He quit when I started putting deadlines on work when he started falling behind. I got suspicious, reached out to his prior company's CEO to ask if he was still employed, and turns out he was! Then came the discovery of the 3rd company...
For hiring managers out there: make sure candidates have a linkedin profile that lists your current company as their current place of employment (both employees with 2+ jobs had their LinkedIn hidden for obvious reasons), and always run background checks that include employment verification screens.
For low paid service workers, it's acceptable and sometimes expected to juggle multiple jobs. Why is it unacceptable for office workers?
The overemployed game is all about exaggerating how much you're working and how difficult your tasks are. Targets, deadlines, and work scoping aren't chosen in a vacuum. We rely on the team to give us feedback about what they can accomplish in the expected full-time work week.
This goes both ways. If I'm handing out 80 hours of work every week, I need my team to tell me it's too much and I'll scale it down. The problem with overemployed people is that they must lie about their workloads and estimates to avoid being assigned more work than they can handle.
We had an overemployed remote person once. Like the parent comment, we noticed when they weren't performing at the same level as their peers (or even a reasonable level of expectation). They were also frequently unavailable for discussions, half-involved in meetings, and generally unreliable.
> For low paid service workers, it's acceptable and sometimes expected to juggle multiple jobs. Why is it unacceptable for office workers?
Low paid workers with multiple jobs aren't doing them simultaneously, but someone with two remote tech jobs is almost certainly trying to do both at the same time. Honestly if someone had infinite energy and could dedicate 8 hours per day to my job and then another 8 hours per day to another job and not overlap the two or run out of steam, I wouldn't care at all. But in practice, it becomes a constant game of lies and sandbagging that is just incompatible with running a fair and balanced engineering team. (Hint: It's often the coworkers who catch on before the manager because they can see very clearly that their peer is sandbagging)
You hire a doctor for a few hours, plumbers/lawyers for hours or weeks depending on the task, everything goes fine
but somehow software engineers have to come on board, sit at a company desk, wear a company shirt drinking company coffee every day
It'd be great if coders were organized as individuals and small groups that just took on tasks for fixed bids, like the fantasy world from the book "Developer Hegemony."
I could really go for six months off right now, but I'd have to fight tooth and nail to get it from my job, and it would severely hinder my career. So instead I'm just stuck chugging along until I've got enough saved up to quit and start my own company (or take some time off, then jump through a bunch of hoops to take on another prolonged period of full time servitude)
(Bringing it back to the topic at hand: That doesn't make it morally right to lie to your employer(s) and do a half-assed job. The overemployed people on Reddit/TeamBlind sound like a bunch of lying dirtbags who just say everything is harder than it is to cover for themselves slacking off, and aim to just get fired after a couple of years.)
Maybe engineering staffing practices should be more reflective of the possibilities, but that’s best for a single Org to define for itself.
At least for me I don't even have enough emotional energy for my current job, I can't imagine doing more than one. The trouble is this is impossible to measure and certainly isn't formally part of employment.
Similar story here. Person was clearly falling behind and was unreliable. The "it shouldn't matter if they get their work done" narrative doesn't hold up in practice, at least not with any reasonably utilized engineering team.
Now when I hire remote, I get in contact with the person's former company to confirm their start and end dates match the resume.
"<Start date> - current" prevents that problem nicely.
There are places outside the SF Bay Area
The "overemployed" people generally aren't performing identity theft like this. Having multiple jobs ranges anywhere from legal to fraud depending on contracts they've signed or how they've misrepresented themselves (it's not uncommon to see suggestions to take multiple hourly jobs and then exaggerate the number of hours worked, for example). However, adding identity theft on top would elevate what they're doing to a major crime, which is not something that would help them.
Sure they're typically hourly not salaried but that doesn't seem to be too major of a difference.
I don't even see what the issue is at all. If a person can get both jobs done fine, then who cares?
Their goal is to find jobs and managers with low expectations, then sandbag as much as possible ("Gee, this task is harder than I thought. Going to take a couple weeks longer than we estimated!").
Had a team member try this and an old company. We caught on quickly when they couldn't keep up with their workload and were constantly unavailable during the day. Really sucked for the rest of the team who had to pick up the slack this person created by pretending to work full time.
i personally tried to do two jobs (with full agreement from both sides) splitting my week half half. It was a real struggle, but it is possible.
