimed schadenfreude , there's a productivity related aspect: many corporate jobs are largely about showing up on time and putting in the hours you're expected to, not necessarily about doing something useful with all those hours. This just exploits this fact.
posted by signal at 2:31 PM on August 18, 2021 [16 favorites]

1. Who are these motherfuckers getting unlimited time off???

Unlimited time off in my experience means they don't track your vacation days and expect you to be largely available all the time. This is usually passive aggressive and doesn't account that if you took a week off you'll have a week worth of emails to catch up to. They sort of expect you to catchup on the plane on your way back or something.

That's cynical but I think at least it is an attempt to accept they give us devices that are on us all the time that has work e-mail and stuff.
posted by geoff. at 2:31 PM on August 18, 2021 [7 favorites]

Someone I know's employer caught a manager doing this, but with three jobs at once.

The last place I worked had a director doing this. He would be offsite "in meetings" all morning, but he was running his second gig. It would have gone unnoticed had he not been an utter prick who attracted the ire and scrutiny of his underlings. So if you're gonna do this, lay real low and be nice to your colleagues.
posted by Stoof at 2:44 PM on August 18, 2021 [24 favorites]

Unlimited vacation means lots of things, which is part of the problem. For example, my employer has it and my direct manager has taken 2 month-long vacations since last Christmas.

That said, I wonder if this might be more common than people realize. I knew a guy who did this like 15 years ago with software consulting firms and he was apparently doing fine for a long time until he slipped up and got caught. I heard because lawyers got involved and contacted all of his previous employers looking to see how deep the rabbit hole went. Last I heard there were big lawsuits flying, but I don't know what happened. I actually looked this guy up a few years ago and he is still working in the industry.
posted by feloniousmonk at 3:02 PM on August 18, 2021 [1 favorite]

Let’s take a minute and think about...

I cannot favorite this series of observations enough.
posted by gimonca at 3:05 PM on August 18, 2021 [7 favorites]

Every time I ever hired an on-site consultant to help with a project they were constantly working on their next hustle while sitting in our office. For all I know they were billing that time, too.

What I'm curious about is how these people handle benefits. Are they pulling 100% medical/dental from both? Just one? What happens if the company providing your health insurance figures out the scam?
posted by JoeZydeco at 3:06 PM on August 18, 2021 [1 favorite]

The companies like it, because accrued vacation is basically debt, and if the employee leaves they have to pay it out

I think you're onto something here. Where I live and work, the government mandates that companies fund a reserve account so that they can pay out accrued and unused vacation benefits when staff leaves. My employer has cut back on the amount staff can accumulate, and more recently has had initiatives basically telling people to take time off--because financials looked iffy and the accountants saw it as a way to tilt those funds towards other things. The less "saved vacation" that's on the books, the less they have to fund that reserve account.

So if that "saved vacation" number drops down to zero......??? Hmmm.
posted by gimonca at 3:14 PM on August 18, 2021 [4 favorites]

Are they pulling 100% medical/dental from both?

One way out: "I'm on my spouse's insurance." That's if they even ask or care, of course.
posted by gimonca at 3:17 PM on August 18, 2021 [8 favorites]

Every time I ever hired an on-site consultant to help with a project they were constantly working on their next hustle while sitting in our office. For all I know they were billing that time, too.

Oh, I think you can count on that. That’s simple entrepreneurial spirit!
posted by Thorzdad at 3:35 PM on August 18, 2021 [5 favorites]

I thought we would share tips in this thread!
1. Try to get different time zone jobs so lunch at one place is when you do morning meetings. This is actually productive and ethical if you are more of a night owl. Mornings are hell for some people even w good sleep.

2. Recycle written internal content as needed. Just control and replace the words. Also use the words use research, leverage, and maximize a lot.

