double dipper
I wanna laser focus in on this phrase in particular because I think it’s bullshit. No one is double dipping, no one’s getting paid twice to do one job. You do a job, it’s to the satisfaction of your employer, they pay you. That is and has always been the deal. If I can do two jobs to the satisfaction of two employers I deserve and am entitled to two paychecks.
Yeah but employers want to be the only party who can have their cake and eat it by giving one person the work of three people and calling them ‘cross-trained.’
The way employers work. There is no such thing as satisfied. By definition they want every single ounce of your existence to be spent on their enrichment. I’m pretty certain salaries were invented as a mental wedge to expect more and more for the same money.
I think there are two different scenarios being conflated here. Having two jobs where you work 1, then work the other is overall fine. The issue is when you have two jobs that you work during the same time, in other words you work for both companies from 9-5 unbeknownst to those employers. If you’d like to do that you need to be an independent contractor or form your own company and do contracted work where the terms are entirely different between you and the company you do work for.
If you’re getting the work done for both jobs, what’s the problem? If they want to double your workload, they can pay you double.
If I have to wait for you to do something to do part of my job, and the reason I have to wait is you have another job, then that’s a problem. The vast majority of salaried jobs involve collaboration.
Then hire more people? Never heard a complaint when a CEO manages multiple companies.
This argument is dumb. End of the day people are free to do as they like. So are employers. If both parties are satisfied with the work getting done then end of story.
Are you serious? I’m talking about an Employer that isn’t ok with it.
Then there is normal recourse. Derr.
But you would rather the employers have some sort of special rights, huh?
What in the hell are you on about? They can just fire you for cause.
Im not conflating anything. A job is an expectation of work to be done for a wage. I do the work, I get the wage. If the expectation is outlined at the beginning as the job monopolizing my time and me doing whatever work comes along when I’m on the clock, then that’s the job I took and I need to be available to them. But in a lot of jobs the expectation is just to meet certain targets of work to be completed. If I meet those targets, the employer owes me the agreed upon wage. To imply that doing anything less than as much as humanly possible is some sort of fraud normalizes exploitation and abuse.
If I pay the grocery store a dollar for an apple, am I entitled to as many apples as they can possibly deliver me? Obviously not.
If I pay a worker a dollar for a task, am I entitled to as many tasks as they can possibly deliver me? A lot of employers seem to think so.
If the expectation is outlined at the beginning as the job monopolizing my time and me doing whatever work comes along when I’m on the clock, then that’s the job I took and I need to be available to them.
Yes. THAT is the expectation we are talking about. If a company doesn’t expect that, then there is no issue.
in a lot of jobs the expectation is just to meet certain targets of work to be completed. If I meet those targets, the employer owes me the agreed upon wage.
Great. If that’s what your employment agreement says there isn’t a problem. Congrats on finding a white collar salaried job that involves no collaboration or expectations on availability.
If I pay the grocery store a dollar for an apple, am I entitled to as many apples as they can possibly deliver me? Obviously not.
That’s akin to hourly pay. You work an hour you get $10. You buy an Apple you pay $1. Salary is like an all you can eat buffet. You pay $20 you eat 1 Apple, 2 Apples, 3 Apples, etc. But also there are rules; Can’t take anything home, can’t share your food with a non-paying person, you’ll probably get cut off at some point if you eat too much or waste food etc.
If I pay a worker a dollar for a task, am I entitled to as many tasks as they can possibly deliver me?
I think this is the big misconception. You’re describing contract work, not salaried employment.
Working multiple jobs is a part of the fabric of the working world
is this guy for real? is this a common thought in America?
Does it sound fucking dystopic only to me?!
It’s commonly accepted but not commonly enjoyed.
I have met very few people in the USA that worked 2 jobs. I have never had more than one job at a time.
Additionally, I have spent a couple decades in poverty and hanging around people of similar means while those conditions were true.
Not even two part time jobs, or one full time the other part time?
