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This is especially lucrative in corporate America. I spend maybe 20 hours / week doing actual coding / technical things. The other half is meetings that could b

This is especially lucrative in corporate America. I spend maybe 20 hours / week doing actual coding / technical things. The other half is meetings that could be emails and daily standups that don’t need to happen. Oh and explaining to a CAB group why your changes need to go into production (because your company asked for these features….?) So it makes it pretty enticing to get a second full time job, learn how to do it well, automate some of it and then only work about 20 hours a week. As long as you’re meeting the deliverables for both organizations, on time and in full, what’s the problem?

ghaff 5y ago
As long as everyone involved knows what the arrangements are.
mooreds 5y ago
> As long as you’re meeting the deliverables for both organizations, on time and in full, what’s the problem? If I was an employer and an employee said "I can meet all the deliverables in 20 hours a week", I'd say either: * great, let's get you working on more deliverables, or * great, let's give you 50% of your pay That's the elephant in the room that I don't see anyone (including this post) addressing. It is perfectly okay to split your time between two employers (I've done it myself as a freelancer). What isn't okay (at least to me) is to say to employer 1: "okay, I'll give you my full time energy, give me work to do", then figure things out so you don't have to give your full time energy (automation, realizing that meetings take too much time, whatever). Then, with that extra time, instead of asking for more work (as you said you would), finding another job. I wonder how folks would feel if the situation were reversed. Say you hired an assistant to help you for 10 hours a week and they were meeting all their goals. Yay! Then, after a few months you find out they were charging you for 10 hours but only working 5. I don't know about you, but I'd feel pretty bummed. Some might say "well, just set the goals and the payment and let the assistant decide how much to work". That's called contracting, not employment. Goals change and it is hard to nail them down in a contract (it requires effort from both parties and is inflexible if things change). Employment occurs when: * the employer wants your time and commitment, with goals to change as needed. * the employee doesn't want the risk of setting a fixed price for their goals. The social contract around employment has changed, yes, and will change further (see https://hbr.org/2013/06/tours-of-duty-the-new-employer-employee-compact https://hbr.org/2013/06/tours-of-duty-the-new-employer-emplo... for more on that), but being honest about effort is critical to me.
- xboxnolifes 5y ago
  Usually when employees can complete all their work in half the time, they end up with promotions; which means more work (expectations) and more pay. If a promotion isn't on the table, or the employee would rather stay where they are, why does it matter if they get their expected work done in less time if you expected the work you paid for to take more time? The amount of work given was obviously (or should have been) priced into the original salary.
- guhidalg 5y ago
  I half disagree. In the case where you are working 20 hours a week and meeting all your deliverables, your employer should simultaneously promote you and give you more work to do. This is assuming that your 20-hour workload is equivalent to a peer's 40-hour workload. If they want to give you more work to do without paying you more, then they're falling into the trap of seeing you as an underutilized machine that could be producing more widgets. Based on your definition of employment, I think you believe that model applies to software development. I think that attitude fundamentally misunderstands that the work we do is not primarily measured in quantifiable output but in qualitative results. Sometimes work takes longer than expected, sometimes work takes less time than expected. What matters is that progress is being made and project deadlines are carefully chosen given available resources and the risk profile of the project.
  - mooreds 5y ago
    > I half disagree. In the case where you are working 20 hours a week and meeting all your deliverables, your employer should simultaneously promote you and give you more work to do. This is assuming that your 20-hour workload is equivalent to a peer's 40-hour workload. Would you give your assistant a raise in the case I outlined?
    - willcipriano 5y ago
      If I had a infinite backlog of assistant tasks that generally generate more money then they cost I would. You're just leaving money on the table otherwise. If I had barely enough tasks to cover a full time assistant, or if assistant tasks were loss leaders, I'd probably go with the slow and cheap one though.
igouy 5y ago
Probably you agreed several times with both employers that they were your sole employers, and would obtain written consent before that changed.
mdorazio 5y ago
> what’s the problem? Contractual problems, context-switching problems, conflict of interest problems, and from experience consulting, time problems since your two companies are very likely to want to have meetings at the same time. If you're an independent contributor at both companies and expectations are low you might be able to pull it off, but if you're a manager forget about it.
- ghaff 5y ago
  If you assume no inherent contractual/contract of interest problems... (Which isn't always necessarily a terrible assumption. Some companies are fine with a little side freelance/consulting work on your "own" time so long as it's not competitive.) You still need a lot of conditions if you're not going to be getting into a lot of elaborate subterfuge and ridiculous amounts of work. A few off the top of my head. If you're a full-time employee, it's a lot more imaginable if you have a contract gig somewhere else rather than a full-time job which almost no employer is going to be OK with. You need a relatively light workload in that first job as an individual contributor. You can't have a lot of meetings, travel, and a fair bit of flexibility generally. You can't really be known in the industry at large. If you can land a contractor job that takes you another 20 hours or so with someone non-competitive which also is largely independent work? And you keep that job pretty quiet. Maybe. But that's imposing a lot of conditions and probably isn't really sustainable for any length of time. It's somewhat interesting as a thought exercise but seems pretty impractical outside of some narrow cases. And maybe that person is just better off consulting which puts everything above-board.
kevinmchugh 5y ago
Do you have an incentive to reduce/eliminate bullshit meetings? On the one hand, those meetings give you cover for getting your work done. On the other, juggling attendance at two sets of meetings seems like the hardest part of this (Read "you" as "one", I guess)

ghaff 5y ago

As long as everyone involved knows what the arrangements are.

