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How to Set Low Expectations at Your Two Remote Jobs

175 points by oriettaxx 5y ago

HPsquared 5y ago
It's ironic that a site about working two simultaneous jobs has a "resource limit exceeded" error.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
midjji 5y ago
This really highlights how salaries really only ever motivate some people to work the absolute minimum.
- actually_a_dog 5y ago
  When you show people that hard work is just rewarded with more hard work, and isn't compensated at a rate that's worth it, what else do you expect? I wish I could find the link, but I read about a study which showed explicitly that this is true (the reward for hard work is more work), and, surprisingly, that hard workers didn't like that. Seriously, why would you bother?
  - midjji 5y ago
    Skilled leadership.
bellyfullofbac 5y ago
Haha, the error message is a bit ironic when talking about working 2 full time jobs: Resource Limit Is Reached - The website is temporarily unable to service your request as it exceeded resource limit. Please try again later.
- zekenie 5y ago
  Hilarious
bearbin 5y ago
Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20211117171239/https://overemployed.com/set-low-expectations-at-your-two-remote-jobs/ https://web.archive.org/web/20211117171239/https://overemplo...
- bdidicn 5y ago
  This is an endless redirect loop for me on mobile
- pph 5y ago
  Unfortunately that site seems to keep reloading forever (/e/ Browser which is a Chromium/Bromite fork). I haven't been able to check the original site though, so the issue might be present there as well.
  - bearbin 5y ago
    Ah, uMatrix saved me from that... Reader mode seems to work well on Firefox to stop the redirection as well.
- kuyan 5y ago
  Redirect loop for me but I can load the page if I disable Javascript. Here's a copy of the text (keywords: mirror, archive): > How To Set Low Expectations At Your Two Remote Jobs > On April 12, 2021 By Chloe T. In Corporate Life, Multiple Remote Work, Tactics > One of the keys to success while working two remote jobs is communications and setting low expectations with your boss. You want to give the perception of meeting standards while striving to overachieve in your primary “keeper” job. You want to set yourself up for success, and by success, we mean keeping the two remote jobs for as long as possible. Naturally, with working two jobs, one job will be more demanding than the other. The strategy is to set the workload low in at least one of the two jobs so you can navigate spikes in workload. Remember, the end goal here is to have dual income streams and reach financial freedom sooner. > Why Is Perception And Setting Low Expectations Important For Remote Work > We’ve heard it before, perception is everything. This HBR article illustrates a great example of how perception matters at the end of the day, not the real story. The fact is if you’re perceived as a hard worker, it doesn’t matter what you do behind the scenes. In the two job game, you want to be perceived as someone who meets expectations. While in reality, your aim is to do the minimum and get by; don’t get fired while secretly hoping to get laid off. A strategy to achieve a positive perception (and outcome) is accomplished by setting low expectations with your manager. > Why Setting High Expectations With Your Boss Is A Waste Of Time > Let’s first start by going over what everyone tells you to do – set high expectations, get promoted. Yes, this leads to more money. That’s great. But let’s look at the ROI because all great employees and MBA’s should care about the ROI on behalf of the company. > But what about your Personal ROI’s? Indeed’s research concluded that the average employee raise is 3%. It may be a bit higher in tech, so let’s say 5 – 10%. > You might need to put in 30% more hours, more stress, more work to get a minimal increase in your salary. To me, setting those high expectations to get a promotion is a waste of time. You can get a second job and easily give yourself an 80% “raise” for your work. Also, I’m a good employee by being mindful of ROI’s, my own. > What I’ve Learned About Setting Low Expectations From Years of Working > What I’ve learned is expectations need to be set from day 1. I once worked with a new senior manager who always left at five o’clock since his very first day. New hires usually stay late to ramp up quickly. Not this guy. He set the expectation that he would leave the office by five and stuck by it every day. It was genius. A year into the job, he’s still shutting down at five while the rest of us kept working. > For managers, it’s typically hard to have that conversation, “can you put in more hours?” If your manager adds new tasks, just be clear you cannot complete them in the timeframe given. If you’re labeled as the “guy who leaves at five,” people won’t give you more work knowing you can’t get to it. More work is assigned to you once you do a great job, and it is an endless circle. This story is just one example, but the lesson is to set expectations early and set them low. That way, the only place to go is up. > Once you set high expectations, you’re always going to fail if you don’t meet them. Like the concept behind the HBR perception article, you can have done great work but once you fail to meet the expectations that’s what people remember. How many times you think you did a great job, but when you have your review, your boss mentions all the “failures” and missed expectations. Sound familiar? > How To Set Low Expectations At Work With Your Manager > Let’s get into how you can set low expectations while working your two remote jobs. As we mentioned, set these expectations early. > Be The One To Drive The Conversation > Don’t ask what your boss’s expectations are; set them yourself. Instead of going into the conversation by asking what their expectations are, set and communicate them to your manager. By asking what their expectations are, you are putting yourself in a corner. In developing your own low expectations and communicating them, you are placing the burden on your boss to have that difficult conversation with you to say otherwise. Psychologically, it’s harder to say no, than to say yes. Let your boss be the one to say no to you. As a new employee, you’re most likely to slide by for the first