I have twice worked two jobs at once. Both times I was young, late teens/early 20s. Once I was working for one bike shop, but getting fed up with management, when the owner of another bike shop started hiring me on occasion when he needed extra help- which eventually led to me quitting the first shop and working at the second one full time. The other time, I was working for my uncle’s construction business, and I took a second job at a video store one day a week mainly for the benefit of free movie rentals.
Couldn’t you just pay them enough so that they don’t need a second job?
The article also quotes
to “cheat” the system
As if people working two jobs are stealing and not working in exchange for proper value of money.
It’s because the system is designed to keep us paid just enough to live and keep buying from companies, but not enough to have true independence. Working two jobs is cheating that system by giving you more money and freedom than they want you to have. Once you have financial security you can start to wonder about how fucked up this “system” truly is.
Do you really think anyone out there actually wants you to not have more? Doesn’t seem to me that anyone cares. I think the concern is that you will perform your job halfway, not that you will become too solvent. Having more money to spend is always good for the capitalists. Hurting productivity is the fear (whether right or wrong).
Except they’re not even paying us enough to live anymore
It really should depend on the role. If part of your job is being available for inbound requests, or participating in group work of some kind, it seems reasonable to expect that during the business day you will be available and not randomly tied up with other commitments. It would be hard to have two such jobs.
If it’s a task completion kind of job then it shouldn’t matter exactly when the tasks get done as long as they get done.
But you should be able to have one “high availablility” job and one “task completion” job at the same time because your tasks can always be set aside if you are needed. Or two task completion jobs, for the same reason.
In all events, the point is being able to perform your job without undue obstacles. If you can do that, and you’re meeting the goals and criteria set for you, nothing else should matter.
I don’t follow. If you’re claiming you’re putting 40 hours of work in a week, or that is what your contract says, and you’re really only doing 20 because you’re splitting it between two jobs…isn’t that obviously cheating the system?
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t give a shit if people take advantage of a corporation to milk it for cash, but it seems to me to be pretty clearly cheating the system. If you want to get paid on what you produce, and not the time you put in, then you should structure your contracts that I way. I know a lot of my side work I don’t bill hourly precisely because I know it can be done quickly ( for me with experience) but it’s worth more to them.
If you’re salaried, you’re not usually obligated to work a certain number of hours, you’re just obligated to complete tasks on time. If someone holds two salaried positions and works fast enough that they get all obligations for both completed in 40 hours a week, they’re not cheating anyone.
Ive worked many salaried jobs in my life. I’ve never seen a work contract that simply defines your tasks you have to get done. Not saying that it doesn’t happen, but I would be hard pressed to believe it’s common. I don’t even know how you would do that because what tasks I do always shifts, especially in tech. On top of that, how long a task takes is extremely unpredictable. Sometimes I fly through something, sometimes that last 10% takes 90% of the time.
*edit: contract work is very common and definitionally does not define ‘time on the job’, and instead lays out specific metrics of performance related to production. Salaried work is definitely far more common, but to say that’s unusual or impossible is just wrong.
I think this helps elucidate the real issue here, which is the distinction between selling labor and selling your time. One of those is obviously more reasonable and the other shares a conceptual relationship with other types of indentured labor.
It used to be that the distinction didn’t matter since you had to be in a particular place to do a particular work anyway, selling your labor and selling your time looked basically the same and your employer could control and manage how you spent that time. But with remote work, the employer no longer has control over managing your time because they have no (reasonable) way to monitor your production; an employer utilizing monitoring software would (rightly) be seen as an abuse and invasion of privacy. So even though the contract hasn’t changed, people are more aware of how dehumanizing it is not to have sold their labor but control over a certain number of hours of their life.
I obviously have bias here, but I think defining labor by its measure of time is alienating and inhumane.
It’s less about contractual and legalities and more about the feel of the workplace. A lot of places, especially remote jobs, are more laid-back and open-minded than traditional 9-to-5 ass-in-seats old fashioned office jobs.
I manage a decent sized team of salaried people and I am 100% behind this.
If I were to have a criticism it would be of management hiring more people than they really need, not paying good wages, and/or not recognizing when one of their people is ready for a bigger role.