3. Stagger vacation days so you can use them at one place to work hard on complex assignments.
4. Profit!


It is generally not illegal. People who have grown up w/gig jobs and students debt dont give a shit... and do not have many choices.
posted by Freecola at 3:44 PM on August 18, 2021 [12 favorites]

Article is Part n in a series of managers revealing it’s actually a difficult skill to measure production in a complex team when you don’t have the capacity to use proxies for work like presenteeism. In the 1890s Frederick Taylor [spit] was onto this tendency of employees to ‘soldier’ and work slowly as he called it, when not actively surveilled, the difference is now that instead of doing nothing, ideology makes ‘soldiering’ a hyper-production-activity. Personally I like bludging, but I’m getting old
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 3:45 PM on August 18, 2021 [6 favorites]

Can someone with HR experience give us more information on the risk of getting caught via payroll deductions, etc.?
posted by HotToddy at 3:58 PM on August 18, 2021 [1 favorite]

I don't really care about whether the employers feel like they're getting their money's worth or whatever, but if you're already making a six figure salary, don't feel like you've got enough to do in the course of that job, and decide to take an additional six-figure-salary job on the side, then unless you're like, donating 100% of that salary to charity or something, you're part of the problem. This doesn't really seem to be people trying to stretch themselves to make ends meet, this is just greed. You're no worse than the C-suite suit that's already pulling in multiple times your salary, but you're not any better, either.
posted by biogeo at 4:07 PM on August 18, 2021 [16 favorites]

I'm in HR and do payroll, not sure what deduction stuff you think there would be to catch? There are federal limits on things like HSA and 401k, but that's entirely on an individual to manage and make sure they don't overcontribute. You don't have to enroll in benefits. Sometimes the IRS sends us a letter saying we need to set an employee's income tax withholding to the highest level but so far I've never seen one saying my goodness this employee is paying too much tax. If we get a wage statement from a state for like unemployment or something, it only tells us the wages our FEIN reported for the employee, not their wages from their side gig or any other jobs they held that year.

Pretty sure unless you suck at your job or do a big goof there's no way we would know. That said, you probably do suck at your job and you're not as clever as you think. (You just have to be more clever than your manager, which is often not that hard.)
posted by phunniemee at 4:09 PM on August 18, 2021 [20 favorites]

The UK version of this was much easier - get a second job whilst on furlough from your first, get paid two salaries and still only do one job!

Sounds good, but not if I have to say "whilst" as though there was still a Tudor on the throne.
posted by senor biggles at 4:10 PM on August 18, 2021 [7 favorites]

That said, we just had this situation come up with a new hire with a side helping of he was using someone else's green card probably. He was a REALLY BAD liar so it was obvious his first day he was running a scam and doing multiple jobs for his highly specialized skill, so he lasted 2 days. (Second day was only because we paid him for the day he got fired at 8am.)

My favorite red flag of like the 532 red flags he threw up was when he told his manager--on his first day--that he couldn't join a pre scheduled meet your manager meeting because he had to go take his drug test as part of his background check.

We do not drug test. lol
posted by phunniemee at 4:13 PM on August 18, 2021 [16 favorites]

I’m reading this and suddenly thinking of my manager, who constantly is too busy to take phone calls, have meetings, forgets what her group is doing most weeks, and is so slow to review documents that I end up sending stuff to her boss most of the time. I keep assuming other people in my group monopolies her time, but other people in my group have complained about it too.

I’ve been chalking it up to pandemic, but I’m really wondering now if she’s got a second job.
posted by lepus at 4:13 PM on August 18, 2021 [9 favorites]

In every full time job I've had, I've known someone to do this so it is definitely not new.

In one it was a manager doing it while the minimum wage workers had to work twice as hard to pick up his slack.
posted by tofu_crouton at 4:38 PM on August 18, 2021 [2 favorites]

The baller move is to start with an IT or programming job, secretly take a second job, then subcontract both of those jobs.
posted by etherist at 4:46 PM on August 18, 2021 [24 favorites]

The owners of the tech company I work for are billionaires and honestly I think it's pretty weird to know that you're being exploited for your labor and admin is skimming huge chunks off the top, and to then still feel like you should be 'good' at your job.

