Inside the strange, secretive rise of the 'overemployed'

November 13, 2023 6:48 PM

There's a whole community of professionals online who trade tips about juggling jobs on the sly. They describe themselves as "overemployed" — and, they seem to be getting away with it. At its core, overemployment represents a new social contract being forged in an era that has left the old, unspoken agreement around work — "stick with us for life and we'll treat you like family" — in tatters.
posted by Sebmojo (67 comments total)

It says something about my position and attitudes that I had to read it several times before I figured out that this wasn't about jugglers who had too much work to ever get done and were desperate for new blood in the industry.
posted by Scattercat at 6:56 PM on November 13, 2023 [13 favorites]

I used to have a job that was so low effort that I could have easily had a second simultaneous job, except that it was in-person and I was around coworkers all the time, so there would have been no way to actually do the second job without getting caught.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:05 PM on November 13, 2023 [2 favorites]

i don’t have nearly the executive function to pull something like this off, but i’m rooting for those who do
posted by The demon that lives in the air at 7:06 PM on November 13, 2023 [46 favorites]

(Business Insider won’t show me the article because ad blocker, f them)
posted by billsaysthis at 7:17 PM on November 13, 2023 [3 favorites]

More fodder to prove that those of us "working from home" should be suspect! Untrustworthy! Only those willing to be observed IN PERSON can be trusted! Managers BEWARE this ALL NEW THREAT to the corporate trust!

This is a re-hash of another article from mid-pandemic - same Corporate overlord shit different day.
posted by djseafood at 7:18 PM on November 13, 2023 [73 favorites]

Mostly, they're just really, really good at their jobs, which enables them to work fast.

Yes, yes, that’s the reason - it’s not that, because they’re white collar, they’re actually have fewer than 40 hours a week of real tasks to perform. It couldn’t be that white collar jobs often have less active stuff to do, could it?
posted by Going To Maine at 7:47 PM on November 13, 2023 [59 favorites]

Is this the new four hour work week?
posted by Selena777 at 7:52 PM on November 13, 2023 [4 favorites]

The media never call it “double-dipping” when Elon Musk holds down 3+ jobs at once...
posted by mbrubeck at 7:57 PM on November 13, 2023 [85 favorites]

Look, if someone is making $820,000 a year working three jobs, and none of the employers can detect the work suffering, I would say that person isn't overemployed so much as undertasked.

Nice jobs if you can get 'em.
posted by 2N2222 at 8:04 PM on November 13, 2023 [50 favorites]

It’s a fascinating little piece! The entire story gives me an odd feeling of ick, but for somewhat hard-to-specify reasons. The duplicity of the whole arrangement, I suppose, and the feeling that because this story is being told by people within the community you know it’s being told with a rosy tint that I’m not canny enough to pick up on. Ditto the whole anti-hustle-culture framing of it, since advising people to get a second job so that they can hustle harder would seem to absolutely be a way to do hustle culture. Like Selena777 notes, this is definitely going to get someone a book deal as “the new four hour work week”, along with a chapter on subcontracting out your J2 and J3 to others.

But I do sympathize very strongly with the “man, I don’t want to ever risk being out of work and not getting a paycheck”. Being out of work, being fired - these are terrible experiences, and I can absolutely understand all these desires.

The media never call it “double-dipping” when Elon Musk holds down 3+ jobs at once...

Two key differences here though are a) Elon is explicitly taking on CEO jobs and the board knows that he has those other jobs - he’s not going around anyone’s back, and b) he has literally been sued by shareholders (board members?) for spending too much time on company A instead of company B.

I think fairly often (and have surely mentioned it in other comments) about an episode of This American Life where some tech workers discover that a coworker had actually hired someone else to do his interview for him. But the problem wasn’t that he had deceived them to get past the interview - it was that he couldn't actually do the job well once he had it. If he’d been doing ok, no one would have cared. So… lots of fillings. I at least hope that if you were working at co-op you’d be honest with your fellow worker/owners about doing a second job at the same time, but maybe that matters less for corporate stuff. Just don’t do anything so valuable at Job 2 that your employer at Job 1 tries to assert their IP rights.
posted by Going To Maine at 8:05 PM on November 13, 2023 [3 favorites]

I work in a two-person department that used to be a five-person department; I struggle to get my tasks done in fewer than 50 hours a week, and my colleagues and I haven't had a raise in more than 10 years.Taking on another job would only push me closer to the abyss. (I am on mental health leave.)