It’s never happened on my team that I know of, but if I were to run into that case and my guy was getting his job done properly then zero fucks would be given.
Do all of your team members finish their work at the same time, or are some slower than others? Do some require more help than others, or take up more than your time managing? Do you just fire the worst performing ones? Does anything change if you find out that the worst performing person has another job he’s doing during the same hours he’s working for you and maybe that’s why he’s performing under his peers?
If I were to have a criticism it would be of management hiring more people than they really need
A lot of companies I’ve worked at have been the opposite 😅 management making do with less by making people work harder to the point of burnout is not very helpful.
Agreed on management not recognizing when one of their people is ready for a bigger role, it’s even worse when the person is performing that role and has expectations of that role but doesn’t have the title or salary bump to show for it.
Oh definitely lots of places under hire, that wasn’t really what I was getting at. I meant if someone is in a full time role at a job and has enough free time to take a whole as other job without any apparent impact on his output, odds are good they have a lot more people on the team than they really need and a good proportion of people’s time gets spent on the illusion of work getting done more so than the substance.
This is how it works where I live from a legal point of view too. If you “show up” (in-person or remote doesn’t matter) to your full-time job and are “available” for work but they don’t have enough for you, legally you must be paid for your full number of hours (your entire salary). You are paid for your time, not your results. You keep your job by delivering good results, however, since that’s a different matter.
It really depends on the job. For example, security guards need to be present AND vigilant. It’s not reasonable for them to be fooling with spreadsheets on their phone or something. However, a spreadsheet worker is not technically required to sit in their chair 40 hours. They need to get a certain amount of work done. Who cares when they do it? The rub comes when some people think that the spreadsheet job is mandated 40 hours in the chair but it really isn’t. That’s not in the papers you signed. It’s just a “soft expectation” or assumption that management had. If you are completing all the work expected of you during a day, it shouldn’t matter if it took you a full 8 hours or not.
Having said that, someone who only completes what’s given and never contributes extra on their own initiative, or looks for additional ways to be helpful, is not going to be as appreciated. They might not get promoted as fast. But that’s different than cheating.
Most of these people are over paid actually. Making without stock over 150k and then around the same in RSUs or more.
The issue is many folks were only doing like 3 or 4 hr a day and then double dipped to collect another paycheck because they had the time to. I don’t necessarily fault them.
Friend of mine intentionally took a boring bank job making like 50k less than he was making (so around $125k a yr) so he could coast as a high performer there then planned and did find another gig in Pacific time (were east Coast) and then pulled two checks and still only worked like 42 hr a week.
This is the true reason there making work from home optional.
This is why we can’t have nice things.
Huh? If the job can be done this fast and the contract says, you get this money for doing that, why should that be wrong, meaning why should anyone be unhappy?
Except companies are just in for the money and would rather pay you less … Hmmm
and the contract says, you get this money for doing that
Almost certainly the contract doesn’t say this tho.
Mine does. But I’m not working manual labor, so it definitely can and will differ I guess
Is that a job you could get away with working 2 at the same time remotely?
Not really, maybe this one and a half time job or sth, I work 4-8 hours a day depending on what’s happening (I work in it)
All I can say is I agree with you; however, lots of contracts have you agree that you only work for that company while you’re employed by them
Yeah, I think mine has a clause too, that requires me to at least inform my employee
That’s the point of the clause; to fire people who tell them they’re working a second full-time job. When required to be in office everywhere it becomes quite obvious very quickly. They’re upset they can’t tell if you’re two-timing or not if you work from home, so they want to make sure you come in and work for them
Petty tactics from petty people. If someone is doing the job they are paid for, why bother? It’s like the employers are entitled to the 40 hours or something, even if all the work is done.
A real CEO should make absolutely sure, that no employee has to work more than one job to be able to afford to live.
The US is just absolutely fucked in the head.
I don’t know a single other country (to be fair i don’t know many) where you couldnt survive if you had only one fulltime job.There’s a difference between has to work a second job, and decides to. Some people preffer having more money at the cost of their free time.
