phillaholic@lemm.ee 10 months ago
Working a second job outside of the hours or scope of tour main job is one thing, but many people double dipping are literally getting paid by two companies for the same hours. That’s different imo.
Not really. If they're fulfilling their contractual obligations to their employer(s), then who the hell cares?
It's long past time that we stop treating employees like they're chattel of the company that they work for. You hire someone to do a job, which they either do to your satisfaction or not, but you don't own them and you shouldn't get to control the parameters of their life.
They aren’t fulfilling their contractual obligations if they aren’t allowed to have a second job and are doing it anyway, so this notion is nonsense to begin with. If you get paid hourly you can’t be working for someone else while getting paid by the first company for the same time. For salaried, typically there are expectations of how long you’ll be working or even your availability.
The company I work for has more than three decades of experience with WFH, and it’s almost always clear when someone is trying to double dip. It’s impossible to keep it hidden for long. Eventually you will have conflicting schedules, and excuses start piling up. Even if the work is good, very few jobs are done in a vacuum where you never need to talk to anyone or work things through. Most situations like that are handled by subcontractors who have all the freedoms you’re talking about. In fact the only situation I can even think of that would fit the mold of how work is being framed here is through contractors.
But that right there is the issue. Why should a company be allowed to prohibit employees from having a second job if it doesn’t conflict with the first one? And if a company does have that right, does it apply to all jobs? What is the difference in that case between working two jobs in the same industry in different market sectors vs working two retail jobs?
Another POV: if I incorporated myself tomorrow and offered what I do for a living as a professional service, then I become the company and the companies that hire me for my services become the client. Do clients have the right to say I can’t take on other clients? (FWIW I have seen some clients try that and get shut down immediately, and I’ve also never heard of any company agreeing to those terms with a client.)
Why should a company be allowed to prohibit employees from having a second job
Different Topic IMO. If someone wants to work 9-5 at an office job, then go work at Target from 6-10 in theory that’s fine. I don’t support it as someone that’s read the studies about productivity of the 40 hour work week being poor, I know that doing so is not sustainable and it’s not a good idea. Should a company be able to stop you from doing it? I don’t know. I’m open to the idea. It’s a far more nuanced topic though. Along the same lines are how to treat outside of work drug use. I see no reason a person can’t smoke Pot off the clock, but I don’t want to extend that to hard drugs.
…f it doesn’t conflict with the first one?
That’s been my argument since the start. Working two jobs during the same hours is conflicting. The stories I’ve read of high paid tech workers double-dipping during Covid were working both jobs during the same hours. Every time they ignore something from Job 1 because they are working on Job 2, it’s conflicting. Same could be said for WFH users who treat it like they are home on a weekend doing chores, supervising children etc. It’s not the same thing.
What is the difference in that case between working two jobs in the same industry in different market sectors vs working two retail jobs?
Usually a high level of proprietary or non-public information to start. But you wouldn’t be working at Target and Walmart from 5-10 tonight walking back and forth between the two stores. So just at a base level they aren’t comparable.
if I incorporated myself tomorrow…Do clients have the right to say I can’t take on other clients?
Absolutely allowed, but not likely. You are entering into a private contract with a company and agreeing between you on what you are do to be doing. Your contract is going to be far more specific than an employment agreement, and it’s up to you to cover all the things they would have covered including: Health Insurance, Payroll taxes, Retirement, Liability Insurance, etc. Keep in mind creating your own LLC or Corp is different than being a 1099 subcontractor. There are certain IRS rules that you have to make sure are followed (well the employer side mostly) else they can get hit with penalties for misclassifying workers as non-employees.
We have some subcontractors on staff, but afaik they sign agreements on availability and are more or less treated like employees when it comes to work output. They may have specific clauses they’ve negotiated on availability or things like that, but that’s also true of some employees too.
If you CAN do both at the same time, who gets hurt?
It’s preposterous to think you CAN simultaneously do so without impact either at all. All it takes is two meetings or two impromptu phone calls at once. You will choose one over the other, in which case the company you didn’t prioritize is hurt as well as the other employees that you’re collaborating with.
Become a contractor if you want to double dip. You set your own schedule, work as many jobs as you want, and even get to choose your own raises.
There will be impact for sure, but as long as you still perform your job to the satisfaction of both employers, then it does not matter.
Paying a wage doesn’t mean you own 100% of the concentration of a person. It means you want them to do a job, and as long as they do it well enough for your standards, then the contract is fulfilled. Whether they can do the job at 70% or 40% concentration does not matter. You still get what you have paid for.
There will be impact for sure, but as long as you still perform your job to the satisfaction of both employers, then it does not matter.
