How to Set Low Expectations at Your Two Remote Jobs

What are you supposed to do when you have a conflict, if you're keeping things secret? "that time doesn't work for me" "uh, why? I just hired you. You have another meeting?"

Sometimes I wonder if the people saying this stuff really even work there. It's not impossible, but the kind of person who would be promoted that fast wouldn't be working two crappy jobs to begin with.

Not to mention even if you were promoted you wouldn't go from $300K to $500K. You think getting promoted at FAANG gives you an over 50% increase in total comp as the norm? (edit: If you've seen this, it's almost due to the fact that FAANG stock increased drastically during COVID. If you look at 2012-2017 data for promotions a 50% increase is almost unheard of).

You should join one if you're not already there and read about how people are complaining about less than 6.7% (last inflation report) raises during company meetings and less than 10% even when promoted.

Finally, background checks work on what you give them, they're not exhaustive (unless you're trying to work for the government). So many inaccuracies in this post I wonder if it's satire. If so, I apologize.

lol

This is not true in most of the world I believe.

I’m not interested in working two jobs, but can you provide some sort of reference around this?

My last two background checks included no employment info and I was fairly certain private sector jobs have no reporting outside the IRS, hence ridiculous interviews.

I'd be curious to see stats on this. My experience at large corporations (multiple of FAANG) has been the opposite. For instance, at Google my L4-5 salary bump was 10-15%, my bonus target percentage is identical, and to be honest the stock grants from L4 Strongly Exceeds were better than L5 Consistently Meets Expectations. There's theoretically a higher ceiling over the long term (and the L6 bump seems to be better) but it was nowhere near 50% for me.

hah. yes you can. No one cares if you have multiple concurrent jobs on a resume. And no one cares about what the background check is going to show.

This is all easily explained away.

Most people are never good enough to break into FANGMULA.

I get that this is HN and a very SF-centric board, but sometimes users here are so incredibly out of touch with the real world, it's not even funny anymore. I'm not attacking you directly, but it's something you see here all the time ("why not just join google and become a principal engineer")

This is false on average, even at FAANG, getting promoted to the next level doesn't boost your TC that much, the company assumes that the promotion on itself is good enough prize. You usually get a better deal applying to the next level at another FAANG.

> 1. They tend to work double jobs at frankly lo..... This is also false, plenty of people that work for small companies, even being a 10X , "rockstar" , ... developer, would never get "promoted" to the next level, because , there is no next level, and the C-level positions are reserved for friends and family, and in some occasion to outside experienced executives.

30 years ago, climbing the corporate ladder was "the way" to get ahead, nowadays, people with small mildly successful SAAS businesses, consultant companies, podcasters, indie hackers etc... make way more than any Director at FAANG.

This is a very "boomer" take in general, and is also pretty cringe.

However, it's not that difficult to spot if you're paying attention. Two job workers tend to:

1. Have elaborate excuses for why they can't update their LinkedIn profile to show the new job. Obviously they can't tip the old company off that they have a new job.

2. Have mysteriously complicated and ever-changing schedule conflicts throughout the day. We support (and encourage) flexible work, but when someone is disappearing throughout the day and can't reliably jump on a phone call (despite supposedly being online and active) without ample notice, they're probably doing something else.

3. Are extreme people-pleasers in superficial ways (want to keep up appearances) but only actually deliver good work when it's high profile and they know they're in the spotlight.

4. Are loathed by their teammates after a while, because everyone they work with slowly catches on that the person is absent-mindedly doing the bare minimum to not get fired. Inevitably, the teammates have to pick up the slack and do extra work to compensate. Few people are better positioned to recognize this than the people who are in the trenches with the person all day.

5. Have a different jobs on their resume with start and end dates that don't match what you confirm with the company. That's because they need to massage the start/end dates to appear as though they weren't overlapping the two jobs.

6. Are religious about "If I get my work done, why does it matter when I work?" Sounds great, but then they play every game in the book to shrink "their work" to be as small as possible and move the "done" part as far in the future as possible. End result is that team mates suffer (see #4).

Do companies actually teach anyone, ever?

"If they joined as a jr engineer at a FANGMULA or equivalent, they would be making $300k,"

This assumes they could spend the time to pass the interview and then deal with the performance expectations. Losers like me could probably work two $80k jobs if they are simple enough. But I'll never get into FAANG, nor would they pay me $300k for a remote role.

"They think that promos (like this article), are at most only %10, while promos are more like a x1.5 to x2 of your income."

Where the hell do you work!? My company gives a 7% raise with a promotion. I want one of these $300k jobs with a 2x promotion. Even the $150k job would be a 50% raise for me. I have been looking for a while and see almost nothing over $120k.

My employers have so far been very happy with my work, although I am aware I could have performed much better and have done very stupid mistakes because I was moving too fast.