Jesse what are you talking about? That is not what the article is about. How is that relevant?
While a problem, this one is covering high paid tech workers who are pulling $250,000 per job.
Undertone: We don’t pay enough for one job to be enough. The correct response is to raise wages so people have free time.
I only read to the break, but it sounds more like this is a case of someone WFH for multiple big tech companies to maximize income - someone who isn’t interested in free time when they could be puling down multiple 6-figure jobs. There are several internet accounts of people working for MS and FB at the same time, pulling $200k+ from each.
The implication of a double dipper is that they’re really only giving 1/2 effort to each job, which is a reasonable assumption for the average person. Most people aren’t productive more than 30-35 hours a week, regardless of the number of hours they mold a chair in the shape of their ass. This seems to be a “hey, maybe the employee isn’t the problem” take - that you’re paying for production, and if the products targets are hit you’re getting your money’s worth. Now, if they’re not getting hit, or the management doesn’t have enough experience to know how much effort (in work-hours/work-years) are needed on a job, that’s a different problem which isn’t a function of the WFH laborer.
Lol you think anyone gives 100% effort to their job? Not even the CEO cares that much.
Its this, and especially with WFH there are is a pretty large spectrum of “productivity” among users. Some people are much slower than others, but we don’t fire them because of it. People that think it’s ok to have 2 jobs at once as long as they “meet their expectations” seem to be applying hourly assembly line or warehouse performance metrics to much more subjective work. It just doesn’t work that way. If my less productive employee does good work, albeit slower I don’t think he should be fired. If I find out the reason he does it slower is he’s working a second job while I wait for him, then that’s a different story.
they’re really only giving 1/2 effort to each job
total possible effort from an employee is a shitty, exploitative way to measure job performance. is someone who sucks at 100% effort a better employee than someone who does an amazing job at 50% effort? better to measure it based on whether the job’s requirements are being met. if they are, you get paid. if they are not, you get fired. as you said yourself: if the targets are being hit the employer is getting what they pay for, and they’re entitled to no more than that.
Finally someone with authority says it!
Nobody would complain about a freelancer with multiple clients, even at the same time, provided they got their work done on time and on budget. Why isn’t it the same for employees? Why do bosses get to treat them like clients from hell?
I’m not saying they’re justified in this, because frankly if someone is getting their work done, what they do outside of work hours isnt their boss’s business, but I can kinda imagine why a company might not like their employees to have a second job; people only have so much effort to give (consider all those stats people bring up whenever people talk about shortening the workweek, to the effect that working more hours diminishes productivity per hour and gives diminishing or even negative returns compared to fewer hours in many cases) and so a company might decide that an employee with a second job might not be as productive for them as they would be otherwise, due to being exhausted. Though really, if they do it’s honestly the company’s fault for paying so little as for someone to need a second job in the first place.
CEOs and executives do this regularly, so unless their jobs are a lot simpler than they’re claiming the “attention” argument is moot. They pay me to do a thing. I do the thing. They pay me what they’d say they’d pay. That’s it.
FWIW, Microsoft explicitly allows having multiple jobs. Their policy basically amounts to “don’t cross the streams”.
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If you managed to do the work for both, they probably wouldn’t mind. You wouldn’t manage to do it tho.
They def would mind
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The real question is why do people need 2 jobs? If its just ambition or wtv then ok, but if its out of the need to pay the bills and just get by, why is it happening? Or course its convenient for this mfers to say that. Better have people working multiple jobs to get by and keep their mouth shut then having them rebeling, joinin unions, protesting and so on.
The type of worker that article is talking about don’t. They are making $250,000 per job. People making too little to live off largely don’t have jobs that you would lie about working 2 at the same time.
I have a job where the unspoken agreement is they under pay you but you get to underwork proportionally to your favor. I’m more ambitious so I spend the free time on more work. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is more of a benefit to software people than most workers
They underpay you knowing you won’t work as hard for them? I don’t understand business owners.
