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Comment by frabjoused | Hacker News Reader

I just went through a rough case this week where one of my employees was overemployed FT by three companies and pushing commits to these throughout the workday. When confronted he denied it despite overwhelming evidence, gaslighted me by painting me as untrusting and used that as an excuse to quit. This new problem is only possible with remote work.

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I can tell you dozens of stories about people that were collecting a paycheck and were supposed to be in the office doing work, but were in fact at the nearby comic shop or movie theatre.

Do you lock the doors to the office once everyone has arrived?

Did they spend 10 hours a week in the office, another 20 across the street working at Starbucks and another 10 hours working at the local movie theatre, all from 9 to 5, and draw full time paychecks from all three?

If that employee was a contractor or freelancer, would you consider overemployment a problem?

If the employee is underperforming it's totally unrelated consideration. If not, this is a discussion of why you are employing one. To do a job for you or to sit in 8 hours for you?

You need to start thinking on why you are paying. If someone can fill in 10 jobs' requirements at the same time, none of the employers should be concerned. Or only be concerned why they need only 1/10th of that employee?

It only came up because the person seemed mentally unavailable, and would only do what was asked of them. Yes, I’m paying a full salary for initiative and responsibility.

The issue is less about whether what they did was right or wrong (I'll side with you and say that it was wrong), but that you've got so many potential ways to pay people yet not have them there (mentally and/or physically) that in-office or remote is like an independent variable.

If that's the case, you are already considering this employee underperforming.

Being in the office or being remote does not really change the fact.

TBH, this doesn't seem all that different from a CEO for one company serving on the board of another company or two.

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