review cycle with this method. > Communicate Often And Early > Being a great communicator can be a great asset. Think about those who do great work and are not great communicators. What about those who do mediocre work but can communicate. Who do you think will be looked upon more favorably? Set your expectations and make them visible to everyone to know what to expect. Take this as an opportunity to improve your communication skills. With practice comes mastery. ... > As you can see from this example, the employee overcommunicating comes across as more trustworthy and in control. That’s the perception you want to convey. Even though something is not on track, or you haven’t started at all, just the fact you are communicating the details along the way, people are more comfortable. Also by communicating frequently, you can soften the blow of the miss. > Explain The Reasons Behind Your Low Expectations > While setting expectations is excellent, if you can back up your thought process to come to those expectations, you have a better case. Always come to the table with your examples of how you thought through your goal-setting process. For example, if you are new to a particular field, you can put the small milestones to achieve “xyz” goal. With each milestone, you can explain how difficult it was to reach that milestone and drag out the timeline to the next set of milestones to achieve “xyz” mastery. > Good communicators always over-communicate. They are perceived to be in control, even what’s said is the same message just repeated many times. If you have project updates, and the updates are the same for weeks, you’re still being perceived as a good project manager since you are visible and proactive in communicating. Again it’s about perception. Like the deft hands of magicians, mastering resetting expectation is just as important as setting low expectations at the beginning. Leverage Your Newbie Card In Setting Low Expectations > Being new has its advantages. No one knows you, so you start off with a clean slate. You can take advantage by setting low expectations with your manager for your first review cycle. There are many barriers to mastering your remote jobs, such as ramp-up time, company culture, new systems, and different procedures. Let these barriers shine in setting your low expectations – and all the more reasons to have unambitious goals. > Leverage The Review Cycle > Understand when the review cycle starts and ends. Set and time your goals to the review cycle. Usually, people set goals for the year, but keep in mind you’re evaluated on review cycles. There’s no use in setting goals for eight months when the review is only four months away. > Be A Follower Not A Leader > Realize that not everyone needs to be a leader in every job. Everyone is different and it takes employees of all types to make the company hum. There’s nothing wrong with being a follower and doing what’s expected. Remember, there are no leaders if there are no followers. Avoid the slippery ladder in your career. Take the side door instead. > Setting Low Expectations And The Two-Job Game Plan > The game plan for two remote jobs is to set the expectations low with your manager and prolong your hustle until your exit to another job or you’re laid off with a severance. For the second non-primary job, you’re there for one reason only, to collect a paycheck. A paycheck that is 500%+ more than a raise. The goal is to keep the paycheck going for as long as you can with minimal effort. > 30 days – The first 30 days are easy due to ramp up but are critical to set low expectations. Set yourself up for success in working two jobs. Be that guy or girl who always logs off at five o’clock (even better at four), and let people know. Once you start extending yourself, answering emails and messages after hours, your co-workers will see that as the norm and more work will creep up on you. If you’re never available after a certain time, your colleagues won’t message you because they know you won’t respond. > 60 days – In the 30-60 day window, you should set goals with your boss if that’s not already done. Drag out the newbie card and claim slow ramp-up time. Identify what absolutely needs to be done, communicate that as your goal, and meet them. Again, it’s all about the perception that you meet expectations, not the work you’ve actually done. You can do little work but as long as you met the communicated expectations you’re golden. > What If You Don’t Feel Right Low Balling Expectations At Work – Put The Ego Aside > We’re primed at a very young age to be the best we can be. We look up to leaders in society. If your ultimate end goal is financial freedom, you have to strategize and optimize for that and put your ego aside. You’re aiming to be a leader in your personal life and the truly ambitious one land two jobs. Who cares if you’re not a leader in the public eye of a workplace. You can channel the guilt, if any, towards donating the extra money to a good cause, like the YMCAs. Go do something you care about. Work is just means to an end. Join us in the counterculture towards work.
bonestamp2 5y ago
It says a lot about our work culture when leaving at 5pm is considered setting your boss's expectations "low".
- goldcd 5y ago
  I think it depends. My current job is relaxed over hours - I'll checks emails at home, wander in mid-morning and leave when my works is done. Might be 5 if I get it done or have plans, or might be into the evening (quite pleasant/productive to work uninterrupted in a empty room). I've got other colleagues who'll be logged in at 08:30 (so I believe) and leave on the dot of 17:00. I think both approaches work for different people and for the company a mix gives them more flexibility without having to create a formal plan. I think what the article was bringing up was that if you set expectations and are seen to conform to them, everybody is happy (or doesn't think about it). If you're the person who's always there as the office opens and sticks around late - you may be noticed and get a pat on the back, but it's never going to compensate for the additional hours you put in. This might be fine if you have one job and a career - but if you're trying to hold down 2 jobs, those extra couple of hours each day are 50% of the effort of holding down that 2nd job. They're worth 50% of a whole new salary.