The only reason you should be good at your job and feeling like you should happily increase your own exploitation is just so you can make a stink about things. There's a good group of people at my workplace who do this so they have the social capital to openly talk about, for ex, pay inequity or lack of accessibility while also being really good at their jobs and awesome team players, and really it's just to keep the bootlickers (ie HR) off their ass.
posted by paimapi at 4:53 PM on August 18, 2021 [15 favorites]

"...then subcontract both of those jobs."

NPR: Outsourced: Employee Sends Own Job To China; Surfs Web

"…as they learned, his schedule also included sending less than one-fifth of his salary to the Chinese firm. Verizon's investigators say the evidence they uncovered suggests "Bob" might have had similar arrangements at several companies.

"All told, it looked like he earned several hundred thousand dollars a year, and only had to pay the Chinese consulting firm about fifty grand annually," according to the Security Blog."
posted by bz at 4:54 PM on August 18, 2021 [12 favorites]

I did this 2 job thing for about 6 months last year at the start of the pandemic. It was fine, though a little stressful ducking out at random times to meet with clients in my nearby office (or via video) for therapy. But seeing as though everyone else (in leadership/administration) got to stay home to avoid getting sick (though they didn't think it worth the bother or energy to switch our program to full-telehealth to ensure staff and patient safety) I thought of it as my hazard pay. Literally leadership had no plan for telehealth to reduce patient/staff exposure until very late 2020 and by then I already had one foot out the door. I mean, what even the hell is their job if not to be planning for and managing situations like a global pandemic as hospital leadership?! Anyway, working 2 jobs at the same time was a nice bump in pay, made me realize I have more abilities for stress and work than I gave myself credit for and more importantly gave me the courage to finally strike it out on my own as a solo practitioner. So thanks Big Evil Hospital System!
posted by flamk at 5:34 PM on August 18, 2021 [18 favorites]

Not feeling like many people interviewed were in the wrong. I mean, intentionally being mediocre at 2 jobs does suck for your coworkers (I have seen several employees in my workplace who are mediocre, and it means their colleagues do their own work PLUS the slackers share of the work - federal jobs so firing them for sucking is nigh impossible). But the person who lied about a fake security conference to travel abroad and pocket the difference? That’s reprehensible. If your company willingly paid you to half-ass the job that’s on them, but you lying to get a free bonus is fraud. I’m not ok with that.
posted by caution live frogs at 5:39 PM on August 18, 2021 [10 favorites]

I mean, the whole 9-to-5, 40-hour workweek is a fraud, no? It all feels like just one step up from the supposed Soviet joke of "we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us."
posted by flamk at 5:43 PM on August 18, 2021 [6 favorites]

In my previous office position I could get everything done that I needed to get done in 20-30 hours a week and still score 5/5 on my evaluations. Other office cow-orkers would complain that they couldn't get anything done, but they spent 20 hours a week gossiping, visiting other people in their offices, eating birthday cake, etc. I did some social, but spent my 20-30 hours doing my job. When I got bored on the other 10-20 hours, I innovated and did the stuff that got me 5/5.

For Knowledge Workers, the idea of measuring performance by the hours you work is outdated. Pay/determine perfromance by getting stuff done, being available, etc. The old corporate culture of sitting at a desk in a place for 40 hours a week as a peformance measure is fucked.

I've worked off-site for the last 10 years. I can take my dog for an hour hike or go play golf during the work day and mentally pre-plan stuff better than I would do sitting and staring at at screen, getting distracted by every new email or co-worker wandering into my office to complain/gossip.

And I still get 5/5 because I mentally and otherwise kick ass.

I'd like to think I'm working in the future. Others should be able to do so too.

(Also, where's some Office Space qoutes in this thread?)