The media never call it "double dipping" when Elon Musk holds down 3+ jobs at once

I'd have more empathy for the people profiled if I didn't suspect that they admire Elon Musk.
posted by virago at 8:12 PM on November 13, 2023 [19 favorites]

... but when I rightsize on company engagement and appropriately saturate my target labor markets it's villainous.
posted by Slackermagee at 8:18 PM on November 13, 2023 [2 favorites]

Does Elon work, really, or does he just come in, pretend to work, decide to make stupid changes and destroy some shit, then follow the next shit butterfly?
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:45 PM on November 13, 2023 [15 favorites]

Who the heck wants Elon to be part of this? This conversation is for the rest of us real people.

I write this as I decry the loss of the 100% remote job I just got screwed out of by a gubernatorial "return to office" mandate; I only lost the job only because I live hundreds and hundreds of miles from the office they required me to 'return' to on a weekly basis ... I spent the first 6 months of that job bored out of my mind and I'm wishing I'd been part of this movement sooner. J2 and J3 could have gotten me through those first 6 months, even if they didn't last. If they did, I'd most likely be doing other wonderful things.

At least now I know for next time.
posted by chatelaine at 9:16 PM on November 13, 2023 [8 favorites]

The entire story gives me an odd feeling of ick, but for somewhat hard-to-specify reasons.

I'm an unemployed person who can think of some VERY, VERY SPECIFIC reasons why it's icky for people to be hogging three jobs when there are others of us out here trying to find just one.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:28 PM on November 13, 2023 [39 favorites]

Boss makes a dollar,
I make a dime.
That's why
I rightsize on company engagement and appropriately saturate my target
posted by Slackermagee at 10:18 PM on November 13
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 9:29 PM on November 13, 2023 [34 favorites]

Just wait until a household of two adults and a cat needs 6 FTEs to make ends meet.
posted by krisjohn at 9:30 PM on November 13, 2023 [20 favorites]

I have been trying to find a tangible reason for employers to hate work-from-home models. The best I'd come up with was ties to real estate in urban areas etc.

This makes so much more sense, and is SO much more insulting for people who don't work office jobs. Have you ever tried to pretend that you're busy at work when you don't sit in front of a computer? Now try and work an extra job. It's just that simple.

I'm not blaming office workers who are underpaid and have thoughtfully found a way around it. Productivity is up and wages are down. What else can you do? Pay doesn't reflect any of it. Tell me no one wants to work. Fuck fuck fuck capitalism.

[edit. nevermind that you might just be decades-unprecedentedly productive at your job at 24-30 hrs a week and then want to *gasp* have a non-monetized hobby]
posted by es_de_bah at 10:20 PM on November 13, 2023 [7 favorites]

Doing MORE pointless tasks during the day, largely so you can get a few dopamine hits for your superior gamification skills AND reward yourself further with a few more consumer goods and services? Doesn’t sound like they are winning at anything that matters.

My sympathies are with folks who are overworked just to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table.
posted by rabia.elizabeth at 11:30 PM on November 13, 2023 [13 favorites]

I'm guessing eventually some big, remote work-oriented company will try to do this internally and will explicitly just assign people to multiple teams.

And the results will be inconclusive, with some figures about money saved and some horror stories about overlapping deadlines and emergencies, but in the long run more and more white collar work will be about doing small tasks queued up for you by some complex system designed to maximize your productivity, even if that means constant context switching.
posted by smelendez at 11:51 PM on November 13, 2023 [7 favorites]

Thinking about this more, I’m still confounded by the complicated ethics of talking a second job at a big tech company under false pretenses. However, I’m pretty sure I’d be hurt if I found out a coworker was lying to me and had a second job. That’s probably the important point to focus on. We might have fairly thin relationships with our coworkers, but even so they can do things to hurt us.
posted by Going To Maine at 12:42 AM on November 14, 2023 [3 favorites]

Some companies will force you to sign agreements that you don't work second jobs, or that you don't work second jobs which (by way of criteria decided by the company) have competitive overlap with your first job.

For instance, say you work at a major tech company in Seattle that does popular web services, and you are forbidden to work on a game start-up in your spare time.

