8 ms·

Specifically, stay away from the tech industry. 1. Look for a smaller antiquated company or department that doesn't understand IT, and has few if any in-house

Specifically, stay away from the tech industry. 1. Look for a smaller antiquated company or department that doesn't understand IT, and has few if any in-house IT professionals. Make sure the role doesn't include user support. Look for "Operations" jobs. 2. Look for positions that have a TON of manual work. Search for "prepare daily/weekly/etc... reports." and similar job functions. 3. Automate as much of it as possible. 4. DO NOT TELL ANYONE that you have automated those functions. (optional - ethical constraints) 5. Insist on working from home so you can work for multiple companies simultaneously.

glitchc 6y ago
Excellent points except (5) Usually immoral and often illegal
- faeyanpiraat 6y ago
  Except if you are hired as a contractor
- cercatrova 6y ago
  I never understand this point personally. If you're delivering value to the multiple companies you work for such that they like you, or at least don't fire you, then I don't see anything immoral in that. It's merely corporations who insist on people working for one and only one company at a time when in reality it shouldn't matter.
  - seniorivn 6y ago
    there is a chance you are going to have access to valuable information of competing companies, that would put you in position of power over them, and is a clear conflict of interests. So it's like a lawyer serving opposing parties in court, nobody's asking why it's impossible
    - amw 6y ago
      That's only true in that particular hypothetical. There are a lot of possible circumstances without such a clear conflict of interest. Also, in the lawyer example, someone's freedom or livelihood is on the line. In the company example, it's a company's profits, which has a much less clear relationship to either of those two things, especially in today's world of 250:1 salary ratios.
  - confidantlake 6y ago
    Completely agree. Do we insist that corporations only sell to a single customer? No that would be absurd. But insisting a person can only sell their labor to a single customer is seen as perfectly normal.
- bazooka_penguin 6y ago
  Why is it immoral? As long as the asked work gets done there's nothing wrong with splitting your time. How it any different from spending that time slacking off and working on hobbies, which could be monetized (ie art)
  - cj 6y ago
    It's immoral because to be hired for a 40/hr full time job by 2 companies at the same time, you'll need to lie to both companies, representing to both that you're working full time, while in fact you aren't. And presumably the lies aren't limited to the interview process. You'll probably have to lie on a daily/weekly basis to keep up the ruse (for example, what will you say when both companies want you in a meeting at the same time?)
    - sidlls 6y ago
      A different take: in this line of work especially the “40 hour” requirement is an unethical backdoor way to impose a non-compete condition. It’s not entirely an arbitrary number since the 40-hour week has been customary for decades. But in practice there’s no good reason to demand that allocation of time for an exempt, salaried employee.
      - devilduck 6y ago
        Agreed, the 40+ hour workweek is unethical and currently status quo. I am all for toppling that norm.
    - ihojman 6y ago
      I don't think it's immoral if you get to accomplish all of your tasks in both companies. For what I understand, companies want you to do the work they hired you for; they make money out of you, otherwise they wouldn't need you. Maybe a better way to be at 2 companies at the same time is by being completely transparent about working on both places with one of the companies. You automate all your full-time boring work in the first one, and in the second maybe you do part-time, or some kind of work that can align with your own interests. maybe an etrepeneurial partnership or a flexible deal to get a new product that really interests you without having to commit all of your life.
- paul_f 6y ago
  Simply insist on being paid by 1099 and don't live in California.
- CamelCaseName 6y ago
  > and often illegal Source? As long as it's not explicitly stated, and in my experience, it never is, then there should be no issue with this.
  - hnarn 6y ago
    It's very common for employment contracts to explicitly forbid you from working on things during your employment that is not directly related to your employment. An expectation of "loyalty" is also often even included in labor law, even in very left leaning countries in Europe.
    - gryn 6y ago
      yes, which is bullshit because this said loyalty is not reciprocated in any meaningful way, I still fail to see how such conditions came to be.
    - dmitriid 6y ago