- alkonaut 5y ago
  Love being on an old fashioned “clock”. I log my time by the minute and if I work 41 hours one week I work 39 the next week. Worst case I aggregate maybe 20-30 hours over a few busy weeks and then I use it to take a day or two off.
- jamil7 5y ago
  German work culture outside of startups is a bit more like this, get in on time, work hard, don’t fuck around all day, punch out after 8 hours and don’t socialise with colleagues outside of work. Obviously I’m generalising a lot and exaggerating but it was something I observed.
omosubi 5y ago
I love that we are collectively acknowledging that we're all lazy as hell. First that askHN about lying about working and now the HN hug of death for this article
- Sebguer 5y ago
  In case anyone was curious about the AskHN re: lying about work, and missed it like I had: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29581125 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29581125
- nerdponx 5y ago
  Lazy? Not true. We are getting more comfortable admitting that we don't give a shit about our employers beyond what is required. If only the rest of the economy had the same luxury.
xupybd 5y ago
Or believe in the work you do and get satisfaction from working hard and delivering above and beyond. I've burnt out before and lost motivation. It's horrible. I'd much rather buy into the company vision as much as possible. I'd hate to have two jobs that are purely about time in equals money out. I want one job where leadership inspires me to work hard and get more done than I would have without them.
- rokob 5y ago
  I really agree with what you are saying, but counterintuitively buying “into the company vision as much as possible” seems to result in the most burnout for me when reality eventually hits. I’ve been trying to figure out how to temper my natural tendency to go all-in with the reality that everything has some shit that sucks. I can understand the hope that there might be some psychological ease associated with dissociating yourself from the vision.
  - redisman 5y ago
    I can only control small parts of the tech side of a company. It’s silly to worry about things outside of your control so I definitely don’t “buy into the company vision”. I just deliver good software and hope everyone else knows what they’re doing so I don’t need to find a new job.
  - throwanem 5y ago
    Whether you're working W2, 1099, or an LLC, you're still running a business that trades in engineering labor, namely yours. That's the company whose vision you want to invest in. If you like your current clients' vision too, great! That kind of alignment is always preferable. But remember that you're always first representing your own interests, because you're the only one at the table for whom those interests are paramount. Good clients understand and respect that. Bad clients are what you use to avoid starving while you're out finding good clients.
- xwdv 5y ago
  So basically you want to be worked hard like a horse and feel satisfied at the end of the day when you lay your head down to rest that you have made a difference, don’t even care much about the money because the work is it’s own reward.
brosky117 5y ago
This is how you ruin remote work for everyone. Remote work is about trust.
- VRay 5y ago
  Not to mention that working two jobs poorly is a lot more work and a lot less money than boostrapping a decent SaaS EDIT: Pretty rich that I'm getting downvoted so much, despite multiple examples of successful SaaS creators showing up in the comments, and this being a forum started by a VC partly to promote and encourage tech startups. If you think that starting a tech business is so impossibly difficult that you're personally offended at the idea of someone recommending you do it, I'd say you should just go back to Reddit or Twitter. If you're bristling at me calling SaaS "easy", I just meant it's easier than running a multi-year scam and probably committing fraud, depending on the details of your employment contracts.
  - hwers 5y ago
    Successfully boostrapping a decent SaaS sounds way more challenging in my eyes, got any tips on resources to read to make that be as obvious a task as it seems to be in your eyes?
    - andrewxdiamond 5y ago
      There’s a ton of content out there, but the best advice I’ve seen is simple. 1. Find a (ideally large) group of people you care about 2. Find a problem they have 3. Solve it
      - actually_a_dog 5y ago
        Can you make it so obvious someone working 2 remote jobs could do it?
    - VRay 5y ago
      My favorite example is the Expat Software guy: https://expatsoftware.com/articles/ https://expatsoftware.com/articles/ Another good one is Daedtech/Hit Subscribe
raincom 5y ago
Good advice even for one job--whether remote or in-person. Why put in 30% more effort, when you are not getting paid 30% more. That's why stick to the average pace of your team.
- ithkuil 5y ago
  May ai suggest a different spin? Try to put 30% more effort, but into learning stuff for your own sake. This will make you a better engineer. As a side effect you may be more worth to the company you work for and/of get a better job somewhere else later.
  - raincom 5y ago
    That is possible for some people, also depends on the culture of the team one is part of. An average guy needs good mentors, good team mates who can teach, etc. Such teams are very hard to find. So, in that case, one has to be driven to learn on his own without any aid.