In other time periods this kind of thing would be called feudalism, but now we have the veneer of legality to make it morally acceptable.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 12:47 AM on November 14, 2023 [11 favorites]

Maybe the feudalism comparison is deliberately glib, but we do, uh, live in a time when people still get enslaved and compelled to work. Comparing a salaried job that demands IP rights to your spare time work, often -but not always- within limits to feudal serfdom feels a biiiiit extreme.
posted by Going To Maine at 1:07 AM on November 14, 2023 [5 favorites]

However, I’m pretty sure I’d be hurt if I found out a coworker was lying to me and had a second job. That’s probably the important point to focus on. We might have fairly thin relationships with our coworkers, but even so they can do things to hurt us.

A colleague at my last job did this. The universal response from our shift when we found out (after a few weeks of the arrangement) was basically "hahaha, you absolute mad lad, playing with fire, but go you, fuck The Man!" but then we were sitting around twiddling our thumbs overnight in a warehouse on twelve hour shifts, so it's not like the rest of us were busting our arses to pick up their slack or anything.
posted by Dysk at 1:46 AM on November 14, 2023 [12 favorites]

I blame the companies. If people were happy in their jobs, getting paid fairly according to their responsibilities and skills, treated with respect and compassion, then it would be a far less common occurrence. Nowadays, everybody gets stiffed to funnel more money to those at the top, and they drop you like a dirty tissue whenever they want.

I work too many hours of unpaid overtime to try and keep up with my workload, I get shitty sub-inflation raises (if any at all), ever more work, more responsibility, more stress and damn all support. I stick with it because I need the income to look after my family, and I'm slowly grinding out a work-linked education course. Once that's done, if they don't step up, I'm gone. I've put in 20 years with the same place, and there's zero loyalty back.

So I don't blame these guys for treating the companies the way they get treated. They do the work that's required to keep or even excel at the job, then do the same with another. If they're not able to do that, then they get fired, same as the rest of us, but they have the security of knowing that they *can* blow off a job if it treats them like shit without ruining themselves financially. Good for them, wish I could! It's no different really than being a contractor working for multiple people, just more stress.

I get that it sucks for those looking for work to hear some people have 2 or 3, and it does. But also, if the OE are looking to get their money and retire early, then that's two or three jobs that will come available that much quicker, so that's something.

Improvements in productivity should have been shared, and we'd most have a much shorter work week for the same or better money. Instead, we ended up with the super-rich, and a bunch of bullshit jobs.
posted by Absolutely No You-Know-What at 2:21 AM on November 14, 2023 [36 favorites]

Went from no one wants to work anymore stories to everyone wants to work too much stories. Make up your mind businesses!
Wasn't these guys who left the social contract in tatters.
posted by nofundy at 5:00 AM on November 14, 2023 [12 favorites]

Is this the new four hour work week?

It could be. Though this is why I tend to think the work-fewer-hours cry that's popular in places like MF is kind of bullshit. Most folks would just as soon work more if at all possible, so they could make more money. Not less, so they could satisfy somebody else's sense of reasonable work load.

This is a story that breaks popular narratives around here regarding fair pay, work-life balance, and work-from-home privacy. And I don't think it clearly works in favor of any part broadly. To a certain extent, people are paid for their time, not only their output. An employer finding out the guy making $820k with three jobs might feel that either he's getting paid too much, or needs a bigger wprk load. Which is fair, but could be a big drag on the worker. I think most folks have their pay more closely linked to work accomplished, and/or time expended, so it's more difficult to moonlight the way these people are, without it taking a more significant toll.
posted by 2N2222 at 5:13 AM on November 14, 2023 [1 favorite]

Like family often means abusive and manipulative about the abuse. Something about that phrasing rubs me wrong...

If you die at work, you will be replaced as quickly as humanly possible.
posted by slimepuppy at 5:13 AM on November 14, 2023 [7 favorites]

However, I’m pretty sure I’d be hurt if I found out a coworker was lying to me and had a second job.

I totally do not understand this. Unless coworkers are doing a bad job, why does it matter how they spend the rest of their lives?

Frankly, though huge corporations are capable of incredible damage broadly, when it comes to loyalty to employees, I’ve found small companies to be about the same. The first company I worked at had about 200 people, and layoffs that could have been prevented by the executives taking less or profits being lower still happened. Startups hire and fire for incredibly speculative reasons. Local restaurants fire entire staffs without warning when they’re going to remodel.

