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> A third contractor I knew was trying to do two jobs at the same time.

I mean this literally how contractors work. Unless they were taking your IP and using it for another company I don’t see the issue.

Not if you're charging hourly, it's not. Then it's time fraud.

It's just like a lawyer's billable hours.

only if you charge hourly to two companies at the same time. Contractors can work multiple contracts, thats the name of the game.

That's exactly what he did -- charge two companies for 1 hour worked.

Even if he wasn't, he was a contractor, and checking code while being on site for another company was sus. Employment is "at will" in the US for the most part -- particularly contractors.

yeah, bogus... proper time keeping is key to being a contractor. If you are going to work multiple (which happens when you're brought on as an expert but there's spirts of work between lapses of down time) then you can't be doing one while on the clock for the other. Wage theft.

Not necessarily. It depends on the requirement. If I've completed or don't have any real work, but am expected to be around, then that's work. It's only if the second contract breaches the first or creates a conflict, and that's not inherent in time.

Edit: Misread your comment. If you're billing for specific and granular blocks of time, and doubling that up, then ya wage theft. But if you're doing that and also expected to be onsite anyway, then no not wage theft imo.

If you're a company and you see github commits through firewall, why take the chance unless he's really really good?

You wouldn't, I was saying that there could be situations where it wouldn't be a valid claim for wage theft. I would say that's also true of regular jobs where you're not necessarily even expected to be there all the time. I've made commits from my desk on side contracts, but if there's a conflict, I resolve it by sticking around longer. If my employer or client has a problem with me working on other shit, then they get to stop being my employer or client

By working two jobs at the same time, they mean working one hour and then billing two companies for that same hour of work.

At tech companies, "contractor" usually means someone contracted from a staffing company to work 40 hour weeks during normal business hours. They're not someone who is providing an end product with the freedom to set their own schedule, like you typically think of when you hear "contractor".

That is not correct. I won't speak to relative prevalence as that depends on the size and type of tech company, but there are lots of freelance tech contractors.

That very much depends on location.

In the UK a contractor could be someone from an outsourcing company as you suggest or they could be an independent service provider working on their own. This is very common in software dev here when you require someone with specific skills.

If you’re the latter kind then you’d be wise to bill on deliverables rather than time.

If you don’t you could run into a well known tax reg called HMRC IR35. It bars independent contractors from acting like “disguised” employees. It’s a world of pain if that happens.

> bars independent contractors from acting like “disguised” employees. It’s a world of pain if that happens.

The US allows companies to fire long-term employees without cause and replace them with indentured servants.

We're the ones who actually hosted the cotton fields full of slaves, after all.

> while he was supposed to be working for one company he was making public github commits for the second

If you're setting their hours, doesn't that make them an employee rather than a contractor, legally speaking?

May have billed a specific time span, but also had commits during that span. Dunno how they proved the github account belonged to the contractor though unless they just admitted to it or used the company email to register.

He probably used the same GitHub for both their repos. I don't see how otherwise it could be connected. Not so bright.

His github username was easily found from his linkedin account.

> Dunno how they proved

people who no longer trust you and don't want to work with you any more generally don't have to prove it.

Maybe it's not a real contractor. I had one job where I was a "contractor", I had set hours, got paid hourly, received a w2. It seemed like just an excuse to be cheap and not provide benefits.

You can be on a W2, but as soon as the contract ends, your employment ends since you're "at will" in the US.

Usually the W2 is provided through an agency and you're getting a paycheck from them while the agency is billing the company for hours at a negotiated rate, often much higher than you're being paid.

Always ask your supervisor how much they're paying for you. You might not be allowed to work for that company soon (non-competes enforced at the agency side), but you can certainly get a better idea of your value.

Most likely they're going to be prohibited from telling you. The best way to do this is to take [person] out for a round of beers. Wait until 3 beers in and see what their number is.

My belief is that 20%-30% of what you're making is a fair number.

Though if it's somewhere where you could really get a foothold and make a lot of money as an employee, 50% might be acceptable.

We had this happen to the company I was at around 2015. I heard about it after the fact, good phone interview, a Salesforce position, he's hired (contract I think). Day one the person that shows up barely speaks English and can barely log in to Salesforce. Maybe he thought he was going to a bigger department and could hide and blend in, but it was a small Salesforce team at a large company. He lasted less than a day and was escorted out. The placement agency apologized. A lot.

> was trying to do two jobs at the same time

Happened at a company I worked at many years ago. Working from home was new, one dude who we all thought was suspect anyway got a call from his bosses boss and answered the phone with the wrong company name and it was over.

To make an example of him they made him pay back some of his salary (his contract had him on call and available 24/7). Ran into him a while later and he confirmed he paid them back.

Not a fake candidate but a slimy guy.

This started to become much more common post-COVID.

/r/overemployed is a sub full of people sharing strategies about how to maintain multiple jobs at once. Some of those folks have 3 or more jobs. Industries of focus seem to be tech and sales.

I can never tell how much on reddit is creative writing for a cause, sometimes those stories sound more like elaborate / sophomoric morality tales / fantasies ... but I don't doubt folks do it.