    - ithkuil 5y ago
      Sure. But it's also a matter of attitude. If you don't even try because "that looks like work and I'm not paid enough for this" you won't even know what is holding you back. It could be that you need mentors, it could need that you just need to read or watch videos or practice. That said, it's perfectly fine to just do your job and not like it. All I'm saying is that you shouldn't conclude that working more necessary means that you're giving away your time for free to your employer. Often you can get something in return, if you make sure you pick the right kind of extra work.
- jacobr1 5y ago
  The classic advice is for career advancement. For promotions and raises and for internal political capital to promote the projects you want, or the implementation you think best. Sure, if you just want to a be a cog in the machine, without broader responsibility (and the historically much higher compensation for that) then don't do more than the is necessary to ensure you remain employed. But it probably is more lucrative to achieve some success, and then leverage that to the next thing (which might need to be a different company).
Sosh101 5y ago
I hate it.
narag 5y ago
I expected this to be a version of the underpromise overdeliver thing, but it seems more like oversleep under a rock. It was sad to see the epic 10x programmer die, now it's the time for the hillarious 0.1x pretender.
civilized 5y ago
> Resource limit exceeded Ironic, isn't it?
- actually_a_dog 5y ago
  No, it's merely unfortunate.
  - civilized 5y ago
    Think about it. It's a post about how to avoid going over capacity while serving multiple concurrent requests. (Just because somebody taught you to snark at that Alanis Morissette song doesn't mean that every instance of irony that isn't immediately obvious to you is a false instance)
    - actually_a_dog 5y ago
      Ok. ... ... ... I have. I still agree with myself.
      - civilized 5y ago
        I'd say that's ironic, but in this case it really is merely unfortunate.
        actually_a_dog 5y ago
        iro· ny | \ ˈī-rə-nē also ˈī(-ə)r-nē \ plural ironies [...] 2 : a situation that is strange or funny because things happen in a way that seems to be the opposite of what you expected --- It seems to you this is the expected result. Therefore, it is not ironic, merely unfortunate. The good news is that now you know what irony is. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/irony https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/irony
        civilized 5y ago
screye 5y ago
I genuinely don't get the point of 2 remote jobs. The tech wage scaling is absolutely bonkers right now and the value proposition of this system is not clear to me. Assuming you only work 20 of your 40 hrs/week in each job, you are still working a fulltime job with 2x your salary. If someone is competent enough to sustain 2 jobs, they will also get quickly promoted to 2x their salary if they are working one job. Now work a couple of years in this job, and soon you'll be able to complete its responsibilities in 20ish hrs/week. Every job gets easier overtime in that sense.
- Roritharr 5y ago
  I don't know what world you live in, but I have yet to see a company which let's anyone reach 2x of their starting salary in less than a decade. Might be because I'm european, but the idea sounds crazy to me.
  - tibbetts 5y ago
    Depends when in your career, and what the company is doing. I went from my first starting salary of $72k at age 23 (in 2003) as engineer #2 to $150k as chief architect about 5 years later. After another 5 years we sold the company, and I was making better than $300k salary plus bonus in 2013. So that’s two doublings in 10 years. But it’s also probably the exception that proves the rule.
  - bspammer 5y ago
    I'm sure it's harder to get when you're more senior, but I started working as a graduate in London for £30k 3 years ago and am now on £60k. I think this is pretty typical in London.
    - Roritharr 5y ago
      Okay if you start THAT low I can see it, but most start at 40-60 here, getting up to 80-120 is used to be at least a decade away.
  - who_me_qmark 5y ago
revskill 5y ago
There's a time i worked like 4 jobs at the same time. Such a nightmare and my advice is, just keep at most 2 jobs only. The key to success to me, is to kill procastination as fast as possible, seeking for help as soon as possible. Relax well, eat well. The job is getting the job done, not broken.
lanevorockz 5y ago
Americans are finally catching up to Third World standards. It's pretty common to work two jobs and juggle between them, it's just that you used to be able to have a decent life with one revenue stream. It seems that after covid this will no longer be the case. ;)
- bitexploder 5y ago
  I know younger joking, sort of, but an averagely talented and experienced engineer can easily support a family with one income now. This article is really about how to do some game theory stuff to maximize income and be “financially free”. Something working two jobs in the third world will never provide.
- thatguy0900 5y ago
  Even funnier, the rich are needing to catch up to third world standards. The poor have been working multiple jobs in America for a very long time.
dreyfan 5y ago
Only two? [1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27454589 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27454589
vnchr 5y ago
As a remote manager, I find this list of red flags helpful for future reference.
mise_en_place 5y ago
Just be careful what you wish for. One coworker of mine at a previous company did this and burned out really quick. He had a family (16 year old son and 9 year old daughter) and could never use vacation to spend time with them. He would use vacation time at one company to catch up on work from the other. He offered me once to join a team to have two remote jobs but I declined. But I did admire his tenacity and sacrifice for his children.