Businesses are not families. People need to get what they can out of them because they are certainly getting what they are out of them. (They also need to not work for companies that are fueling genocide and the collapse of democracy like Meta and Google, but that’s another story.) As much as you might think the people in that article are being overpaid, those companies could probably pay more. They’re not suckers; they know what they want to get done and how much they can afford to pay and set prices well below that. They count on people thinking they don’t deserve what they get to do that.
posted by ignignokt at 5:18 AM on November 14, 2023 [17 favorites]

My work proposed implementing a "second jobs must be disclosed and approved by management" policy, but it was so ghastly that basically every department head said they'd refuse to implement it; there was a requirement to fill a form descriptions of outside work and the website of the company they worked for, until it was pointed out to the CEO that this was basically asking for links to staff members' onlyfans.
posted by Jon_Evil at 5:31 AM on November 14, 2023 [6 favorites]

2N2222, I'm not quite sure if you're being serious.

If I could get paid triple for the same time invested, sure, but I don't want to work additional hours for more money. I already work many hours for what never seems like enough money. I don't think working more is a popular take at all.
posted by jellywerker at 5:44 AM on November 14, 2023 [7 favorites]

"because they’re white collar, they’re actually have fewer than 40 hours a week of real tasks to perform. It couldn’t be that white collar jobs often have less active stuff to do, could it?"

In a lot of white collar jobs it's not just about what you do it's what you know and can produce. The same job that is a breeze for one person is a struggle for another person - and knowing the job, the organization, and all that in a way to be effective is a separate set of skills on top of the skills to do whatever your job function is.

Example: I've seen content strategists flail at producing usable content for product pages and so forth because they're hired based on their writing skills/training and it's assumed they can pick up domain knowledge on the fly. So they get tasked with interviewing Subject Matter Experts and reading product marketing briefs, and asked to synthesize all that into usable content. And do, at best, a mediocre job because they don't have the domain knowledge. That will eat up 40 hours a week, easily.

Hire a domain expert who can write and the same work takes far, far less time. But that'll cost more because domain expert.

But also, yes, white collar jobs don't mean you are standing there making widgets all day and being monitored for it.
posted by jzb at 5:58 AM on November 14, 2023 [12 favorites]

As someone who works from home 3 days per week with the possibility of going 100% remote in the near future, I have considered this topic. However, I usually do the mental arithmetic of "is the extra stress worth it?" and end up deciding that no, it is not worth it.
posted by Fleebnork at 6:00 AM on November 14, 2023 [3 favorites]

More power to them, but overemployment (or, more accurately, the boogeyman perception of overemployment) drives RTO, spoiling it for the rest of us drones who just want to continue 100% remote working and be left alone.
posted by smcdow at 6:05 AM on November 14, 2023

I’m pretty sure I’d be hurt if I found out a coworker was lying to me and had a second job.

If a co-worker is delivering what you need within the boundaries of their employment relationship, they don't owe you anything else. If they're failing in that, leaving you hanging or picking up the slack, then I could see feeling hurt about it.

Otherwise I'm struggling a bit with this. Each organization and situation is unique, so maybe this makes sense and I just don't understand your situation – but I work in a field where I could be laid off at any time. I've changed jobs a lot and even strong co-worker relationships have rarely translated into actual outside-of-work friendships or any real loyalty long-term.

If a co-worker was doing their job and I found they were doing a second job and making a second salary I'd be impressed, not hurt. Maybe a bit jealous.
posted by jzb at 6:13 AM on November 14, 2023 [16 favorites]

This feels to me as the natural confluence of the “workaholic who brags they spend 100 hours a week at their job” crowd, and younger generations’ obsession with having a side-hustle.
posted by Thorzdad at 6:16 AM on November 14, 2023 [4 favorites]

spoiling it for the rest of us drones

False. The Powers That Be are driving RTO, and they're searching for any plausible narrative to force it. Or implausible, frankly. Don't point the finger at other workers.
posted by jzb at 6:19 AM on November 14, 2023 [12 favorites]

I do wonder how many of these stories are fully true. At my last job, we had an employee that I'm pretty sure was trying to pull this off. She lasted three months because she couldn't do anywhere near the workload called for.
posted by rednikki at 6:19 AM on November 14, 2023 [4 favorites]

> The Powers That Be are driving RTO, and they're searching for any plausible narrative to force it. Or implausible, frankly. Don't point the finger at other workers.