Lol it’s the government. But to be honest, it’s a pretty good deal. If you’re not ambitious, you have an easy safe cushy life. If you are ambitious, you have time and security to try things your way
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Working a second job outside of the hours or scope of tour main job is one thing, but many people double dipping are literally getting paid by two companies for the same hours. That’s different imo.
Like people who are the boards of multiple companies, in leadership roles in multiple companies, and pretty much anyone at the top of company structures?
All that should matter is if they are doing what they were hired to do.
No, not like your example. If a CEO is secretly serving on another companies board you may have a point, but we’re talking about people having two jobs with the clear implication that their employers don’t know it.
“Doing what they are hired to do” is very often defined in employment agreements as working x number of hours. You can’t really say you’re doing what you’re hired to do if you take a second job that you perform during the same hours when you’re not allowed to under your agreement.
If someone wants to work 9-5, then 5-1 and somehow can manage both that’s different. For liability sake alone it’s a problem.
Full time employees might have core hours and then flexibility outside of that. Otherwise, you do your work as quickly as possible and then outside of that is free time. Unless they are reusing the same work at two jobs, they likely are not double dipping. If their metrics are fine, there is no reason for a manager to care other than wanting to micro manage someone’s life.
To be clear: If you Tell two employers that you are working for them from 1pm to 2pm, you are double dipping. The title of the article doesn’t line up with the content. Having a second job that you work outside of the hours / commitment of your first job is fine as long as you didn’t agree not to do so with your first employer. If you want to work 9-5 earning 6 figures in a WFH white collar job, then go out and get a night job at Target and are somehow able to succeed during your first job the vast majority of employers aren’t going to give a shit. The reason employers give a shit is this is a largely fake narrative. Studies have shown the 40 hour work week is too long. People working two jobs cannot keep it up for long and be as good at their jobs. Second, people are conflating having 2 separate jobs with working two jobs at the literal same time. Working 9-5 at two companies and juggling email and meetings between them. The article touches on this, but I completely disagree with the author. So much of business is based on collaboration that having to wait for a peer who is doing work for another company now costs the first company for every person that is waiting on them. Maybe 2% of my work can be done without a single other co-worker being involved in some way. During regular business hours the expectation is that you are being paid to work and collaborate with your co-workers on a regular basis outside of normal PTO etc.
Not really. If they’re fulfilling their contractual obligations to their employer(s), then who the hell cares?
It’s long past time that we stop treating employees like they’re chattel of the company that they work for. You hire someone to do a job, which they either do to your satisfaction or not, but you don’t own them and you shouldn’t get to control the parameters of their life.
They aren’t fulfilling their contractual obligations if they aren’t allowed to have a second job and are doing it anyway, so this notion is nonsense to begin with. If you get paid hourly you can’t be working for someone else while getting paid by the first company for the same time. For salaried, typically there are expectations of how long you’ll be working or even your availability.
The company I work for has more than three decades of experience with WFH, and it’s almost always clear when someone is trying to double dip. It’s impossible to keep it hidden for long. Eventually you will have conflicting schedules, and excuses start piling up. Even if the work is good, very few jobs are done in a vacuum where you never need to talk to anyone or work things through. Most situations like that are handled by subcontractors who have all the freedoms you’re talking about. In fact the only situation I can even think of that would fit the mold of how work is being framed here is through contractors.
If you CAN do both at the same time, who gets hurt?
It’s preposterous to think you CAN simultaneously do so without impact either at all. All it takes is two meetings or two impromptu phone calls at once. You will choose one over the other, in which case the company you didn’t prioritize is hurt as well as the other employees that you’re collaborating with.
Become a contractor if you want to double dip. You set your own schedule, work as many jobs as you want, and even get to choose your own raises.
There will be impact for sure, but as long as you still perform your job to the satisfaction of both employers, then it does not matter.
Paying a wage doesn’t mean you own 100% of the concentration of a person. It means you want them to do a job, and as long as they do it well enough for your standards, then the contract is fulfilled. Whether they can do the job at 70% or 40% concentration does not matter. You still get what you have paid for.