That's bull, man, sorry. Most of the devs out there, I'd wager at least 95%, don't go through background checks ever, as a start.

Second, I work as a dev for 20 years now and I have never known anyone who got promoted by more than 20%. I have only known one guy through another guy who got promoted with 35% once and that was actually a strategy to make him accept more responsibility. He burned out and quit in less than 6 months after. Anecdotal evidence, sure, but then again, what you cite seems statistically insignificant to me so I don't know if I even believe it because I've not seen it and I haven't even heard of it.

Thirdly, "lower tier companies", really? Sure, use that connotation if you like it -- but I've been all over the spectrum and different combinations of work/life balance vs. income are literally endless. There are companies paying top dollar but there's always some gotcha, and more often than not that gotcha is not worth the extra money. I'll concede here that I have been unlucky -- or not that skilled to begin with, why not, I don't claim I am the greatest -- but it's what I've (not) seen.

2. Because of double working, they are pretty much guaranteed to not get promoted beyond the standard terminal level.

Working your arse off in one primary job is seldom if ever rewarded well. I love your positive bubble but you seriously have to think about for how many people out there it applies to.

3. They think that promos (like this article), are at most only %10, while promos are more like a x1.5 to x2 of your income.

Nope, doesn't happen almost ever. Maybe in startups but let's be honest -- will you be in this startup 5 years from now? Also you can't eternally job-hop to more and more money.

4. You cannot work at proper startups and learn a ton, because the workload would be way too high for this strategy.

At least that's true, I'll give you that.

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I realize that I've been at shitty employers most of my career (took me a while to get a good baseline data from other people and understand my position) but still, most devs out there are at shitty employers. What you're talking about no more than 5% of the total programming workforce, I'd wager it's more like 0.5% even.

"FANGMULA" is a dumb acronym that a cringey YouTuber made up because he couldn't get into FAANG, so he had to make up a new acronym that would include the company he did get into.

Comment on the note:

  FANGMULA is from blind
  FANGULTAD is from youtube

EDIT: Pretty rich that I'm getting downvoted so much, despite multiple examples of successful SaaS creators showing up in the comments, and this being a forum started by a VC partly to promote and encourage tech startups. If you think that starting a tech business is so impossibly difficult that you're personally offended at the idea of someone recommending you do it, I'd say you should just go back to Reddit or Twitter.

If you're bristling at me calling SaaS "easy", I just meant it's easier than running a multi-year scam and probably committing fraud, depending on the details of your employment contracts.

The premise is that the average person puts in 10x the effort for a 1% return on investment. You are an employee, sure, but are "investing" the company in terms of life-hours you could spend elsewhere. Naturally, you want to therefore minimize work and maximize salary. The ultimate situation being getting regular raises by doing 20-50% less than is expected to you.

If employers don't want this the solution is simple. It's not finding these people and firing them. It's paying people commensurate to their effort like a real meritocracy would.

If someone can hold 2 jobs working at 50% brain capacity then they are obviously very talented and quite crafty. You pay this person enough, they will dedicate 100% of their brain to your project. The employer side of the equation is JUST as exploitative as the employee side. It's just far, far, far more common for the employee to be exploited. For example, via pagerduty, poor hiring practices leading to overwork, or overtasking.

This is wonderful. Anyone who is truly a libertarian should be encouraging this. It's the perfect free market solution to exploitative labor. You dont get paid past 40 hours for your salary. Why should you reduce YOUR OWN worth to make a company's bottom line bigger? Unless you hold ITM options in the company the answer is you don't and shouldn't. You should be exploiting them at every turn.

Eventually someone figured it out. Management was furious. Remote work restrictions were tightened and everyone suddenly had far more check-ins to ensure we were actually working every day.

I heard they also contacted the person's new job and filled them in on the double-work situation. That person was universally hated and I don't know anyone at the company who would give them a positive reference.

There are a lot orgs out there where if you can spell java, your golden.

I’ve been trying to figure out how to temper my natural tendency to go all-in with the reality that everything has some shit that sucks. I can understand the hope that there might be some psychological ease associated with dissociating yourself from the vision.

Buying in to the vision can blind you to what's really going on

You can claim that's BS or not, but, you really need to bring more to it than "nuh uh."

But it probably is more lucrative to achieve some success, and then leverage that to the next thing (which might need to be a different company).

I've got other colleagues who'll be logged in at 08:30 (so I believe) and leave on the dot of 17:00.

I think both approaches work for different people and for the company a mix gives them more flexibility without having to create a formal plan.

I think what the article was bringing up was that if you set expectations and are seen to conform to them, everybody is happy (or doesn't think about it).

If you're the person who's always there as the office opens and sticks around late - you may be noticed and get a pat on the back, but it's never going to compensate for the additional hours you put in. This might be fine if you have one job and a career - but if you're trying to hold down 2 jobs, those extra couple of hours each day are 50% of the effort of holding down that 2nd job. They're worth 50% of a whole new salary.