- newnamenewface 5y ago
  Can I ask, was this sacrifice necessary? Were you earning decent wages or was he actually struggling to make ends meet? It is far more selfish to pursue more money than you (or your kids) need and miss out on your children's formative years than to just hold a single decent paying job.
  - mise_en_place 5y ago
    So the company was a startup in the Bay Area, SF-based. At that time the wages were very competitive, and he was more senior than I was so most likely he was getting paid very well. He told me he wanted to save up as much as possible while maximizing his income, so he could buy a house in a cheaper cost of living area. He did succeed in that endeavor, and last I spoke with him still does the two job thing. I know for me personally, one job is enough, especially considering that I like to maintain a very generous work-life balance (leaning heavily to the life side of the ratio). Not sure if his sacrifice was necessary, as I was also able to buy a house, it just took me longer. But some people are very type A workaholic types.
herpderperator 5y ago
My expectations were pretty low. The website delivered: https://www.dropbox.com/s/oaiipqmos484ojs/low_expectations.png?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/oaiipqmos484ojs/low_expectations.p...
synergy20 5y ago
The page is inaccessible now, resource limit reached. for any given hi-tech job these days, the employee agreement always states this is your sole job per contract and all your inventions belong to your employer too(not just the 40 hours per week), especially for full-time w-2 jobs. How could you have two in parallel? are we violating the hiring contract here? Assuming two jobs have no conflict of interests of course, otherwise it's illegal in most cases and nobody wants to do that(other than it's too unethical)
- actually_a_dog 5y ago
  In California, yes, you can, provided the employers don't compete in the same areas of business. Your work on your off time is yours, provided it doesn't relate to your employer's businesses.
novok 5y ago
A pattern I've noticed with double job workers: 1. They tend to work double jobs at frankly lower tier companies with lower standards and significantly lower pay. Because the companies are lower tier, they stagnate in their career growth because the company is not teaching them good skills. And you cannot put both jobs in your resume, only one on top of that, and this will show up in future background checks. 2. Because of double working, they are pretty much guaranteed to not get promoted beyond the standard terminal level. 3. They think that promos (like this article), are at most only %10, while promos are more like a x1.5 to x2 of your income. 4. You cannot work at proper startups and learn a ton, because the workload would be way too high for this strategy. Real example: One person I know has 2 $150k jobs for a total of $300k. If they joined as a jr engineer at a FANGMULA or equivalent, they would be making $300k, not be fucking stressed about the duplicity that is working 2 jobs, learn more because it's a better company and get promoed to sr engineer within a year or two and make $400-500k instead. If they have ambition, they can cross the leadership rubicon (either through becoming a staff engineer or manager) and make even more, reaching up to $700k-$1M eventually. Maybe if your having a hard time breaking into startups or FANGMULA and your just starting out, this might be an ok strategy, but beyond that, it's not a good idea.
- riffic 5y ago
  > And you cannot put both jobs in your resume, only one on top of that, and this will show up in future background checks hah. yes you can. No one cares if you have multiple concurrent jobs on a resume. And no one cares about what the background check is going to show. This is all easily explained away.
- odonnellryan 5y ago
  For a short time I was "working two jobs" as part of a transition (everyone was aware) and I found it almost impossible to even manage one or two meetings a week at each job - conflicts were crazy. What are you supposed to do when you have a conflict, if you're keeping things secret? "that time doesn't work for me" "uh, why? I just hired you. You have another meeting?"
  - 5y ago
picodguyo 5y ago
AKA How to end up with zero remote jobs. Seriously, don't do this. Just because you can exploit a system doesn't mean you should.
throwaway5371 5y ago
jiveturkey 5y ago
disagree with the overcommunication. overcommunication means your boss has too much sense of where you are or where you are claiming to be. and more work will be tossed over to you. always accept new work and just drop 50% of it without further reporting on it. otherwise, yeah I always set low expectations. On day 1, I show up late to orientation. always. It's worked great for me over a long career. (single jobs, not dual, although in school I always maintained 3-4 concurrent part time gigs) website worked for me but the menu part didn't load correctly. it looks quite poor. too bad it's not intentional. there's only 1 time of year when you perform. the 2 months before perf eval.
meirelles 5y ago
OMG, again? Are we going to see this every week now? This guy has two jobs already and still has time to brag about and promote his blog? Please don't ruin the remote work for us.
xwdv 5y ago
This is a litmus test. If your mentality is that you are paid for your time, not for your value, then I guess you will always carry guilt about working multiple jobs. If however you feel zero guilt, it is because you have internalized your true self worth. It shows you understand the value you bring to a company and the value of a company having a fully onboarded developer hot and ready to go whenever a crisis happens. You are not merely an ass sitting in a chair. Once you learn that your value as a developer has no relation to time and space, you can truly ascend to the next level of social class.