If you want your employees to concentrate more on your job, then pay them more so they don’t have to get a second job.
There will be impact for sure, but as long as you still perform your job to the satisfaction of both employers, then it does not matter.
If both employers know you are doing it and are ok with it there’s no problem. Its when it’s being hidden from them that it’s a problem. I’ll give you an example:
So say I’m a lead collaborating on a project with two people under me. Bob does great work, needs little to no assistance, and I can trust that he gets it done not only right, but also takes ownership of it and will bring things up if he sees problems. He doesn’t just wait for me to find them as the lead. Jim on the other hand takes a lot longer to do his part. He doesn’t bring up anything like Bob does even though it should be pretty obvious that it’s wrong because it impacts his part of the work, he waits for me to review, find it, and then have to reach back out to him for it to be fixed or changed. He is also far less responsive than Bob to emails, IMs, and isn’t able to multitask nearly as well. So clearly in this situation Bob is a better employee than Jim, and Bob receives bonuses and perhaps higher pay depending on other factors than Jim. However that’s not to say Jim is a bad employee and should be fired does it? A lot of the work can be subjective. Maybe Bob found those errors because he has more experience in the job and has run into the problem in the past and Jim has not. I can’t put “find problems in documents” in their job description so vaguely and then dock them every time they miss something, that would be absurd. People are different. Bob will likely be promoted to a higher role shortly, while Jim won’t, even though they were hired at the same time for the same role. I’d like to see Jim take more ownership of his work and take it upon himself to not just wait to be told what to do on a micro-level but come to me with what he thinks needs to be fixed, and so on. These are things that can be covered at reviews, and often have, and for a little while he seems to get better at it.
So given this situation, am I wrong in keeping Jim as an employee? His work isn’t as good as his peer who was hired for the same job at the same time, and he hasn’t stepped up to take on the same responsibility in the work that I would expect someone being on the job as long as he does. Is the right thing to do to fire him outright?
But now what If It comes to my attention that during the time he was working on the project he was working a second job, and not focusing on the task he told me he was working on. Did he not find those errors because he wasn’t paying attention due to working on something else? Was he avoiding any added work from found errors so he could do work for that other company? Is his lack of multitasking ability not actually true and he’s doing work for someone else while ignoring me further delaying the project and taking my time up to help him?
“Well Enough for your standards” is entirely subjective. I don’t treat my people like robots who can be mathematically judged. There isn’t a binary existence of good or bad. I don’t fire people immediately upon feeling they are sub-standard. I feel I often bend over backwards trying to help people get better, I push for bonuses and promotion when I think they are deserved. I don’t at all believe that outcome that is all that matters. I truly believe that a person who puts in more effort and gets a worse result will be a better employee long term. I’ve seen it time and time again.
And to your last point about paying people enough; While that’s certainly true in some cases, the article cites tech workers pulling in $500,000 through it. Clearly it’s not about being under paid.
It depends on the terms of employment. If they are salaried, then there are no real work hours and just work to do. In general, if someone is salaried, they’re paid to do a job not when they do it.
This is not true. Salaries only means your pay is decided on a yearly basis and divided into each paycheck and not calculated and tracked per hour. Other conditions of employment including working hours and specific job duties are all part of your employment agreement. If your agreement has no set hours of any sort or limitations for other work, then there’s no problem. If a company is going to agree to pay you a salary, they are going to set how many hours you should be working, and reasonably expect you not to be double dipping.
Maybe it is because I have worked in tech oriented roles (which this article is geared towards)but none of my jobs have stipulated number of hours I need to work.
How specific is your employment agreement?
Not nearly that specific. Not sure why it would be unless the company sucks at measuring performance.
There have been times in my career I wished it were more specific. I’ve found companies with loose employment agreements tend to make things your job by reclassification more often than not.
It’s completely accepted when CEOs and other executives serve on multiple boards or even run more than one company. Companies demanding 100% of any employee are just abusing labor and embracing unequal labor practices, and those practices aren’t against any law, companies just make up their own ‘policies’ to try and make their own laws.