Might be because I'm european, but the idea sounds crazy to me.

Haha, at what company? I've met few people who've been able to work at a company long enough (and for the company to be successful enough) to double their salary. Apparently, it's much faster to just get two lower paying, easy jobs.

Between the two extremes (mediocre and rockstar/10x), there are many 'competent' people who can't get promoted to their 2x salary jobs. And these people are competent in a particular niche, not like those who aced programming olympiads, compiler gurus, kernel hackers, etc.

Nope

That's only the case if they were underpaid to begin with. It will plateau very quickly.

[Citation Needed]

One of the benefits of this is that you don't have to be competent enough to sustain two jobs. There are people who do this and just swap their jobs every year or less. Another side benefit of that is that people have lower expectations for the new hire, and if you're perpetually a new hire...

I've found the opposite is true. If you are extremely competent at your job your manager is motivated to keep you in place because that's what you're good at. It's easier to promote lower-accomplishing people-pleasers because it won't affect _their_ software throughput as much (higher level engineers write less code).

I don't know the numbers but in my limited experience, in western Europe, this is just not possible (or very very rare among C level people if any, not mere engineers). A good senior salary (gross) is like 80K Euro/year. As a senior engineer working in Europe, you cannot expect reach 100K Euro easily. Now, thinking that you can go from 80K to 160K just by being an engineer that is "competent enough" is just plain naive. Not even the CTOs are making that around here.

Here's a copy of the text (keywords: mirror, archive):

> How To Set Low Expectations At Your Two Remote Jobs > On April 12, 2021 By Chloe T. In Corporate Life, Multiple Remote Work, Tactics

> One of the keys to success while working two remote jobs is communications and setting low expectations with your boss. You want to give the perception of meeting standards while striving to overachieve in your primary “keeper” job. You want to set yourself up for success, and by success, we mean keeping the two remote jobs for as long as possible. Naturally, with working two jobs, one job will be more demanding than the other. The strategy is to set the workload low in at least one of the two jobs so you can navigate spikes in workload. Remember, the end goal here is to have dual income streams and reach financial freedom sooner.

> Why Is Perception And Setting Low Expectations Important For Remote Work

> We’ve heard it before, perception is everything. This HBR article illustrates a great example of how perception matters at the end of the day, not the real story. The fact is if you’re perceived as a hard worker, it doesn’t matter what you do behind the scenes. In the two job game, you want to be perceived as someone who meets expectations. While in reality, your aim is to do the minimum and get by; don’t get fired while secretly hoping to get laid off. A strategy to achieve a positive perception (and outcome) is accomplished by setting low expectations with your manager.

> Why Setting High Expectations With Your Boss Is A Waste Of Time

> Let’s first start by going over what everyone tells you to do – set high expectations, get promoted. Yes, this leads to more money. That’s great. But let’s look at the ROI because all great employees and MBA’s should care about the ROI on behalf of the company.

> But what about your Personal ROI’s? Indeed’s research concluded that the average employee raise is 3%. It may be a bit higher in tech, so let’s say 5 – 10%.

> You might need to put in 30% more hours, more stress, more work to get a minimal increase in your salary. To me, setting those high expectations to get a promotion is a waste of time. You can get a second job and easily give yourself an 80% “raise” for your work. Also, I’m a good employee by being mindful of ROI’s, my own.

> What I’ve Learned About Setting Low Expectations From Years of Working

> What I’ve learned is expectations need to be set from day 1. I once worked with a new senior manager who always left at five o’clock since his very first day. New hires usually stay late to ramp up quickly. Not this guy. He set the expectation that he would leave the office by five and stuck by it every day. It was genius. A year into the job, he’s still shutting down at five while the rest of us kept working.

> For managers, it’s typically hard to have that conversation, “can you put in more hours?” If your manager adds new tasks, just be clear you cannot complete them in the timeframe given. If you’re labeled as the “guy who leaves at five,” people won’t give you more work knowing you can’t get to it. More work is assigned to you once you do a great job, and it is an endless circle. This story is just one example, but the lesson is to set expectations early and set them low. That way, the only place to go is up.

> Once you set high expectations, you’re always going to fail if you don’t meet them. Like the concept behind the HBR perception article, you can have done great work but once you fail to meet the expectations that’s what people remember. How many times you think you did a great job, but when you have your review, your boss mentions all the “failures” and missed expectations. Sound familiar?

> How To Set Low Expectations At Work With Your Manager

> Let’s get into how you can set low expectations while working your two remote jobs. As we mentioned, set these expectations early.