- baobabKoodaa 5y ago
  Whatever helps you sleep at night, I guess
  - xwdv 5y ago
    I sleep very well at night knowing I’m making a lot of money.
codelord 5y ago
Encouraging people to take two full-time jobs by lying and cheating their way around is such a terrible advice even if you only look at it purely based on self-interests with no moral considerations. Negotiate well when starting a new job (If you haven't find a new job and negotiate well). Do great work. Use the extra time to invest on yourself: read, exercise, learn new skills, etc. You'll be happier and more successful in the long run.
- actually_a_dog 5y ago
  The premise here, which you haven't engaged with, is that you can get 2 remote jobs and end up with 80% more income than you would have with just one of them, all without negotiating well or needing to do "great" work. You can claim that's BS or not, but, you really need to bring more to it than "nuh uh."
  - codelord 5y ago
    The proof is in the pudding. Re: negotiating. You negotiate your comp once, it takes 1 hour maybe. Compare that to the effort it takes to maintain a fragile career based on lies.
    - actually_a_dog 5y ago
      If you can negotiate +80% on your comp every time, then, sure, that pays off comparatively. But, I doubt you can. Furthermore, you only have a few chances to do so throughout a career, and your first few attempts will likely be bad.
  - TameAntelope 5y ago
    You can oftentimes just walk into homes and take the things lying around in that home, and if you pick the right homes and the right times, you will avoid the negative consequences that come with getting caught. The premise here is that you can stand to benefit from lying and stealing. What is there to engage with about that? Of course it’s true, but you weigh that against the negative consequences of your deception being discovered.
starklevnertz 5y ago
If you’re a developer, your employer is using git checkins as the primary measure of whether you are working. You’ll need a script to automate credible git activity.
- WanderPanda 5y ago
  What is a git checkin? Sounds like a shiny new time-tracking feature :p
- OnionBlender 5y ago
  My former skip level manager was bad for this. He told everyone they are not allowed to squash commit and that they should commit every work day. He was located in another city from my team and this was how he checked to see who was a slacker. When one of my co-op student's term ended he wanted to hire him full-time because he thought he was a rock-star from his high number of commits. In reality the student wasn't very good and we just gave him simple tasks to write unit tests. He wasn't even good at writing unit tests because when he was unsure about edge case behavior he would just see what the function currently outputs and then write a test to expect that result. The worst is when a unit test would start to fail so he'd change the existing test to expect the wrong result. Before anyone asks, I eventually left the company and I did repeatedly tell the student how to write better unit tests in his code reviews.
- maximus-decimus 5y ago
  Is this a joke? Counting git commits is using LOCs as a performance metric with extra steps.
soheil 5y ago
Word of caution: don't over develop this habit as it will stay with you for the rest of your life and in all areas of your life. You think you're being clever and getting away with 2x more money, but in the end you're hurting yourself the most. If you pretend you are working, if you're not moving as fast as you can, you won't be sharpening your skills. You're in fact most likely not only sharpening your skills, but making them more dull. It's when we challenge ourselves that we grow.
kmac_ 5y ago
It's unethical, manipulative and looks like a fraud.
- nnoitra 5y ago
  Right, welcome to the real world.
PLenz 5y ago
"Resource Limit Is Reached" which is actually quite on-brand
I-M-S 5y ago
> In the 30-60 day window, you should set goals with your boss if that’s not already done. Drag out the newbie card and claim slow ramp-up time. Identify what absolutely needs to be done, communicate that as your goal, and meet them. In my experience, this will already make you more valuable than most employees working at big companies
- actually_a_dog 5y ago
  Finally! Someone who actually gets it! Truth be told, you can substitute "realistic" or "sustainable" with "low" and have a good guide to performing well at one remote job here.
headmelted 5y ago
Keep getting Resource Limit Reached errors, which is pretty ironic.
Hippocrates 5y ago
This makes no sense unless both jobs are coast-mode situations with no worthwhile upward mobility. Every job I have had and every career trajectory I have seen in the industry involves a growth curve that looks way better.
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  Is this true for most devs though? Company churn seems to say no.
iwork3jobs 5y ago
I work 3 gigs is in paralel. AMA, if you want, I guess.
- raincom 5y ago
  A few questions: (a) what kind of gigs? (b) how you manage meetings? (c) how you manage the delivery expectations?