You're not wrong, but I honestly couldn't care less about who is to blame here. My only concern is to continue 100% remote working, and avoid RTO, full stop. I don't care how that happens, as long as it happens.
posted by smcdow at 6:26 AM on November 14, 2023 [4 favorites]

Jellywerker, I get what he’s saying because mefi people when it comes to the shorter work week articles tend to look at this issue from the perspective of a salaried worker who is required to put in at least 40 hours of infrequent activity where they can credibly ask “do I really need to be here right now?” in addition to requests that bleed into their personal life based on volume and deadlines that sometimes make an hourly calculation not even worth the work life balance forfeit. For hourly workers, OTOH less time at work automatically means less money and people hate less money.
posted by Selena777 at 6:45 AM on November 14, 2023 [2 favorites]

My wife did this for a year. I'll share a few details.

We're both work from home (I started in 2018, she started late 2020.)

She's highly educated and had shifted to white collar work a couple years previous.
She's a restless type, who can't handle downtime well.

She had a major surgery which, while successful required a lot of non-activity. So, she couldn't run or lift weights, or do much of anything.

Prior to her surgery, she had floated her resume around as her 1st job boss was... well, a lazy, lying, conniving, abusive sort.

Unexpectedly, she was contacted for a contractor / advisor role at a company. They needed her expertise and wanted her to analyze some data and build reports and spreadsheets and such.

During the interview with for this contract, she mentioned her 1st job. They didn't have any interest or concern.

The salary was competitive and a bit exciting. We didn't need the money.

So, she decided to try doing both jobs. More as a lark, than anything else.

No, she did not tell the 1st employer. They are an enormous, faceless organization and wouldn't have known what to do with the info anyway.

The first 3+ months were hell. She's a diligent person and she REALLY wanted to excel at both jobs. During this time I did all the cooking, cleaning, cat care, and chores. She was a paranoid wreck. But... she absolutely excelled at both jobs.

She had her 1st job laptop (and an extra monitor), a contracting company's laptop for the 2nd job, and a hiring company's laptop all set up on her desk. Her office looked like a NASA control room.

After she got settled into a routine, she learned the disappointing truth... the people at the 2nd job didn't really know what they were doing and didn't really value the very expertise for which they hired her. Mostly, the middle aged lady she reported to wanted to fiddle with spreadsheets in a MS Teams meeting call and have my wife present on the call for.. uh, company or something. My wife absolutely did contribute, but often times her work was simply ignored.

She continue to excel at the first job as well. In fact, she got promoted during this time.

On average, she worked about 50-55 hours per week total between both jobs.

She was always worried she'd "be found out"... even despite my reassurances that nothing would happen even if she were.

The contract was ended a little early as they completed the work.

Everyone seemed incredibly happy about the whole thing. The 1st job was none the wiser and she kicked ass and delivered very well for them. The 2nd job was also delighted that they completed the work ahead of schedule. She was happy to have tried something seemingly impossible and succeed at it. Also, she was delighted with her increased savings.

To be truthful, I was probably the least happy about the whole affair. I will always support my wife 110%, without question. But also, it would be nice to be a little more considered in her decision making sometimes. This is pretty typical relationship friction and nothing to be concerned about. We love each other and communicate and are happy. I just included it for completeness.

(Postscript: We still haven't spent 90% of that windfall savings... the current economic climate is terrifying in its absolute chaotic confusion.)

(Post-postscript: What is going on in our online world that I continue to worry about including too many details and somehow get "found out".)
posted by digibri at 6:45 AM on November 14, 2023 [23 favorites]

Let me remind all those who are not savvy to the "Corporate Model" that while I don't make widgets from home all day standing up I do have some sort of "Productivity Observance Software" installed on my work computer.

If you don't think it's there on your work issued computer than (you are most likely wrong) HR isn't working hard enough to gauge your metrics. They literally can track every keystroke you input.

So yes, it's about what you DO but it's also about doing it while being observed like a good little peon.

(authored from a non-work issued computer)
posted by djseafood at 6:46 AM on November 14, 2023 [6 favorites]

Heh. I got my current job because the previous person who held my position was doing this. They weren't fired specifically for doing so (it's a freelance TV production job - nobody's being too precious about anything like that) but rather because they were severely half-assing the duties entailed in order to be holding multiple of these jobs at once.
posted by Navelgazer at 7:06 AM on November 14, 2023 [2 favorites]