Peter Gibbons : It's a problem of motivation, all right? Now if I work my ass off and Initech ships a few extra units, I don't see another dime, so where's the motivation?
posted by ITravelMontana at 6:17 PM on August 18, 2021 [7 favorites]

As someone who is clandestine interviewing for a new remote gig, the Idea that I could work both, even for a short or limited period to pay off bills, is fascinating and very enticing. I could give NO shits about getting ahead or climbing the ladder, really I to hate work, full stop, and would rather chill, beach adjacent, forever.

That being said I'm not sure I would be willing to attempt working 2 corporate jobs for longer than say, 90 days... mostly because I want to work LESS the older I get.

FWIW - at the potential new job interview I was asked the ever typical "where do you see yourself in 5 years?" during the interview. I replied with pleasure "IN A MIRROR!" first, chuckled to myself & then answered honestly "I hope I'm working less, because I don't want to keep working forever"
AKA - IDGAF about your corporate goals.
posted by djseafood at 6:35 PM on August 18, 2021 [6 favorites]

The companies like it, because accrued vacation is basically debt

It's not just basically debt, I heard about one factory that was struggling for business a couple years ago that required their employees to use up their vacation before the end of the year just to make their books look a little better.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 6:50 PM on August 18, 2021

Company policy that you can only carry over 50 hours of PTO is another manipulation because if you don't use it it disappears (down to 50) - many times unused PTO is because a company/manager HEAVILY IMPLIES that if you take vacation you're not preforming, or simply refuse to approve vacation time. Welcome to America where the corporate cards are stacked against you.
Capitalism does not have a moral clause and Corporations are fundamentally not moral because they are profit driven.
posted by djseafood at 6:58 PM on August 18, 2021 [4 favorites]

I work for an F100 corporation at the moment and even this company doesn't allow vacation rollovers. We hit a big crunch at the end of 2020 and some of the more senior people begged to be allowed some rollover so they could make the deadlines.

Management said nope, so the labs went dark the entire month of December. Probably not what they expected.
posted by JoeZydeco at 6:58 PM on August 18, 2021 [18 favorites]

I would just like one job that pays well and isn't soul destroying
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 7:04 PM on August 18, 2021 [17 favorites]

This part of the article just killed me:
They have paid off chunks of student-loan debt, plumped their kids’ college-savings accounts and bought everything from an engagement ring to a sports car with the extra cash.

You used to be able to do this with ONE ordinary job. Being able to afford this stuff shouldn't be surprising!

In the kind of climate we're in now I sort of wonder if I'm not an idiot for not doing this. But I had a part time job for a few months and even though I felt like a part time second job is pretty normal I still found it was too much work even though I enjoyed the extra $. If only because the taxes I paid on it offset my hubby's disability payment tax. Of course I need to be working 2 jobs if there's 2 of us and only 1's working, according to the government.
posted by bleep at 7:06 PM on August 18, 2021 [10 favorites]

I accidentally did this a few months ago, but only for a week. I was laid off from my full time job and landed a freelance thing. It was only going to be for a few months so I had to start my job search anyway. Towards the end of freelance job, it started to get really slow. Found a new job and when they asked when I could start, like an idiot I said right away. Final week of freelance job. Things are really slow. What could go wrong?

Naturally, everything went wrong. Massive crisis at old job. Right during training for new job. In a meeting with new job when old job manager needs to talk to me right away. What do I do? Fake a power internet outage to meet with job #1 manager. Etc, etc, etc.

Thankfully it was only a week. I just couldn't handle all the lying. My wife joked that it was like having two girlfriends.

Unfortunately it wasn't anywhere near as fun as that.
posted by freakazoid at 7:21 PM on August 18, 2021 [8 favorites]

I saw this under a headline about people doing this and making like $300,000 a year and became so blinded by rage at the privilege one has to have to be working two SO lucrative jobs AND engaging with a reporter about it that I couldn't do anything at all but breathe for a full minute.
posted by tiny frying pan at 4:45 AM on August 19, 2021 [2 favorites]

The usual kind of working two jobs is "flipping burgers" and "cleaning toilets" and "so they can feed their kids." It's hard to hate these tech people though, because everyone should be sticking it to the man. The privilege does leave a really sour taste though.
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:09 AM on August 19, 2021 [5 favorites]

"... The privilege one has to have to be working two SO lucrative jobs..."