  - iwork3jobs 5y ago
    They are long term consulting (or you can call them outsourcing, rather) jobs for quite big companies. I am weary of saying the domain, but it's... Really not the domain most people would expect. I guess I'm just lucky stuff doesn't overlap. I try to keep meetings at a minimum and solve things as promptly as possible so I avoid being dragged in them. If I have some overlap I reschedule or if it's not critical I simply don't join. The expectations are pretty fucking abysmal to boot. People in this domain do not know how to fucking write software and I've been at it for a while and I know my stuff petty well. The funny part is the customers are quite happy with my work. If you also them, they will say I am one of the higher performing members of their team. I do tend to solve trickier problems and I understand the parts I build quite well so if issues arise I am quick at solving them. But, again, the level of competence is really really low! Clients will suffer most in a couple of ways. It will probably take me longer to do things than if I were to be uniquely employed for them. But, again, expectations so low, they don't have a good comparison. If one of the clients has a really serious problem, I will pour most my time in it to fix the burning issues, so the others will get neglected for a bit. Sometimes I run out of gas and I have mini burnouts so I will have these mini slumps, but I quickly snap out of it and get back on track. Just to expand how bad competence is here, at one point we had a team we worked in and out of about 4 people I basically did the whole work, while working 2 contracts at the time. As mentioned, this field is deeply dysfunctional. I worked in it as a normal consultant for a long time and really really tried improving client's stuff but.. I gave up. Most clients don't even use git and they won't fucking listen when we tell them the decisions they take are bad. They just go ahead out of inertia with horrible horrible standards and bad approaches. So I guess I'm now jaded and kind of... Resigned to be just a pawn and just bill hours.
firstplacelast 5y ago
I’m amazed by the amount of resentment and anger in these comments and how off-base they are to my own experience. I had two full-time jobs during the pandemic for 1.5years. One I had been at for 3 years previously and 70% of the time I had a very manageable work-load. I was only 100% remote for 3 months at the start of the pandemic, then in hybrid office/wfh, they are highly flexible and I can work Saturday instead of a Wednesday if I want, etc. Other position was 100% remote (even before pandemic), semi-flexible, and was for such a large organization and had so many stake-holders on every project that I barely needed to think. Pick-up a ticket, follow instructions. A typical day for me would be to wake up at 6am and start job B, have a scrum at 9am for job B, then head into job A (10minutes commute), work at job A until 1pm, come home for a 2 hour lunch and work job B, then back to the office for job A, around 6pm come back home and finish up any work for job B and job A. When things piled up I would work 10-15 hours on the weekend. At job B, I saw many coworkers fired for underperformance. At job A a few were also fired during this time period, but not in my dept. I did burn out after 1.5years and left job B, also gained a bunch of weight from sitting at a desk so often. I would do it again, I saved up a down-payment for a condo in HCOL. I have put both positions on my resume and will happily talk about this experience, have had no qualms talking to recruiters about this. Some like it, some don’t. Have been talking to one about a potential role in sales, they seem to be pretty ok with this/slightly impressed. Also, for those that didn’t grow up poor, this is called making things work. This isn’t some crazy decision with no rationale behind it. I am used to putting my head down and working hard for long periods of time. I had a full-time job my senior year of high school (still able to earn a double ride to undergrad), I’ve had a full-time + part time job some college summers, have had 3 part-time jobs other college summers. I worked part-time through 50% of college and 70% of high school. I worked a full-time job while in grad school part-time. So as you can see, from just wanting to exist and get ahead in life, I have unintentionally trained to be able to work two full-time jobs for awhile without fucking anyone over and delivering fair value in return for my paychecks.
- ativzzz 5y ago
  Your experience is not what the linked article is about. You sound like you essentially put in 80 hours of work a week to work two full time jobs. The entire website is about how to not actually do any work for either job while talking making it seem like you are with the ultimate goal of getting laid off on one job to collect severance.
lifeisstillgood 5y ago
My theory is that you have 2 sets of 4 hours per day. If you work 8 hours for the same employer then that is kind of 1x results for you. If you do 4 hours work and 4 hours "networking" then that often becomes 2x results - at that one company. This is considered good career moves. It's what all these 300K job discussions revolve around. You could do 4 hours and 4 hours slacking off. That's usually 1X as well. sometimes more ! You could do 4 hours work and 4 hours writing blog posts. That sometimes is 2-3x or more. Not often. Finally you could do 4 hours at each of two companies. This seems 2x as well.
canjobear 5y ago
I really hope this site is run by that guy who posted on HN about how he is doing 5 remote jobs at the same time. One of my all-time favorites
musesum 5y ago
At its peak (1990s), Microsoft was allowing engineers to moonlight. It was regarded as a retention tactic.
monkeycantype 5y ago
I have a younger relative, making a very very comfortable living, who has taken on the developing the software for a number of small companies as a solo dev, each pay him for features and a pretty decent (non software decent) annual wage for ongoing maintenance. He makes no secret that he has multiple clients, there's no duplicity, and he gets to have a flexible life where he travels when he wants and exercises a couple of hours a day. Every client he's ever picked up has kept him on. He's got the full skill set to be able to be sales negotiator, designer, tester, dev. It may be that many of us don't and are more valuable, and will be paid more, in a team that blurs our deficiencies.