If both employers know you are doing it and are ok with it there’s no problem. Its when it’s being hidden from them that it’s a problem. I’ll give you an example:
So say I’m a lead collaborating on a project with two people under me. Bob does great work, needs little to no assistance, and I can trust that he gets it done not only right, but also takes ownership of it and will bring things up if he sees problems. He doesn’t just wait for me to find them as the lead. Jim on the other hand takes a lot longer to do his part. He doesn’t bring up anything like Bob does even though it should be pretty obvious that it’s wrong because it impacts his part of the work, he waits for me to review, find it, and then have to reach back out to him for it to be fixed or changed. He is also far less responsive than Bob to emails, IMs, and isn’t able to multitask nearly as well. So clearly in this situation Bob is a better employee than Jim, and Bob receives bonuses and perhaps higher pay depending on other factors than Jim. However that’s not to say Jim is a bad employee and should be fired does it? A lot of the work can be subjective. Maybe Bob found those errors because he has more experience in the job and has run into the problem in the past and Jim has not. I can’t put “find problems in documents” in their job description so vaguely and then dock them every time they miss something, that would be absurd. People are different. Bob will likely be promoted to a higher role shortly, while Jim won’t, even though they were hired at the same time for the same role. I’d like to see Jim take more ownership of his work and take it upon himself to not just wait to be told what to do on a micro-level but come to me with what he thinks needs to be fixed, and so on. These are things that can be covered at reviews, and often have, and for a little while he seems to get better at it.
So given this situation, am I wrong in keeping Jim as an employee? His work isn’t as good as his peer who was hired for the same job at the same time, and he hasn’t stepped up to take on the same responsibility in the work that I would expect someone being on the job as long as he does. Is the right thing to do to fire him outright?
But now what If It comes to my attention that during the time he was working on the project he was working a second job, and not focusing on the task he told me he was working on. Did he not find those errors because he wasn’t paying attention due to working on something else? Was he avoiding any added work from found errors so he could do work for that other company? Is his lack of multitasking ability not actually true and he’s doing work for someone else while ignoring me further delaying the project and taking my time up to help him?
“Well Enough for your standards” is entirely subjective. I don’t treat my people like robots who can be mathematically judged. There isn’t a binary existence of good or bad. I don’t fire people immediately upon feeling they are sub-standard. I feel I often bend over backwards trying to help people get better, I push for bonuses and promotion when I think they are deserved. I don’t at all believe that outcome that is all that matters. I truly believe that a person who puts in more effort and gets a worse result will be a better employee long term. I’ve seen it time and time again.
And to your last point about paying people enough; While that’s certainly true in some cases, the article cites tech workers pulling in $500,000 through it. Clearly it’s not about being under paid.
The other perfectly qualified person out of the job so that you could buy a second house?
Awfully presumptuous of you to assume someone else’s financial situation.
It’s an exaggeration to prove a point. But do feel free to get offended.
I don’t work, so there’s at least one job free :) And I also don’t need any more houses. So, someone must’nt work two jobs because he steals one job from someone more needy? He got the 2nd job despite the needier one also applying, right?
Jobs are finite. You asked who gets hurt? Someone does.
It depends on the terms of employment. If they are salaried, then there are no real work hours and just work to do. In general, if someone is salaried, they’re paid to do a job not when they do it.
They want it both ways - we are ‘overtime exempt’ because we’re ‘paid for the job’ but also after the job is done - they think they own us.
This is not true. Salaries only means your pay is decided on a yearly basis and divided into each paycheck and not calculated and tracked per hour. Other conditions of employment including working hours and specific job duties are all part of your employment agreement. If your agreement has no set hours of any sort or limitations for other work, then there’s no problem. If a company is going to agree to pay you a salary, they are going to set how many hours you should be working, and reasonably expect you not to be double dipping.
No to the second-to-last assertion, not definitionally. The last one is simply begging the question.
Which are you talking about specifically?
Not sure why people downvoting you.
You have some good points and arguments, specially compare to the “they think they own us” comments. Everything isn’t black and white.
There isn’t a lot of room for discussion here from what I’ve seen. The demographic is very far-left to a fault. Those that are in white collar jobs should probably read their employment agreements, handbooks, etc. a lot of incorrect information floating around.
Maybe it is because I have worked in tech oriented roles (which this article is geared towards)but none of my jobs have stipulated number of hours I need to work.
How specific is your employment agreement?
If they can get their work done on time, and with appropriate quality, who cares? If they can’t keep up with the workload, then they can get in trouble for that.
The truth is they can’t, and that’s how they get caught, and why it comes up.