      As I said in a sibling comment, bill by the hour, and they start calling you a consultant, and suddenly this isn't an issue anymore :)
  - kelp 6y ago
    I've only worked at tech companies, and mostly the kind that you want to work at. But basically every company I've worked at has some clause in the employment contract about outside activities. And typically having another full time job would violate the spirit, if not the letter of the employment contract. That said, some contracting on the side is probably fine, as long as it's not at a competitor.
    - koheripbal 6y ago
      Correct. Most companies have "Moonlighting" clauses. It's a clause that originally meant that you couldn't have a 2nd night job, because you would be exhausted in your primary job, but it also includes having a 2nd job in the same hours.
  - 6y ago
- ncallaway 6y ago
  > often illegal I think a citation is needed here. It _may_ be a contract violation, but I struggle to think of many jurisdictions where this would be illegal. Could you share some examples of when this would violate a law?
- mitchdoogle 6y ago
  I thought the whole point of being paid a salary was to not have to worry about keeping track of hours
pbrb 6y ago
I was in a role that hit 1 & 2 for my first 'job' out of college in 2008. They told me that I couldn't go on vacation if I didn't finish my entire 2 weeks worth of work once... so, I automated all of it. A couple button clicks right before I left town and boom, all of my work was done. Eventually the marketing department caught on that I had a really fast way to build reports and marketing targets that didn't require using a cumbersome db marketing tool and manually generating reports. I shared what I had built, and it royally pissed off everyone else in my role because they thought they were going to lose their cushy do basically nothing jobs. It actually turned into the team building out more tooling + automation, and most people learned valuable skills. The company even sent people to training and paid for tech books etc. I left shortly after for greener pastures, but overall I think it was a net win.
etxm 6y ago
Items three and four I did at my first job (non-technical). I had been screwing around with software through my teenage years building AOL chat tools and little mods for games - I never considered it for a career. I was hired as a data entry clerk when I was 18 at a large hospital. The billing department would work in excel and print hundreds of pages a day for data entry clerks to enter into our insurance billing system. It took me about two weeks before I realized that if I could get them to bring me the spreadsheets on diskettes I could write a program to input the data into the system for me. It took me a few days to figure it out and then I completely automated my job for about six weeks. I was busted reading the Dungeon Masters guide in the middle of the day by my boss. She asked what I was doing and I explained “I am reading the dungeon Masters guide.” I explained that I had written a tool to automate my job. I had not signed a PIIA form and I wrote the software at home on my own computer. I guess the company had no legal right to take it, so she offered me $2000 and a promotion to the IT department to give the company the rights to my software. I was making $7 an hour, so I was very excited at the 2k. I took it and they fired 15 clerks :(
chinchilla2020 6y ago
Early in my career (23 years old) I made the mistake of automating (rule 4) and bragging about it. I wrote some scripts that automated AutoCAD drawing calculations and spit out some spreadsheets. It would save a draftsman or engineer the entire morning of work every business day. Naive and hungry for recognition, I even did a couple presentations about the process and was very proud of myself. Later, I was reprimanded by an 'old school' director for taking shortcuts and changing processes that were well-established. There was no process change, my script performed the same calculations that a draftsman/engineer would click and commit to paper every morning.... zero room for error. My boss was also reprimanded for letting the 'new kids they hired' run amok and do things however they liked. They still used my script though and began giving our group new responsibilities to manage with the time I had freed up.
judge2020 6y ago
5. is like this tweet that suggests there was an engineer that worked at both Google and Facebook simultaneously. https://twitter.com/arrington/status/1311520168200163328?s=20 https://twitter.com/arrington/status/1311520168200163328?s=2... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24650817 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24650817 The issue is that this thread is suspicious, says 'a friend of a friend' so there's literally no way to verify this as being real. It got 20k likes on twitter so it might have just been a made-up tweet to garner a day of fame.

