Hacker News Reader

Comment by betaby | Hacker News Reader

Of course that is not applicable to 'boards' and 'CxO'. Quick search suggest some of them sitting at at least 2 'boards' or also 'partners' or something. So yeah, rules for thee but not for me.

View on HN

In their defense, board seats are not a full time job. The commitment could be as little as a few hours a month or quarter. “Partner” could also mean quite a few things, such as a partner at a venture firm for example. Which also may not be a full time job.

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.

You could give the same argument for second jobs as well, could be a small gig getting done in an hour, a music class that someone teaches to their neighbourhood kids or someone doing trading on the stock market. It is all additional income, just the semantics of how one gets them is different.

It is true that higher-level employees at companies not uncommonly sit on boards although I assume this is something that high-level employee discusses with their management--and as you say it's typically not a big time committment though can lead to conflicts. And it's not unusual for even individual contributors to be on some unpaid non-profit board but that would generally be out of scope of most employment agreements.

Most CxO positions are full-time although there are, e.g. fractional CFO-type positions for smaller companies.

Boards are usually explicitly not full time. At the previous place I worked, I know from the paperwork we gave the government that the board only worked 2-8 hours a week (and even that might be generous)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com