Full time employees might have core hours and then flexibility outside of that. Otherwise, you do your work as quickly as possible and then outside of that is free time. Unless they are reusing the same work at two jobs, they likely are not double dipping. If their metrics are fine, there is no reason for a manager to care other than wanting to micro manage someone’s life.
To be clear: If you Tell two employers that you are working for them from 1pm to 2pm, you are double dipping. The title of the article doesn’t line up with the content. Having a second job that you work outside of the hours / commitment of your first job is fine as long as you didn’t agree not to do so with your first employer. If you want to work 9-5 earning 6 figures in a WFH white collar job, then go out and get a night job at Target and are somehow able to succeed during your first job the vast majority of employers aren’t going to give a shit. The reason employers give a shit is this is a largely fake narrative. Studies have shown the 40 hour work week is too long. People working two jobs cannot keep it up for long and be as good at their jobs. Second, people are conflating having 2 separate jobs with working two jobs at the literal same time. Working 9-5 at two companies and juggling email and meetings between them. The article touches on this, but I completely disagree with the author. So much of business is based on collaboration that having to wait for a peer who is doing work for another company now costs the first company for every person that is waiting on them. Maybe 2% of my work can be done without a single other co-worker being involved in some way. During regular business hours the expectation is that you are being paid to work and collaborate with your co-workers on a regular basis outside of normal PTO etc.
snooggums@kbin.social 10 months ago
Like people who arr the boards of multiple companies, in leadership roles in multiple companies, and pretty much anyone at the top of company structures?
phillaholic@lemm.ee 10 months ago
No, not like your example. If a CEO is secretly serving on another companies board you may have a point, but we’re talking about people having two jobs with the clear implication that their employers don’t know it.
“Doing what they are hired to do” is very often defined in employment agreements as working x number of hours. You can’t really say you’re doing what you’re hired to do if you take a second job that you perform during the same hours when you’re not allowed to under your agreement.
If someone wants to work 9-5, then 5-1 and somehow can manage both that’s different. For liability sake alone it’s a problem.
1847953620@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Mm iono, kinda sounds like people finally using the concept of salaried exempt positions properly.
For too long, people let themselves get bullied into equating salaried positions with hourly positions, having their time micromanaged and scrutinized when it shouldn’t have been the case by definition.
phillaholic@lemm.ee 10 months ago
That’s not really the same topic. Employers still have the right to set terms of employment. If they want you to work 9-5 and not 8-4, they have every right to set that expectation. If you’re hourly they can send you home at Noon on Friday and you just won’t be earning 40 hours of pay that week. Salary they really can’t.
That’s not to say that people aren’t miss classified as exempt or that some employers try to use it as an excuse to get over 40 hours of work out of someone. Different topic all together.
slowwooderrunsdeep@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Not necessarily true anymore in white collar professions, especially nowadays with gig work. It really depends on the language and terms of your employment contract. I’ve worked for places that define the employment as 40 hours per week, and also for places that define it as specific tasks for a length of time, and also for places that define it as availability during set hours of the day. It’s very important to read the employment contract terms and the company’s employee handbook.
If your job explicitly defines your employment as being available and dedicated during set hours, or if your contract explicitly says you can’t take on additional employment, then you’re right. That would be “double-dipping”.
I also hated working for those types of places, because they’re usually run by micromanagers who failed up and measure their worth by how many emails they forward along. Which are probably the same type of people who are mad about overemployment to begin with.
The way I see it, it only becomes a problem if you have multiple jobs that have a problem with it. And I can’t imagine why anyone with the means to work two 6-figure jobs would choose to work for two of those companies.
phillaholic@lemm.ee 10 months ago
Well yea. If you are staying in the lines of your employment agreement, you’re in the clear to do whatever else you want. I feel people are conflating all of these things into what this topic is really about. The problem here is when someone has two jobs as either reports the same time to both employers for payment, or agrees to certain availability and does work for the other company at the same time. It does not include hourly workers having a second job doing hourly work during different hours, or anything similar with Gig work. If you for example drove for Lyft and Uber, picked up 1 passenger for Uber and 1 for Lyft simultaneously, that would be an example of breaking the rules.
I’ve worked for a company that has been doing WFH for over three decades. It’s very clear when someone has two jobs. They are unresponsive, their work isn’t very good, and they take forever to do everything. This assumes they have two jobs in the same line of work. If they are going and getting a night job at Target or something no one cares if their work is fine.
I can’t think of anyone I know that doesn’t at least partially collaborate with their co-workers where their availability is key to their jobs. So doing work for another company during that time would never be ok. The exception to this would be subcontractors who are free to set their own schedules within reason. They are free to take other work, often required to do so, due to IRS rules, but individual contracts likely have the same sort of language where they’d need to be available during certain hours, or available for group meetings etc.