I think this just goes to show how unevenly distributed precarity is in the job market. This is not meant as a "think of the managers!!" comment, but it is a bit of a "think of your coworkers" thing. Sometimes you work with solid people who suddenly become unreliable. People who once used to shoulder their responsibilities easily, but now they're out of contact for hours/others have to correct what they've screwed up/etc. I don't know how much of a "real" thing overemployed people are, but I suspect they're not getting away with it as well as they think. Most white collar jobs at large corporations are not eager to fire employees that have been good in the past! Firing people is a hassle. Hiring new people is a huge hassle. And, you know, maybe you like whoever has started to suck. Maybe you figure they're just going through something and you should extend grace to them and hope they revert to the person you used to know. So I suspect a lot of teams just start compensating for the weakness. I don't mean to say that overemployed types are fully to blame for the toxic dynamics at American offices, but I would understand why a fellow employee might be annoyed to learn about a coworker holding down multiple jobs like this.
posted by grandiloquiet at 7:59 AM on November 14, 2023 [8 favorites]

At its core, overemployment represents a new social contract being forged in an era that has left the old, unspoken agreement around work — "stick with us for life and we'll treat you like family" — in tatters.

Hasn't that unspoken agreement been in tatters for decades already? Overemployment may be one outcome, but this is a weird framing.

I also think that such people are an extreme minority and barely even exist. This is being reported on as if it is a major trend, in part, to continue building the narrative that everyone needs to RTO right now, because workers are liars and untrustworthy unless you're breathing down their throat.
posted by asnider at 8:06 AM on November 14, 2023 [23 favorites]

I've heard of maybe 4-5 cases of this in last 2 to 3 years in a very large global company - so not common - but certainly wild when it occurs (and maybe it occurs more and we don't see it). From my clients I've heard more problem with employees/contractors who have been passing their work offshore to lower cost workers (especially in development). Seems like maybe not to work multiple jobs - but simply wanting to work way less while still getting great performance reviews and bonuses etc. Harder to detect as the work is being done on time and often everyone is happy enough with level of work output and quality. One contractor was doing this for several years...and it was only when the contractor was asked to validate their bank account for payment and they slipped up and gave an offshore bank account in another name by mistake, that the company became suspicious. Cost a lot in the end as they needed to go into full incident response mode and review several years of code submits and logs to try and work out what all the offshore folks had actually been doing to the code.
posted by inflatablekiwi at 8:59 AM on November 14, 2023

This article answered some, but not all, of my previous questions.
posted by bigbigdog at 12:12 PM on November 14, 2023 [1 favorite]

I had a friend that sorta did this for a while. His first company was sold to a similar organization in France and everyone was basically waiting for the sword to drop. This was all pre-pandemic so technically he worked out of an office, until they closed his office and told him to work from home. But FC basically gave him almost nothing to do. So when an old manager offered him some contract work he took it. The new boss fully knew he was still working for FC and given the fact that new boss had beef with that employer it wasn't a problem. This translated into an offer of a fulltime job at the new company. New boss basically said "I don't care if you still keep working for FC as long as you don't tell me and get what I ask you to do done."

This carried on into the Pandemic, so maybe almost 3 years in total, before he was abruptly laid off (with a pretty good package) from FC.

The only stress my friend had with the whole situation is that we have a mutual good friend who was also a coworker at FC that he couldn't tell for fear that they'd spill the beans accidentally.
posted by cirhosis at 12:29 PM on November 14, 2023 [2 favorites]

CRUSTY JUGGLERS
posted by Bwentman at 12:47 PM on November 14, 2023

Just wait until a household of two adults and a cat needs 6 FTEs to make ends meet.

Well, there's the various humanitarian crises around the world.
posted by aniola at 1:43 PM on November 14, 2023

I think there are some good questions about how fair this arrangement is to other workers since other people might have to pick up your slack and is it fair for someone to have two full-time white collar jobs when other people are looking for just one.

But there is no doubt in my mind that this arrangement is perfectly fair to employers. This is just employees treating employers the same way employers treat employees. In the vast majority of jobs if you double your productivity you don't double your compensation. You have to threaten to leave or actually leave to get a big raise, and even then the prevailing pay for your position might hold you back from being compensated in line with your productivity. Employers aren't stupid, they pay you what they have to, not what you're worth.

Similarly if an employee can get a job done in 20 hours or even 5 hours per week, why should that employee give the company more hours for free? The idea that you should take on more work because you're good at your job is insane, yet it's the default expectation. Some of us think employers should pay more if they can pay more, but many many more people think employees who can take on more work should take on more work rather than spending time as they see fit (relaxing, hobbies, or being overemployed). The asymmetry in expectations is staggering.
posted by Tehhund at 2:57 PM on November 14, 2023 [18 favorites]

A friend used to do consulting work for a well-known patent trolling organization. They knew from the outset that the organization would not implement any of the work they were doing - they were solely brought in to provide window dressing around their area of expertise. Corporate virtue signaling, essentially.