The key is to turn the thing upside down and seek out the jobs you’d normally reject - shifty companies with lower pay, bad tooling, tons of bureaucracy, etc - basically a place where no sane developer would willingly apply. Then, you’ll be the smartest person in the room without having to do anything special and the extra bureaucracy can be either automated away or come in handy as an excuse when you fall behind, while the lower pay isn’t really a problem if you have 4 of them running concurrently.
They currently sit at a 2.8 on Glassdoor.
Think of that however you will.
Last I heard, the executive who manifested this mindset is gone, too.
Poetic.
If my snark wasn't clear, it's a mindset of hiring and personnel management that I think is lazy at best, total shit at worst.
Not what I believe, but that's the logic they were using
If you want to do this “scam” in an ethical way without the reputation risk, just be a consultant, work for multiple companies, and be honest about it.
You won’t get benefits and finding clients will probably be harder, but you can set your own schedule and charge a lot more for your time.
But yeah being a freelance would give you the freedom (at the cost of more time spent selling yourself).
No, consultancies do not double-bill multiple clients for hours worked.
In fact, anyone billing a company in full for time that someone wasn't actually working on their project is committing fraud. Fraud that leaves a paper trail. This story would be brought to light very quickly by a disgruntled employee somewhere.
The solution is to escalate the "sandbagger" problem to someone who can fire and replace them, not cover for them.
I've also employed an engineer with multiple jobs (3 total). He's an active HN reader. I (sadly) wish they would have at least tried to outsource their work rather than not do the work at all and miss all their deadlines.
People then get the idea that they can juggle two jobs like that - but the trouble is usually not the work itself, but conflicting meetings and such.
Citation needed
1. People want more money.
2. Remote jobs are becoming much more common as of late.
3. It is (much) easier to double up on remote jobs than non-remote jobs.
4. Doubling up on remote jobs results in more money.
5. Therefore, there is a growing movement of people who are doubling up on remote jobs. QED.
I mean, it's pretty unlikely that this argument doesn't hold. I feel like you'd need a citation to counter it.
You don't need a citation to counter a baseless assertion. My assertion is that most people who apply for remote jobs are fairly honest (by culture) white-collar types who wouldn't think to 'double up on remote jobs' for the same reason they wouldn't think go out at night stealing catalytic converters, which is that they possess a basic sense of right and wrong.
I mean, if you think that the average person is basically a scammer at heart, okay... Maybe you come from a low-trust culture, I don't know. I don't think most people who come from high-trust cultures would behave this way or think that behaving this way is okay.
But many more are now compared to recent history.
Stealing catalytic converters is directly harming another person and also punishable with prison time, it's hardly comparable to working two remote jobs. But sure, some (potentially large) proportion of white collar workers may not be willing to violate trust by working two jobs, but many would.
Beyond that, if you think that all knowledge workers are ethical people, I would remind you about all the horrible software that exists in the world for the sole purpose of scamming or harming people. There's a lot of it. And it's all unquestionably much less ethnical than working two normal white collar jobs.
However I think a substantial number of posts are creative writing exercises
A lot of division trolling going on there, trying to foment labor militancy. r/antiwork is the most visible facet of it, endlessly trying to encourage strikes, calling out, sandbagging, etc. This overemployed stuff (people blatantly bragging about how they're getting so much money for barely working and how you're stupid if you don't try and scam the system) is another facet of it.
It's the usual suspects exploiting and widening any and all divisions in society they can find.
If you have a US resident's stolen PII and can somehow set up a bank account to receive ACH direct deposits, and are a good enough social engineer, can possibly get hired under that name.
Then they'd refuse to hire me, refuse to address the issues I discussed, and then sometimes one of the interviewers would pass that information to the Russians or Chinese leading to a massive break ala OPM or Solarwinds even after Senator Wyden sent Chris Soghoian or someone of similar skill adjacent to the Omnidynar group to go ask some hard questions.
In parallel, folks with non-US passports would obstruct any applications I made in private industry in favor of those with their same passport.
It was all super frustrating, since my CV had the appearance of someone with a deep commitment to nonprofit work, when it often more than I made decisions like "Being a PhD student pays slightly better than a Papa John's employee and I'll eventually find something more permanent doing the latter".