Oh my god. So much this.

I have ONE job, for which I get paid about $50K a year (union-negotiated wage), and it could take up 80 or 90 hours a week if I allowed it to. I can barely get done what I need to get done in eight hours a day, and after those eight hours I am emotionally and intellectually spent.

The idea that people who make 3x what I do at one job have doubled their salary by half-assing two jobs has me foaming at the mouth.
posted by virago at 5:09 AM on August 19, 2021 [12 favorites]

I just thought having two jobs that don't pay enough was called "being a millennial"
posted by eustatic at 7:00 AM on August 19, 2021

That's not what this article is about. At all. These people have TWO extremely privileged jobs:

The Wall Street Journal verified the workers’ accounts by examining offer letters, employment contracts, concurrent pay stubs and corporate emails. Most of them say they are on track to earn a total of $200,000 to nearly $600,000 a year, including bonuses and stock. They have paid off chunks of student-loan debt, plumped their kids’ college-savings accounts and bought everything from an engagement ring to a sports car with the extra cash.
posted by tiny frying pan at 7:06 AM on August 19, 2021 [3 favorites]

Do these people have multiple LinkedIn profiles? I guess you’d need to decline health insurance from the other employers. Does this necessarily involve lying? Is deceit wrong even if you don’t lie? Do your friends know? Do your work friends know? What about your work spouse, is it wrong to have more than one work spouse? Is it wrong to take positions with two or more companies that each provide services to those who have multiple jobs?

How hard is it to meet webcam monitoring requirements with deepfakes? Are there real-time deepfakes I can have someone wear like a costume during simultaneous Zoom meetings? What’s the best national franchised service for body doubles for geographically distant in-person events? How viable is the twin defense when accused of shenanigans? Does it work better if the twin is evil? What is the best way to optimize the mix between “hilarity ensues” versus “I guess murder is the only way out” in your third act?

How much of your day jobs should you spend getting another day job? Does having a scramble suit make it easier? Is it really working more than one job if your next eight jobs are all your own confidential informants? I feel like there should be a moonlighters union. If you’re a manager, is it wrong to hire yourself as a subordinate? Can you leverage this somehow when you get fired from the subordinate position for insubordination?

If there’s a weird copier in the basement at work and it makes duplicates of the person making copies and you discover it and now there are like five of you, how many jobs is it ethical to take? Can you sleep in shifts or do you have to get five apartments now? What’s the best way to distinguish between each other besides numbered hats or greek letters or something else that doesn’t imply an ordering or hierarchy even though it’s obvious you should be in charge because you discovered the copier first? Is it weird that numbers two and three keep disappearing together? Are they two-timing the rest of us? If number four is willing to deal with numbers two and three does that mean they’re a threat to the rest of us now? What’s the best way to weaken in advance of personal combat an opponent completely identical to yourself in every capability? Do I need to prepare all my own meals now, is that it?
posted by bigbigdog at 7:30 AM on August 19, 2021 [19 favorites]

F100 corporation at the moment and even this company doesn't allow vacation rollovers.

My experience is the bigger companies don't usually allow for rollovers. My husband has worked for large multinationals, and virtually all of them severely limited roll over. They'd also do some interesting calculations when paying out what little PTO you could accrue.

I've worked for much smaller regional places since college, and 4/5 of them have allowed me to accumulate a total of about 3-4 weeks of PTO. After that you've hit the max, you just stop accruing, but you don't ever lose what you've accrued. That makes it way easier to have prevent "everyone needs to take PTO now," events. Also, every job I've had except one has paid out unused PTO when you left, so I've almost always gotten the equivalent of at least 2 weeks pay on leaving a job.