> Be The One To Drive The Conversation

> Don’t ask what your boss’s expectations are; set them yourself. Instead of going into the conversation by asking what their expectations are, set and communicate them to your manager. By asking what their expectations are, you are putting yourself in a corner. In developing your own low expectations and communicating them, you are placing the burden on your boss to have that difficult conversation with you to say otherwise. Psychologically, it’s harder to say no, than to say yes. Let your boss be the one to say no to you. As a new employee, you’re most likely to slide by for the first review cycle with this method.

> Communicate Often And Early

> Being a great communicator can be a great asset. Think about those who do great work and are not great communicators. What about those who do mediocre work but can communicate. Who do you think will be looked upon more favorably? Set your expectations and make them visible to everyone to know what to expect. Take this as an opportunity to improve your communication skills. With practice comes mastery.

...

> As you can see from this example, the employee overcommunicating comes across as more trustworthy and in control. That’s the perception you want to convey. Even though something is not on track, or you haven’t started at all, just the fact you are communicating the details along the way, people are more comfortable. Also by communicating frequently, you can soften the blow of the miss.

> Explain The Reasons Behind Your Low Expectations

> While setting expectations is excellent, if you can back up your thought process to come to those expectations, you have a better case. Always come to the table with your examples of how you thought through your goal-setting process. For example, if you are new to a particular field, you can put the small milestones to achieve “xyz” goal. With each milestone, you can explain how difficult it was to reach that milestone and drag out the timeline to the next set of milestones to achieve “xyz” mastery.

> Good communicators always over-communicate. They are perceived to be in control, even what’s said is the same message just repeated many times. If you have project updates, and the updates are the same for weeks, you’re still being perceived as a good project manager since you are visible and proactive in communicating. Again it’s about perception. Like the deft hands of magicians, mastering resetting expectation is just as important as setting low expectations at the beginning. Leverage Your Newbie Card In Setting Low Expectations

> Being new has its advantages. No one knows you, so you start off with a clean slate. You can take advantage by setting low expectations with your manager for your first review cycle. There are many barriers to mastering your remote jobs, such as ramp-up time, company culture, new systems, and different procedures. Let these barriers shine in setting your low expectations – and all the more reasons to have unambitious goals.

> Leverage The Review Cycle

> Understand when the review cycle starts and ends. Set and time your goals to the review cycle. Usually, people set goals for the year, but keep in mind you’re evaluated on review cycles. There’s no use in setting goals for eight months when the review is only four months away.

> Be A Follower Not A Leader

> Realize that not everyone needs to be a leader in every job. Everyone is different and it takes employees of all types to make the company hum. There’s nothing wrong with being a follower and doing what’s expected. Remember, there are no leaders if there are no followers. Avoid the slippery ladder in your career. Take the side door instead.

> Setting Low Expectations And The Two-Job Game Plan

> The game plan for two remote jobs is to set the expectations low with your manager and prolong your hustle until your exit to another job or you’re laid off with a severance. For the second non-primary job, you’re there for one reason only, to collect a paycheck. A paycheck that is 500%+ more than a raise. The goal is to keep the paycheck going for as long as you can with minimal effort.

> 30 days – The first 30 days are easy due to ramp up but are critical to set low expectations. Set yourself up for success in working two jobs. Be that guy or girl who always logs off at five o’clock (even better at four), and let people know. Once you start extending yourself, answering emails and messages after hours, your co-workers will see that as the norm and more work will creep up on you. If you’re never available after a certain time, your colleagues won’t message you because they know you won’t respond.

> 60 days – In the 30-60 day window, you should set goals with your boss if that’s not already done. Drag out the newbie card and claim slow ramp-up time. Identify what absolutely needs to be done, communicate that as your goal, and meet them. Again, it’s all about the perception that you meet expectations, not the work you’ve actually done. You can do little work but as long as you met the communicated expectations you’re golden.

> What If You Don’t Feel Right Low Balling Expectations At Work – Put The Ego Aside

> We’re primed at a very young age to be the best we can be. We look up to leaders in society. If your ultimate end goal is financial freedom, you have to strategize and optimize for that and put your ego aside. You’re aiming to be a leader in your personal life and the truly ambitious one land two jobs. Who cares if you’re not a leader in the public eye of a workplace. You can channel the guilt, if any, towards donating the extra money to a good cause, like the YMCAs. Go do something you care about. Work is just means to an end. Join us in the counterculture towards work.

When one of my co-op student's term ended he wanted to hire him full-time because he thought he was a rock-star from his high number of commits. In reality the student wasn't very good and we just gave him simple tasks to write unit tests. He wasn't even good at writing unit tests because when he was unsure about edge case behavior he would just see what the function currently outputs and then write a test to expect that result. The worst is when a unit test would start to fail so he'd change the existing test to expect the wrong result.

Before anyone asks, I eventually left the company and I did repeatedly tell the student how to write better unit tests in his code reviews.