Equifax used records it collects from companies to fire employees with 2nd jobs

One of criteria is right to subcontract and freedom to work with multiple clients.

If they get it wrong, they're liable for taxes, not the Contractor.

HMRC, the UK tax body is responsible for this, and therefore it is an utter mess in practice and has had chilling effects on the UK IT consulting market.

This is actually much more of an issue than someone just holding two W2 jobs, because these "contractors" are almost always billing hours, and if you're billing the same hour to two people that very quickly approaches actual fraud.

Edit: I was under the impression being a contractor would give one flexibility to do whatever they want when they’re not billing hours, depends on the contract wording of course

They could terminate them if they could show that the contractors were faking the hours.

This is very common misconception. People can have multiple employers just like contractors can have multiple clients. It has no bearing.

(Famously, this made Uber grant some rights to their drivers here.)

If you are an actual employee of mine it's even more likely you are in breach.

Sounds to me like the execs just have control issues. "WE get to fly around in the private jets and strike business deals on the golf course, not you!"

They are big enough it's totally normal that not everyone knows what everyone else is doing.

Not sure what the leak is telling you, it's not telling me too much

I'm still astounded no one ended up in jail over that. Software Engineering really does need some professionalization.

The difference here is that as an employee you commit to provide 40 hours of service to your employer. From the stories I’ve heard of these double jobs, this isn’t a weekend job working at the local coffee shop for an extra few bucks which doesn’t impact your primary responsibilities. Instead it’s a professional job with overlapping hours. Which means an employer isn’t getting what they paid for and these people are deceiving them.

I can think of many scenarios where 1K/month/child is the best option. I don't know the quality of schools available in your area, but I do know it can vary wildly, and good school can make a huge difference.

And you have my deep respect for the sacrifice you are making for your children. We need more people like you.

You pay for it with your taxes. It's a lifestyle choice if you want to send your kids to a private institution when public school is already covered.

I hope that doesn't come across as rude, because that's not my intention. But private school is not some necessity of life that you're forced to pay for -- definitely not "literally impossible" to survive without.

Sounds like student loans.

But you have to submit your data to get access to everyone else's.

Merely feeling undervalued isn't enough to induce most people to work two full-time jobs. That's a brutal time commitment even for someone who isn't working very hard at either.

People usually do that because neither job pays well enough on its own.

I don't see why not. To my knowledge employment information isn't protected by law, and presumably whoever provided equifax that information turned it in willingly.

It doesn’t matter. For this to matter it would require punishing the offenders, and since they are wealthy it’s not really an option in most western countries.

America has a long history of owners doing everything in their power to control, literally or by proxy, their workers.

It also has a long history of making sure "those people"/workers/etc know their place and stay in it.

Mailed, or emailed to: TWNFreeze@equifax.com

If this assumption is made impractical im afraid companies will react by putting stricter measures like clock in and out times and crap like that.

At the same time, if an employee wants to work two jobs, all the power to them. Go get it buddy, screw the companies, you owe them nothing.

Except that having a second FULL-TIME job does affect the first one.

The law should make this data a liability. Companies like Equifax should not even want to have access to this data. It should cost them money every day to know this information. They should be trying to forget everything they know about us, not amassing even more data.

For instance, if an employee is working from home at two jobs at once, and makes an invention which they introduce in both jobs, then both companies might rely on this 'trade secret' to protect market share (including suing people whos 'steal' it. Some engineers are employed to come up with inventions, and if a business can't rely on their output to create competitive advantage then they are not providing the service they were hired for.

Similarly, a sales rep working for 2 businesses, or working in procurement at a government customer and sales at a vendor, could create a very nasty corruption lawsuit.

Finally, some jobs are responsive - for instance a site engineer or some cyber security roles. A lot of sitting around punctuated by sudden urgent work. I know a guy who repairs offshore wind turbines and he plays xbox all day then occasionally jumps in a helicopter and rides to the rescue. It would be a great job to do alongside another role, but if they company has chosen to pay you to be present in between assignments then they are very much paying you not to do that instead of just having you on call at a cheaper rate. It would be legitimate for them to contractually require you to give them what they paid for, and enforce.

I think it comes down to, are you providing what you are actually being paid for - in the first case pristine inventions, in the final case literally your time.

The other side of this is - in engineering we are trusted to tell the employer how much work we are able to do in a period. At sprint planning I tell my team I can get these 3 tasks done this week and that goes unchallenged.

You could say that it is legitimate for employees to quote less than a full weeks work to their first job to leave room for some work from their second job, because if they aren't getting enough work done they will be fired.

Honestly that assumes a much more aggressive, KPI driven environment than most of us are lucky enough to work in. Would you like to work for a company where your productivity is measured according to some arbitrary KPI like "lines of code" or "supervisor assigned work volume points" or "team agreed scrum points"* and if you aren't in the top 2/3rds in a quarter you get fired? This is normal in sales but generally not in our comfy software roles. Be careful what you wish for.

* A lot of places do stack ranking but it is about getting rid of the negative outliers. Stack ranking to force average performance would be a lot worse.

Not only does it exist, Equifax itself offers this as a service, Equifax's offering is called The Work Number.

You can access your record here - https://employees.theworknumber.com/?_ga=2.101852741.5983227...

From the article -

>For a company like Equifax, this trends represents a potential business opportunity. The company sells a product called Talent Report Employment Monitoring so other companies can keep tabs on potential moonlighting by their employees, too.

Kind of like a mini bunker in your own home.

How?

It stated that in one calendar year, I made slightly less than minimum wage. It also stated that during high school I was working for a civil engineering firm on the opposite end of the country doing engineering work.

If an employer places any faith in that data, you probably don't want to work for them.

And what if his work quality had been consistent and his availability what you expected it to be? Would you still have this reaction?

Of course, if an employee's being useless, perhaps warn / eventually fire them, irrespective to whether they have a second job, which again should be none of the employers' business.

> It took a lot of time to investigate and justify the firing.

So you already knew the work was of poor quality. That's enough reason to let them go. Why do you need to investigate and justify it any further? You don't need to invade their privacy.

> I feel angry at those who lack integrity

I feel angry about a lot of stuff but employees exploiting corporations isn't one of them. I wouldn't do it myself because that's not how my father raised me to behave. I just don't really feel anything when others do it.

Do you think these companies have integrity, loyalty? They have an generally terrible reputation due to their long history of having neither. Do you seriously believe they're a victim here? I mean, we're in a thread discussing the overreach of surveillance capitalism that enables collusion to reduce wages. All this integrity talk is ridiculous in that light.

The fact is that employee just didn't work out for the company. A false positive in the interview process. That's always a risk when you work with other human beings. He didn't "steal" from the company.