mooreds 5y ago

> As long as you’re meeting the deliverables for both organizations, on time and in full, what’s the problem? If I was an employer and an employee said "I can meet all the deliverables in 20 hours a week", I'd say either: * great, let's get you working on more deliverables, or * great, let's give you 50% of your pay That's the elephant in the room that I don't see anyone (including this post) addressing. It is perfectly okay to split your time between two employers (I've done it myself as a freelancer). What isn't okay (at least to me) is to say to employer 1: "okay, I'll give you my full time energy, give me work to do", then figure things out so you don't have to give your full time energy (automation, realizing that meetings take too much time, whatever). Then, with that extra time, instead of asking for more work (as you said you would), finding another job. I wonder how folks would feel if the situation were reversed. Say you hired an assistant to help you for 10 hours a week and they were meeting all their goals. Yay! Then, after a few months you find out they were charging you for 10 hours but only working 5. I don't know about you, but I'd feel pretty bummed. Some might say "well, just set the goals and the payment and let the assistant decide how much to work". That's called contracting, not employment. Goals change and it is hard to nail them down in a contract (it requires effort from both parties and is inflexible if things change). Employment occurs when: * the employer wants your time and commitment, with goals to change as needed. * the employee doesn't want the risk of setting a fixed price for their goals. The social contract around employment has changed, yes, and will change further (see https://hbr.org/2013/06/tours-of-duty-the-new-employer-employee-compact https://hbr.org/2013/06/tours-of-duty-the-new-employer-emplo... for more on that), but being honest about effort is critical to me.

xboxnolifes 5y ago
Usually when employees can complete all their work in half the time, they end up with promotions; which means more work (expectations) and more pay. If a promotion isn't on the table, or the employee would rather stay where they are, why does it matter if they get their expected work done in less time if you expected the work you paid for to take more time? The amount of work given was obviously (or should have been) priced into the original salary.
guhidalg 5y ago
I half disagree. In the case where you are working 20 hours a week and meeting all your deliverables, your employer should simultaneously promote you and give you more work to do. This is assuming that your 20-hour workload is equivalent to a peer's 40-hour workload. If they want to give you more work to do without paying you more, then they're falling into the trap of seeing you as an underutilized machine that could be producing more widgets. Based on your definition of employment, I think you believe that model applies to software development. I think that attitude fundamentally misunderstands that the work we do is not primarily measured in quantifiable output but in qualitative results. Sometimes work takes longer than expected, sometimes work takes less time than expected. What matters is that progress is being made and project deadlines are carefully chosen given available resources and the risk profile of the project.
- mooreds 5y ago
  > I half disagree. In the case where you are working 20 hours a week and meeting all your deliverables, your employer should simultaneously promote you and give you more work to do. This is assuming that your 20-hour workload is equivalent to a peer's 40-hour workload. Would you give your assistant a raise in the case I outlined?
  - willcipriano 5y ago
    If I had a infinite backlog of assistant tasks that generally generate more money then they cost I would. You're just leaving money on the table otherwise. If I had barely enough tasks to cover a full time assistant, or if assistant tasks were loss leaders, I'd probably go with the slow and cheap one though.

igouy 5y ago

Probably you agreed several times with both employers that they were your sole employers, and would obtain written consent before that changed.

mdorazio 5y ago

> what’s the problem? Contractual problems, context-switching problems, conflict of interest problems, and from experience consulting, time problems since your two companies are very likely to want to have meetings at the same time. If you're an independent contributor at both companies and expectations are low you might be able to pull it off, but if you're a manager forget about it.

ghaff 5y ago
If you assume no inherent contractual/contract of interest problems... (Which isn't always necessarily a terrible assumption. Some companies are fine with a little side freelance/consulting work on your "own" time so long as it's not competitive.) You still need a lot of conditions if you're not going to be getting into a lot of elaborate subterfuge and ridiculous amounts of work. A few off the top of my head. If you're a full-time employee, it's a lot more imaginable if you have a contract gig somewhere else rather than a full-time job which almost no employer is going to be OK with. You need a relatively light workload in that first job as an individual contributor. You can't have a lot of meetings, travel, and a fair bit of flexibility generally. You can't really be known in the industry at large. If you can land a contractor job that takes you another 20 hours or so with someone non-competitive which also is largely independent work? And you keep that job pretty quiet. Maybe. But that's imposing a lot of conditions and probably isn't really sustainable for any length of time. It's somewhat interesting as a thought exercise but seems pretty impractical outside of some narrow cases. And maybe that person is just better off consulting which puts everything above-board.

kevinmchugh 5y ago

Do you have an incentive to reduce/eliminate bullshit meetings? On the one hand, those meetings give you cover for getting your work done. On the other, juggling attendance at two sets of meetings seems like the hardest part of this (Read "you" as "one", I guess)