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>If I found out one of my salaried employees was moonlighting I'd immediately be looking for evidence that it had the slightest impact on their responsibilities

>If I found out one of my salaried employees was moonlighting I'd immediately be looking for evidence that it had the slightest impact on their responsibilities & performance a predictable response, but it's the wrong one which will surely lose your company plenty of money and valuable employees extremely rapidly while generating a tremendous amount of ill-will from the people in your network. really, it's the attitude that's creating the problematic and unprofitable approach here. aside from being disgustingly invasive and utterly reprehensible from a social perspective, you've also put yourself in a position where you're spending your company's time on something that will never generate it any financial returns, only more costs when the employee discovers your snooping and inevitably ditches you and you need you find a replacement on short notice. the correct response here is to re-evaluate how much you're paying the employees that are moonlighting because it clearly isn't enough to keep them appeased, which means that by definition it isn't enough to keep them operating at 100% during the hours you expect to be getting 100% of their energy and potential for productive output. in other words, moonlighting employees need a raise because at the salary you're paying them, they know they can't afford to stop looking for more opportunities to work for pay. when you do find a reason to give that employee a raise proactively, you'll increase their output to the level you thought you were purchasing with the initial salary negotiations. you'll also increase their loyalty to the company, and avoid intruding on their private life, which is explicitly, irrevocably, and unimpeachably beyond your purview, consideration, or examination under any conditions whatsoever. in a nutshell: focus on things you can change, then stay in your lane.

PragmaticPulp 7y ago
> the correct response here is to re-evaluate how much you're paying the employees that are moonlighting because it clearly isn't enough to keep them appeased, Might be true for some people, but it's not the primary motivation for freelancers. Usually it's the highly-skilled, highly-paid people who are in a position to pick up freelance work, not your lowest-paid workers at the bottom of the hierarchy. They do it not because they need the money, but because it's there for the taking and they get to work on something interesting while they do it. With a salaried dayjob, your effective hourly rate goes down with each additional hour you work. With a freelance job, your effective income goes up with each additional hour worked. Someone who has both types of job at the same time has an incentive to minimize their input to their dayjob so they can maximize the incremental income from their freelancing work. Sure, theoretically a perfect employee could keep their dayjob perfectly isolated from freelancing work, but in practice people with an hourly side hustle can't resist the temptation to sandbag at work. The whole crux of the argument for shorter workdays and shorter workweeks is that people only have so many productive hours each week. Past the point of diminishing returns, their work quality and productivity drop. If someone is working 40 hour weeks, commuting, and also freelancing for another 10-30 hours per week, which job gets their best hours? Which job gets their least productive hours? In my experience, side-hustle freelancers always let their dayjob work output slip, whether they expect to or not. This is why you need to watch employees very closely as soon as you get wind that they're freelancing.
- chownie 7y ago
  Would you watch an employee closely if their performance dipped after they started a hobby game development project? Or night classes? How about if they just had a new born? Do you also acknowledge the weeks their performance is better than average? Do you compensate them for it, or is it just a given? You have the right to be concerned about someone's time but only while they are at work. Your employees get to do what they want outside of work hours. I'd wager those X hours a week in the office are often not the most important part of your life, why should it be for them?
- learc83 7y ago
  Almost everyone I know has some kind of side hustle. Whether it's a job, a business, a serious hobby whatever. And unless you hire a 22 year old with zero responsibilities, you're never going to get 100% from anyone. It's absurd to expect 100% in the first place. All you should be concerned with is whether or not someone is getting their work done. Not whether they are capable of doing even more.

PragmaticPulp 7y ago

> the correct response here is to re-evaluate how much you're paying the employees that are moonlighting because it clearly isn't enough to keep them appeased, Might be true for some people, but it's not the primary motivation for freelancers. Usually it's the highly-skilled, highly-paid people who are in a position to pick up freelance work, not your lowest-paid workers at the bottom of the hierarchy. They do it not because they need the money, but because it's there for the taking and they get to work on something interesting while they do it. With a salaried dayjob, your effective hourly rate goes down with each additional hour you work. With a freelance job, your effective income goes up with each additional hour worked. Someone who has both types of job at the same time has an incentive to minimize their input to their dayjob so they can maximize the incremental income from their freelancing work. Sure, theoretically a perfect employee could keep their dayjob perfectly isolated from freelancing work, but in practice people with an hourly side hustle can't resist the temptation to sandbag at work. The whole crux of the argument for shorter workdays and shorter workweeks is that people only have so many productive hours each week. Past the point of diminishing returns, their work quality and productivity drop. If someone is working 40 hour weeks, commuting, and also freelancing for another 10-30 hours per week, which job gets their best hours? Which job gets their least productive hours? In my experience, side-hustle freelancers always let their dayjob work output slip, whether they expect to or not. This is why you need to watch employees very closely as soon as you get wind that they're freelancing.

chownie 7y ago
Would you watch an employee closely if their performance dipped after they started a hobby game development project? Or night classes? How about if they just had a new born? Do you also acknowledge the weeks their performance is better than average? Do you compensate them for it, or is it just a given? You have the right to be concerned about someone's time but only while they are at work. Your employees get to do what they want outside of work hours. I'd wager those X hours a week in the office are often not the most important part of your life, why should it be for them?
learc83 7y ago
Almost everyone I know has some kind of side hustle. Whether it's a job, a business, a serious hobby whatever. And unless you hire a 22 year old with zero responsibilities, you're never going to get 100% from anyone. It's absurd to expect 100% in the first place. All you should be concerned with is whether or not someone is getting their work done. Not whether they are capable of doing even more.