It was really lucrative, but they really struggled with the situation. I stand by the advice I gave them at the time:
"Every dollar you can extract from an organization like that is harm reduction. Take 'em to the cleaners."
posted by FallibleHuman at 3:43 PM on November 14, 2023 [3 favorites]

Every employee's ability to produce falls somewhere on the bell curve. There are people who can do 40 hours worth of work in 20 hours. Good on them. People on the other end of the curve may be diligent workers, but it takes them longer to produce. Which is not to say they still aren't productive and valuable to the company. Maybe they only churn out 5 round wigits a minute, instead of the average 7.63, but they have fewer defective oval ones. Typically, companies look at the overkill workers producing 10.94 wigits, and expect the average worker to meet that quota, but don't want to pay for it.

Corporations suck. We have a shitty relationship to work. If there were a minimum guaranteed livable income, there would still be people who would work two jobs, just because some people are driven. The rest of us might decide to work for a little bit of gravy to afford other things. Some might decide to say screw work and just do art, writing, music, or stay home and make sure the next generation has the best possible start in life. Work is highly overrated.
posted by BlueHorse at 4:16 PM on November 14, 2023 [6 favorites]

Part of me is a bit like, good for these people if they're actually doing each job effectively (and I mean, in my professional career, I've never actually had 40 hours of work in a 40-hour work week. Even in my retail life, there was some downtime sometimes). The concerns these people are taking jobs away from people who need them? I absolutely agree there. And I do worry that "working three jobs simultaneously" will become the norm. Probably for less pay, because that's how this world works.

I'm underworked at my current job and I'm OK with it for now and I am job-seeking (for a new job, not a second one!). But I think the realization that companies do not care about you so it's OK to take advantage of them is a good one. Until there's a better solution, that's where we are.
posted by edencosmic at 5:46 PM on November 14, 2023 [2 favorites]

I’m curious if this is the kind of thing that will eventually cause companies to shed more salaried workers in favor of freelancers or independent contractors? This was already happening for a long time but it seems like people working multiple jobs might accelerate the trend. Employers might say “okay well so if employees are only putting in what might only be 15 hours a week we might as well shift over to hiring them as freelancers on an hourly rate.”
posted by mostly vowels at 7:42 PM on November 14, 2023 [1 favorite]

It's worth remembering that when companies gradually detached white collar work from a 9-5 schedule - which they did decades before COVID - they did it for their own benefit.

Like unlimited PTO, the main beneficiary of this flexibility is not the employee but the employer (I'm not saying that this flexibility doesn't sometimes benefit employees too, I'm just saying that's not the reason it exists.)

The reason it exists: the majority of white collar workers I know (mostly in tech) work more than 40 hours a week - sometimes a lot more. A few people like this, but in general it's not voluntary nor pleasant, and people feel they have to put in many hours to not get cast as low performers and fired.

So this "over employed" thing - the flip side of people exploiting this corporate flexibility for their own gain - is a bit of a man bites dog story. It's extremely uncommon, and inspires disproportionate outrage. Let's save a little of that outrage for the much more typical case of tech workers and other white collar workers who are expected to put in 50, 60, 70 hours of work just to not get canned by demanding employers who have normalized this.
posted by splitpeasoup at 8:45 PM on November 14, 2023 [10 favorites]

PS: I was referring to white collar work above, but I want to make absolutely clear that I'm not saying blue collar workers have it better. Shitty as the life of an Amazon programmer may be, it's vastly better than the plight of Amazon warehouse workers.
posted by splitpeasoup at 8:59 PM on November 14, 2023

and on VERY rare occasions rise to above that 40 hours, upon which overtime and much management consternation.

Hahahahahahahaha! Hoo boy. This is very much not true for salaried professions. “Overtime” only applies to a subset (not even all!) of workers who are paid an hourly rate.


PS: I was referring to white collar work above, but I want to make absolutely clear that I'm not saying blue collar workers have it better. Shitty as the life of an Amazon programmer may be, it's vastly better than the plight of Amazon warehouse workers.