My mom (nurse) had it even better. She could accumulate months of PTO before hitting the limit. And when she got to the limit, she could cash it out.

Guess which one of the three of us was in a union?
posted by ghost phoneme at 7:50 AM on August 19, 2021 [5 favorites]

I worked with someone who took on a second job - it was a waitressing job and it wasn't a secret - but as one person in a two-person department, it made my life a whole lot more difficult. We're in a deadline-driven occupation, and she would regularly call in sick on deadline days - I don't know if she was working or really sick or, as some who knew her suggested, hung over. I don't really care if these people are sticking it to the man, but if you're sticking it to your fellow employees, that's a shitty thing to do. You may not be as good at managing two jobs as you think you are, and your co-worker might be picking up your slack.

(This isn't a case where she was trying to feed a family on low wages and needed a second job to do that. It's possible there was financial stuff I didn't know about, but she was a single person and this was a professional position that paid well enough for people to live on in our town.)
posted by FencingGal at 8:01 AM on August 19, 2021 [3 favorites]

At my (very large) company, we have a generous vacation policy, a culture of people actually taking their vacation, and no rollover. So, inevitably;
- everybody hoards their vacation early in the year;
- sometime around now you start seeing people take more and more long weekends as they realize they have to use up their time;
- some longer-tenured people who don't take any time all year just don't come back from Thanksgiving.

I understand that they don't want to let people accrue a huge balance and then take six months off, but it would really be easier to get things that involve other people done in December if they allowed rollovers and capped accrual at, say, one year's PTO allowance.
posted by madcaptenor at 8:28 AM on August 19, 2021 [3 favorites]

One company my husband worked for let you roll over a couple of days, but you had to use them by the end of the first quarter.

Since January/February were pretty slow, it was theoretically pretty smart. It'd encourage people to take time off when things were slow. However, since it was only 2-3 days people wound up just taking long weekends when their kids would have a day off school. I don't think they fully maximized the potential.

she would regularly call in sick on deadline days - I don't know if she was working or really sick or, as some who knew her suggested, hung over.

I don't think that was necessarily a function of her second job. IME (as one of the ones who's usually stuck picking up slack), people who conveniently call in for busy days (plus a few more) tend to do that regardless of external factors.
posted by ghost phoneme at 9:05 AM on August 19, 2021 [1 favorite]

I actually thought about doing this not long ago because I'm remote and work has been extremely slow, but my current job is great in a lot of ways so I don't want to risk being found out and fired. Plus I'd have to find a second job that isn't busy — if the new job were busy I'd be overextended and it's just not worth it.

I recently learned of someone (a colleague of a friend) who is a very senior person in their field and also seemed to have two full-time jobs: a researcher at one institution and a teaching professor at another institution. If I understood correctly the research was his primary job and teaching was less so, but both sounded like full-time positions. My friend made this sound very normal but it sounded to me like double-dipping. I guess I can see how it could work: as a researcher he could spend his time directing the lab and writing grant applications without being there full time, and as a professor he could give lectures and office hours but offload grading exams and papers to TAs. My friend seemed to think this was all very normal but it sounded sketchy to me.

This very senior person was recently let go from their teaching job without explanation. My friend and his colleagues are UP IN ARMS — how dare this institution stop employing this well-respected and knowledgeable person? I asked if it might have anything to do with him having two full-time jobs but they just looked at me like I had two heads.

Anyway I thought it was an interesting contrast with this article. Apparently there are niches where you can have multiple jobs and nobody thinks it's weird as long as you are handling your business.