Lately, looking back, I wonder if I'd have been better off saving up then moving to Thailand like one of my old drinking buddies did. (I don't drink alcohol anymore, and I'm spending the afternoon reading HN as I work on some technical projects I'll probably never put online, since it seems no amount of code publication leads me to a fair interview -- all it does is give tools for others to use in their "work")
Happy to reply again if the above is unclear -- I made sure to not use a nym that doesn't include my legal name, for privacy -- I could have been much more detailed :-)
...
> Then they'd refuse to hire me, refuse to address the issues I discussed, and then sometimes one of the interviewers would pass that information to the Russians or Chinese leading to a massive break ala OPM or Solarwinds even after Senator Wyden sent Chris Soghoian or someone of similar skill adjacent to the Omnidynar group to go ask some hard questions.
This paragraph is exceedingly unclear and may hint at the reasons why you are struggling to get hired. This reads as some mix of narcissistic personality disorder / conspiratorial thinking. You write like a native (or near-native) English speaker, but your composition is all over the place.
I don't mean this unkindly, but have you ever spoken with a mental health professional? Many technical folks are neuroatypical and this can sometimes be a barrier to traditional stable employment.
This individual claims to be somehow involved in two high-profile national security incidents. It's not beyond plausibility that they are being exploited for information by companies who don't want to be seen associating with them. Snowden would receive the same treatment.
Hacker news does attract some singular individuals from time to time, but I would suggest the more plausible scenario is that this person has untreated mental health issues.
Now, bristly replying aside: I also DO have anxiety, and wrote my comments earlier after too much caffeine.
>This individual claims to be somehow involved in two high-profile national security incidents. It's not beyond plausibility that they are being exploited for information by companies who don't want to be seen associating with them.
To give a real world example: one of the reasons I was pushed out of an NGO is I annoyed the lawyers pushing them to put MFA on their email accounts. Later we were one of the few not to be penetrated by the Russians... digitally... but when I watched that one Mr. Robot plotline where the one agent is increasingly unclear why her supervisor is not taking her concerns seriously, she finds out they are an agent of a foreign power.
Also I did a master's thesis on anonymity technology, so obligatory "it's not paranoia if they're actually out to get you".
>Snowden would receive the same treatment.
Snowden is stuck in Russia, a totalitarian hellhole. I live here, in the Paris of Appalachia, where I wander around sipping cortados and banging hipsters. We are not the same.
What often happens is I get a mix of people who respond in good faith (have no idea who the hell I am), paired with those who do, and say things in bad faith about my mental health.
(Reoccuring income would solve those issues overnight, email if you want a CV. I'm a decent pentester, can code in languages like Python and bash, and have an OSINT certification from Bellingcat.)
But often since my skills are more... qualitative (eg: I cannot write exploits well), people schedule an interview to treat it like a free consulting session (ask the one question an FBI agent would have if they could supoena me slipped in with the rest to clear me as a suspect in some bullshit), then don't actually hire me on... and the cycle repeats in 3-6 months.
Hence my supreme annoyance and occasional trolls.
Oh -- almost forgot -- in addition to the above, years ago, before I was doing brain experiments on undergrads alongside former Israeli snipers, I was in therapy. I found out at that therapist's funeral that he was a member of a motorcycle club. So sometimes... odd people boosted me through my career in civil society, and sometimes it feels like when I hit a wall, it's because someone in the past was supporting me for unsavory reasons, and doesn't have a good explanation for the sudden shift in allegiance.
I'm happy to explain further as needed, but all you really need to know is I ended up at a libertarian NGO despite being anything but, for reasons I don't fully understand, then got stranded in Appalachia by people who never want to admit they're wrong, even as I turn on the TV and see teachers who used to claim I was a menace to society running up on the capital.
TL;DR: I'm anxious because I'm a skinhead, in the antiracist sense, and a leftist, and the people who could assist me in my goal of being independent choose not to. I could join a firm like Mandiant or whatever tomorrow, be assigned some work, and be off HN and happy, but folks make the emotional decision to not allow me to do that, despite very clearly being qualified to, then question the mental health of a first generation PhD student with a dwindling bank account.
Any other questions?
:-)
That's putting it mildly.
Based on the writing, my best career advice to this person would be to take a community college English composition class and/or join the local Toastmasters.
Extra time spent working on communication skills almost always pays off more than extra time spent on technical skills.