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If I'd figure that one of my employees does contracting on the side, I wouldn't be happy. If you really need more money for a serious reason, I'd prefer people to chat with me about that during 1:1.

It's absolutely none of your business what your employees do in their free time. You'd be unhappy in this situation because it's a demonstrated failure on your part to exclusively capture their labor potential. You should react with an apology and a promotion (or silence) before you even think to furrow your brow.

This is business. You want loyalty? Show me the money. You want absolute disclosure? Show me your books. We're not family. Back up and earn your keep, buddy.

What a great comment. Unbelievable. I personally also buy the "show me your books" argument. People go extra miles for a company and suddenly get fired, with all that effort becoming another line in a CV.

People should have the freedom to do whatever they want on their freetime. People work because they have to, not because they want to. Very rare people have the chance to work on what they want to. The rest need to deal with crazy office politics and some CRUD apps and bad requirements.

If I dedicate myself to a company or not, that might be MY choice, not some mandate from heaven of a employer, for gods sake. Interestingly enough, I do and go the extra mile, but it is my choice, I can also change that. If my employer doesn't like it, it can fire me. But it has no say on what the fuck I do.

I agree mostly, with the exception that you shouldn’t do anything on a side project for money that directly competes with your full time job.

While I agree to most of what you said, the attitude of paying based on what someone needs doesn't seem to be a fair basis for negotiation to me. The case you mentioned is surely an extreme that deserves an exception to be made and I highly appreciate that you helped your employee in this situation, but this shouldn't be the general way to assess what someone is worth to you as an employer.

Also someone working on the side (within limits) may actually benefit you as an employer. It's a way to gain experience that you otherwise couldn't get your hands on. I agree that things need to be made transparent and agreed on before, but I'd rather not recommend a general negative attitude towards this.

I'm assuming the case when one gets paid fairly, regardless of their location. In my previous comments on one of GitLab posts I expressed my disagreement with the way their salary calculator works: it calculates salary based on location and I'm against that.

When discussing those things first thing to keep in mind are legal complications for both parties, and being open about this lets everyone deal with risks properly.

“Fair” in a capitalist economy is based on supply and demand. If you want to get a developer locally to Silicon Valley, you’re going to have to pay more based on the pool of qualified individuals. If your pool is “the entire United States” or the “entire English speaking population”, as employer, you can pay less. As an employee, you’re competing with a much larger pool.

Why would s company pay more than they have to?

lol haven't you ever heard of "from each according to his means to each according to his needs"

We had a situation a few months ago where some manager found out a small group in the company were doing a side hustle in design consulting. One morning IT showed up and confiscated all of their laptops and searched them + did some searching through their network history to see if they were using company resources for it. Turns out they weren’t. But it was a big deal for a few days.

That’s a great lesson in not how to react by management. I’d be looking to leave if I was one of that group after that behavior. Few companies pay well and then they’re surprised people are doing side hustles. Excuse me, people need the appropriate funds to live their lives!

This is seriously good and honest advice. If your motivation for doing the side job is monetary because your main job is not paying you enough, go ahead and have a honest discussion with your employer and put your concerns on the table. If your employer is sincere, they would take it seriously.

The potential income from your own products or SaaS will almost always eclipse your main job. Plus the added benefit of calling your own shots and being able to grow your own business. And the comfort that you won't suddenly get let go from your own business or have your own business fail because of other people's decisions. You need to have the desire to do it too. So if you do not have the desire to build your own, talking to your employer is an option. Do it the right way though, use care when asking for a raise. Typically the way to get a sizeable raise is changing companies.

Why specifically wouldnt you be happy he/she was consulting on the side?

More than his salary... that's incredible to me.