On the topic of PTO accruals: I work for a hospital and when revenue dried up due to the pandemic they forced everyone to spend their PTO down a bit to improve their financials. I wasn't thrilled with that move but this meant they didn't have to furlough anyone. Also I don't want to see a hospital go bankrupt during a pandemic (or at all, really) so maybe it's a good thing that they were improving the balance sheet before things got critical. But I heard of at least one person who had saved up the maximum amount of PTO for their honeymoon which was happening shortly after the deadline for spending down most of your PTO. I never heard whether they were granted an exemption since they were going to spend down their PTO, just a month after the deadline, but IME exemptions to any policy are extremely rare. (I also wonder what they did for their honeymoon since there is a pandemic on)
posted by Tehhund at 9:06 AM on August 19, 2021 [5 favorites]

This is only a big deal for the lower income earners right? I mean, serving on a board gets you paid (in many cases) and plenty of CEOs and upper income earners do that.


I saw a stat recently that in general, people with more degrees have more simultaneous jobs than those we normally think of, ie: the lower income person working fast food and working for Uber.

Logan Mohantashmi I've not verified this data (so it may be incorrect or Simpsons Paradox!) .
Per this, about 7% of people with advanced degrees hold more than one job simultaneously.

My own boss is an amateur moving toward semi-professional (meaning he gets paid occasionally for doing well) race driver.
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:11 AM on August 19, 2021 [2 favorites]

Happily, my day job boss is fine with me working three jobs, which I was doing back when I was in the office 40 hours a week, so I'm not quite what this article is talking about. (My day job earns $44K, and I'm an adjunct instructor teaching online courses at two different community colleges.)

When I was in the office, I did almost all of the other jobs at night, of course. These days, working from home, I'm more flexible about it, but I also occasionally check my day job at night too.

I saw a stat recently that in general, people with more degrees have more simultaneous jobs than those we normally think of, ie: the lower income person working fast food and working for Uber.

Anecdata: PhD, MBA, MAcc, three jobs. It's been as high as 4 at once--and if you count each course as a separate job, it maxed out at, I think, seven or so.
posted by Four Ds at 9:35 AM on August 19, 2021 [2 favorites]

a researcher at one institution and a teaching professor at another institution. If I understood correctly the research was his primary job and teaching was less so, but both sounded like full-time positions

This may be more common than you think it is. There could have been something hinky in the particular case, but I've known a few researchers (usually in a clinical specialty) who'd also teach at other institutions, as their "home" institution didn't have a class relevant for them to teach: their expertise was needed for research in closely related fields, but essentially the university didn't have a relevant major.

In some cases the teaching was because they enjoyed it. In others it fulfilled a requirement for advancement Why would you require teaching for a person if you don't have a class for them? Because everyone else has to teach.

Sidenote: it's definitely not unheard of for adjuncts to teach at multiple universities. Depending on the rules of the university, they may be allowed to carry the teaching equivalent of a full load (for at least a term), which could happen at each location. Because you're not guaranteed classes, you pretty much take what you can when you can.
posted by ghost phoneme at 9:36 AM on August 19, 2021 [3 favorites]

There's a world of difference in how this shakes out, depending on what your role is. If you're processing things, writing things, programming, sure. Companies may hate it, but if the work gets done, ehhhhh. Your company may view it as cheating, but if it doesn't affect your work or cause any conflicts of interest, it's hard to see where you've done anything untoward.

However, if you have jobs with two companies in direct competition and your role with each is to push that competition...

For instance, there is a story going around my circles about a sales exec who did this with two competing telecoms. She simultaneously represented and sold the same product for two directly competing companies to the same market of customers.

She got caught when an interviewee from her "prior employer" was asked if he had worked with her before she left. "Left?" he asked. "I was on a call with her an hour ago."

I think the way to do it would be to pursue two jobs in divergent verticals or with differing roles. If you had, for instance, a sales job with a tech company, and a sales support role with a furniture company, how would they ever find out?
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:05 AM on August 19, 2021 [2 favorites]

bigbigdog, I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
posted by thedward at 10:20 AM on August 19, 2021 [1 favorite]

Honestly it's the fault of the companies. We have all been made to absorb tasks as they cut down the number of full time employees over time. I am doing the job of what 5-6 people did only a few years ago. They trained us to do multiple jobs at once, at least in this case people are getting paid for it.