glitchc 6y ago

Excellent points except (5) Usually immoral and often illegal

faeyanpiraat 6y ago
Except if you are hired as a contractor
cercatrova 6y ago
I never understand this point personally. If you're delivering value to the multiple companies you work for such that they like you, or at least don't fire you, then I don't see anything immoral in that. It's merely corporations who insist on people working for one and only one company at a time when in reality it shouldn't matter.
- seniorivn 6y ago
  there is a chance you are going to have access to valuable information of competing companies, that would put you in position of power over them, and is a clear conflict of interests. So it's like a lawyer serving opposing parties in court, nobody's asking why it's impossible
  - amw 6y ago
    That's only true in that particular hypothetical. There are a lot of possible circumstances without such a clear conflict of interest. Also, in the lawyer example, someone's freedom or livelihood is on the line. In the company example, it's a company's profits, which has a much less clear relationship to either of those two things, especially in today's world of 250:1 salary ratios.
- confidantlake 6y ago
  Completely agree. Do we insist that corporations only sell to a single customer? No that would be absurd. But insisting a person can only sell their labor to a single customer is seen as perfectly normal.
bazooka_penguin 6y ago
Why is it immoral? As long as the asked work gets done there's nothing wrong with splitting your time. How it any different from spending that time slacking off and working on hobbies, which could be monetized (ie art)
- cj 6y ago
  It's immoral because to be hired for a 40/hr full time job by 2 companies at the same time, you'll need to lie to both companies, representing to both that you're working full time, while in fact you aren't. And presumably the lies aren't limited to the interview process. You'll probably have to lie on a daily/weekly basis to keep up the ruse (for example, what will you say when both companies want you in a meeting at the same time?)
  - sidlls 6y ago
    A different take: in this line of work especially the “40 hour” requirement is an unethical backdoor way to impose a non-compete condition. It’s not entirely an arbitrary number since the 40-hour week has been customary for decades. But in practice there’s no good reason to demand that allocation of time for an exempt, salaried employee.
    - devilduck 6y ago
      Agreed, the 40+ hour workweek is unethical and currently status quo. I am all for toppling that norm.
  - ihojman 6y ago
    I don't think it's immoral if you get to accomplish all of your tasks in both companies. For what I understand, companies want you to do the work they hired you for; they make money out of you, otherwise they wouldn't need you. Maybe a better way to be at 2 companies at the same time is by being completely transparent about working on both places with one of the companies. You automate all your full-time boring work in the first one, and in the second maybe you do part-time, or some kind of work that can align with your own interests. maybe an etrepeneurial partnership or a flexible deal to get a new product that really interests you without having to commit all of your life.
paul_f 6y ago
Simply insist on being paid by 1099 and don't live in California.
CamelCaseName 6y ago
> and often illegal Source? As long as it's not explicitly stated, and in my experience, it never is, then there should be no issue with this.
- hnarn 6y ago
  It's very common for employment contracts to explicitly forbid you from working on things during your employment that is not directly related to your employment. An expectation of "loyalty" is also often even included in labor law, even in very left leaning countries in Europe.
  - gryn 6y ago
    yes, which is bullshit because this said loyalty is not reciprocated in any meaningful way, I still fail to see how such conditions came to be.
  - dmitriid 6y ago
    As I said in a sibling comment, bill by the hour, and they start calling you a consultant, and suddenly this isn't an issue anymore :)
- kelp 6y ago
  I've only worked at tech companies, and mostly the kind that you want to work at. But basically every company I've worked at has some clause in the employment contract about outside activities. And typically having another full time job would violate the spirit, if not the letter of the employment contract. That said, some contracting on the side is probably fine, as long as it's not at a competitor.
  - koheripbal 6y ago
    Correct. Most companies have "Moonlighting" clauses. It's a clause that originally meant that you couldn't have a 2nd night job, because you would be exhausted in your primary job, but it also includes having a 2nd job in the same hours.
- 6y ago
ncallaway 6y ago
> often illegal I think a citation is needed here. It _may_ be a contract violation, but I struggle to think of many jurisdictions where this would be illegal. Could you share some examples of when this would violate a law?
mitchdoogle 6y ago
I thought the whole point of being paid a salary was to not have to worry about keeping track of hours

pbrb 6y ago

I was in a role that hit 1 & 2 for my first 'job' out of college in 2008. They told me that I couldn't go on vacation if I didn't finish my entire 2 weeks worth of work once... so, I automated all of it. A couple button clicks right before I left town and boom, all of my work was done. Eventually the marketing department caught on that I had a really fast way to build reports and marketing targets that didn't require using a cumbersome db marketing tool and manually generating reports. I shared what I had built, and it royally pissed off everyone else in my role because they thought they were going to lose their cushy do basically nothing jobs. It actually turned into the team building out more tooling + automation, and most people learned valuable skills. The company even sent people to training and paid for tech books etc. I left shortly after for greener pastures, but overall I think it was a net win.

etxm 6y ago

Items three and four I did at my first job (non-technical). I had been screwing around with software through my teenage years building AOL chat tools and little mods for games - I never considered it for a career. I was hired as a data entry clerk when I was 18 at a large hospital. The billing department would work in excel and print hundreds of pages a day for data entry clerks to enter into our insurance billing system. It took me about two weeks before I realized that if I could get them to bring me the spreadsheets on diskettes I could write a program to input the data into the system for me. It took me a few days to figure it out and then I completely automated my job for about six weeks. I was busted reading the Dungeon Masters guide in the middle of the day by my boss. She asked what I was doing and I explained “I am reading the dungeon Masters guide.” I explained that I had written a tool to automate my job. I had not signed a PIIA form and I wrote the software at home on my own computer. I guess the company had no legal right to take it, so she offered me $2000 and a promotion to the IT department to give the company the rights to my software. I was making $7 an hour, so I was very excited at the 2k. I took it and they fired 15 clerks :(

chinchilla2020 6y ago

Early in my career (23 years old) I made the mistake of automating (rule 4) and bragging about it. I wrote some scripts that automated AutoCAD drawing calculations and spit out some spreadsheets. It would save a draftsman or engineer the entire morning of work every business day. Naive and hungry for recognition, I even did a couple presentations about the process and was very proud of myself. Later, I was reprimanded by an 'old school' director for taking shortcuts and changing processes that were well-established. There was no process change, my script performed the same calculations that a draftsman/engineer would click and commit to paper every morning.... zero room for error. My boss was also reprimanded for letting the 'new kids they hired' run amok and do things however they liked. They still used my script though and began giving our group new responsibilities to manage with the time I had freed up.

judge2020 6y ago

5. is like this tweet that suggests there was an engineer that worked at both Google and Facebook simultaneously. https://twitter.com/arrington/status/1311520168200163328?s=20 https://twitter.com/arrington/status/1311520168200163328?s=2... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24650817 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24650817 The issue is that this thread is suspicious, says 'a friend of a friend' so there's literally no way to verify this as being real. It got 20k likes on twitter so it might have just been a made-up tweet to garner a day of fame.