Yeah, working 2-3 jobs (often each one just under part-time limits so that the employers can avoid paying benefits) is much more standard and necessary for survival for folks at the minimum wage end of the scale. (Where being required to work overtime but off the clock seems to be a not-uncommon wage theft technique.)
posted by eviemath at 3:21 AM on November 15, 2023 [4 favorites]

The highlight in the article with what happened to Allison is 100% my experience at white collar jobs:

> Allison recently faced such a dilemma. Her new boss at her J1 kept dumping more and more work on her, until she eventually found herself running a whole team of employees. All she wanted was a promotion, and maybe a $10,000 raise, to compensate her for the additional responsibilities she was forced to take on. But her employer refused. Before, she would have stuck it out, dependent on her job to support her and her family. But this time she had the backup of a great J2, which gave her the freedom to walk away. When she quit, the company posted her opening as a manager role — and asked her whether she'd come back for the better job title and higher pay she had wanted all along. She declined. <

I'm on team "employers have been asking for this, so let them have it."
posted by knownassociate at 7:22 AM on November 15, 2023 [7 favorites]

The main thing that's interesting about this is that these people all have very similar second jobs.

If I had to guess, I'd say 30-50% of the white collar people I work with have some sort of 2nd job, whether it's coach of some team, a board member on some group or via church, a volunteer group (animals is most common), tutoring other children (not their own) [most of these don't pay much], or a paying 2nd job selling something either via MLM or at a store (these are actually less common).

The US absolutely runs on part-time labor and 2nd jobs.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:04 AM on November 15, 2023 [4 favorites]

Only 5% of people attest to holding more than one job according to the BLS
posted by Selena777 at 8:34 AM on November 15, 2023

I think it's beneficial for everyone to try to have a 2nd job/side-hustle. You never know where it can take you or what you'll learn through it along the way. I started a side hustle of consulting for several years and it eventually turned into a full-time fractional COO firm once my last job ended. If I hadn't done this on the side previously, I wouldn't have had the confidence (or success stories) to make it full time.
posted by atpuga at 4:58 AM on November 16, 2023

I think it's beneficial for everyone to try to have a 2nd job/side-hustle. You never know where it can take you or what you'll learn through it along the way.

Adding the counter-argument that for many of us, trying to have a side-hustle teaches us about the importance of having a work-life balance because trying to monetize our hobbies just sucks all the joy out of it and leaves us lacking.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:31 AM on November 16, 2023 [7 favorites]

2N2222, I'm not quite sure if you're being serious.

If I could get paid triple for the same time invested, sure, but I don't want to work additional hours for more money. I already work many hours for what never seems like enough money. I don't think working more is a popular take at all.

I'm absolutely serious. Re-read exactly what I said. "Most folks would just as soon work more if at all possible, so they could make more money. Not less, so they could satisfy somebody else's sense of reasonable work load."

But if you don't want to work additional hours for more money, good for you. Not to mention your privilege.
posted by 2N2222 at 10:35 AM on November 19, 2023

The entire story gives me an odd feeling of ick, but for somewhat hard-to-specify reasons.

I’m an unemployed person who can think of some VERY, VERY SPECIFIC reasons why it's icky for people to be hogging three jobs when there are others of us out here trying to find just one.

After overthinking myself in a circle about this and eventually deciding that I’d feel betrayed by a coworker doing this to me, I think I’ve gone further around where EmpressCallipygos intuitively started. (This is a very Metafilter experience!)

The question of whether or not this is an ethical way to treat an employer is a bit of a red herring. The real story is that, in a society where living wages, health insurance, and so much depends on having a job, it hardly seems ethical to deprive someone else of a possible place just because you want a bit of insurance. You can tell yourself that by over-earning at a few disposable white collar jobs at once you’ll take yourself out of the job market and free up spaces for others, but the reality is that other people need that work right now. If you’re earning “enough” (a different number for different people, but one that’s probably between $75K and $200K, it’s just wrong to increase your own income because you’re afraid of your employer / you hate how they treat you under capitalism so that you can knowingly take a bunch of money that could help someone else to get by. It’s not about whether the employers deserve it - it’s about what you owe to other people.
posted by Going To Maine at 5:59 PM on November 19, 2023 [1 favorite]

Dang, I was just being a grumpyboots about my job hunt, but you made it sound like I was being way more profound.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:37 PM on November 19, 2023 [1 favorite]

Sometimes being a grumpyboots about the job hunt enables cutting to the core of the matter
posted by Going To Maine at 9:28 AM on November 20, 2023