Good for these people. Fuck corporations, get money.
posted by elvissa at 12:11 PM on August 19, 2021 [5 favorites]

bigbigdog, I would like to subscribe to your newsletter and also marry you.
posted by scratch at 1:00 PM on August 19, 2021 [1 favorite]

I am doing the job of what 5-6 people did only a few years ago. They trained us to do multiple jobs at once, at least in this case people are getting paid for it.

But that's the thing, they aren't. From what the article describes, these people are getting paid multiple salaries, but they aren't actually doing any jobs. The kind of people who will actually do the work of 5-6 people are in that situation partly out of the desire of employers to maximize profits, and partly because some other people are willing to lie about how much work they actually do, and instead pass the work onto some poor honest sap.

I also have to say, as someone who has been desperately trying to leave academia for the better part of a year in order to stop being chronically broke while busting my ass to advance someone else's career, and has been told by several hiring managers at tech companies that my "lack of experience in industry" is a point in the negative column, the idea that I'm competing for these jobs with some assholes who don't even plan to do them and just want to be able to pay off their summer home faster or whatever is pretty infuriating. You want to stick it to the corporations? Unionize, go on strike for better pay and conditions, whatever. This isn't some noble Robin Hood act, this is just the greedy exploiting the greedy. Like I said before, maybe you're no worse than the capitalist class, but you're no better, either. I refuse to root for someone making 10 times as much money as I do while providing less positive value for the world.
posted by biogeo at 1:58 PM on August 19, 2021 [5 favorites]

This is only a big deal for the lower income earners, right? I mean, serving on a board gets you paid (in many cases), and plenty of CEOs and upper income earners do that.

If we're talking about the Wall St Journal article in the post: No, this is not about the lower income earners. The article focuses on people who earn anywhere from $200K to $600K a year, including stock options and bonuses (income verified via employment contracts, concurrent pay stubs, corporate emails and offer letters). The people interviewed in the article have two jobs, each of which pays $200,000-$600,000 a year. They half-ass each job, and they go on their merry way.

Anyway, the WSJ definitely didn't interview anyone who drives an Uber and delivers pizza.

Note to anyone who's interested in the article but who doesn't have a WSJ subscription: You can read it for free if you give them your name and email address.
posted by virago at 5:01 PM on August 19, 2021 [1 favorite]

IIRC it was Chris Dillow who observed, about the salaries of star football players, that they were so enormously large even compared to the salaries of mid-ranked players, that it no longer made sense to think of them as payment-for-work, or that any value was being observed—for these people the pay was a fee not to go and sign up for some other team. I think that's what's happening here too, that for a certain class of professional manager, pay is an understanding of exclusivity, but that's not being honoured by professional workers, who can see through the promises. No wonder the WSJ sees a moral crisis.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 5:13 PM on August 19, 2021 [6 favorites]

The people interviewed in the article have two jobs, each of which pays $200,000-$600,000 a year. They half-ass each job, and they go on their merry way.

That's the real nub of the problem. Doing this for just two jobs is a scam, but if they'd used their credentials to get many dozens of jobs and then subcontracted that work out for pennies on the dollar to those lacking credentials, then it'd be a path to VC startup heaven.
posted by gusottertrout at 11:30 PM on August 19, 2021

I'm not saying you should always steal from your employer, but you probably should always steal from your employer.
posted by MrJM at 9:26 PM on August 20, 2021 [2 favorites]

If you have a burning need to work two jobs because a $100,000 salary isn't enough for you, you have huge problems in your life more money won't solve.
posted by tiny frying pan at 5:59 AM on August 21, 2021

Oh, I think you can count on that. That’s simple entrepreneurial spirit!

Capitalism! Rewards! Innovation!
posted by turbid dahlia at 4:43 PM on August 25, 2021