TameAntelope 5y ago
I’m firing someone after the holidays who tried to set expectations low, and couldn’t do the work I gave him in anything remotely resembling a reasonable time frame. He may have been doing something like this, but honestly it doesn’t matter. The work I need done takes 40 hours to do, and sometimes more. How it gets done, or what he does otherwise isn’t really my concern, as long as it gets done. By the way, you can do this legitimately by working as a contractor. Some companies will ask you only work on their project, but many will not. The deception is not necessary.
- RobRivera 5y ago
  what communication did you provide as to say 'this is insufficient'?
- p_l 5y ago
  And the requirement to only work on their project could actually open you to legal issues at times, so it's best to push back.
exdsq 5y ago
This feels so wrong. I always understood this to mean a really good developer taking on two easy jobs, perhaps a senior developer taking two junior-mid roles that paid similarly to the senior role, so they can meet the expectation of the employer while only needing to work 10 hours a week. I thought it was cheeky but fair. To actually try and cheat employers out of wages by taking jobs and knowingly doing the minimum required to hopefully not get fired pisses me off to be honest. Over employed examples I want to hear about is from people getting jobs in admin roles and automating themselves, or senior developers taking manual testing roles and finishing their work in an hour a week.
- actually_a_dog 5y ago
  Let me ask you, then: if you're paying me $X, why are you entitled to more than $X worth of effort from me?
  - cglace 5y ago
    Does that mean during a week if you don’t deliver $X of effort the company can claw back pay?
    - welshwelsh 5y ago
      If the company feels that your contributions aren't worth $X they can fire you
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    Because you agreed to work 40 hrs/week for that $X.
    - actually_a_dog 5y ago
      I've never seen that in any offer letter or document I've signed for any tech job. Nor have I ever verbally agreed to such.
ucm_edge 5y ago
Not that I endorse this, but this seems the wrong way to do this. Take one job and do well at it. Get a reputation that you don't need to be managed. Work hard. Identify a niche for work that needs to be done but is currently underserved. Take over some of that niche while telling everyone how hard it is. In reality the niche takes 20 or fewer hours a week. Get the second job lined up. Take some vacation from the first and come out the gate hard at the second job. Attempt to more or less repeat what you did. If you can get yourself setup on the right little niches you could probably keep three or four jobs going. If you are just kind of jelly fishing along though eventually people will notice how all the other juniors in the same surface area out perform you. You want to be the person who went off, slew some dragons in a specific area, and we need to keep this person around to ensure the dragons don't repopulate. I basically get promoted doing that. Of course I'm using my spare hours to go help other people in the org, build relationships, get noticed, etc. All while having an easily defended core area to handle. Just do that but collect other jobs instead of promotions.
- throwaway1492 5y ago
  This is basically how I did it. Max for me was three jobs. I started pre pandemic. I was thoroughly burned out after five years. Took a break before getting back in. I could retire, but keep working for healthcare and the lulz. (One job) There are a lot orgs out there where if you can spell java, your golden.
- actually_a_dog 5y ago
  Not that I particularly endorse this practice, either, but your way wouldn't work. You're missing the part where the reward for hard work is more hard work. You definitely can get promoted this way, but, you can't really use it to maintain a whole other job, IMO.
  - ucm_edge 5y ago
    That's why I said you define the niche and overstate its work. You work hard and build trust and then yes if you ask for more work, you get more work. However there is a window in which to define what you do next and make it seem like more work than it really is.
yummy_box 5y ago
Lovely to see the "how dare you to have 2 jobs!" boomer crowd going nuts. All those comments about , "you are destroying you career", and "you wont get promoted" , are so cringe. If you hire a dev, that is delivering and is a decent person. Why do you about care what he/she/* does on the side? That's like saying you should only be able to own one business. In the other hand, if a employee is not performing , you should fire him/her/* regardless of how many jobs the person has.
danbmil99 5y ago
A more upfront way to do this is to get contract work as a consultant, and have at least some of your clients paying by project or retainer rather than strict hourly billing. This discussion of the TKPV ladder is relevant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29360119#29362849 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29360119#29362849
boublepop 5y ago
The two job setup is just a brilliant way of exposing the fact that almost every tech worker is in a position where pay/effort is falling as pay increases. We all know there are 10x’s but you’ll never see anyone getting 10x the pay no matter how productive they are. So for most its better to take two jobs at 50% the effort at 75% the pay each.
raincom 5y ago
All outsourcing companies follow the same formula: set low expectations, add more billable hours. Just go and look at how WITCH(wipro, infosys, tcs, etc) operate. In fact, many Indian middle managers get bribed by transferring money and assets to their relatives back home. Next time look at these managers and why they have 20 contractors in their team and not delivering any improvements. The moment employees slack, mortal wizards come from the wood work.

175 points by oriettaxx 5y ago

HPsquared 5y ago

It's ironic that a site about working two simultaneous jobs has a "resource limit exceeded" error.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

midjji 5y ago

This really highlights how salaries really only ever motivate some people to work the absolute minimum.

actually_a_dog 5y ago
When you show people that hard work is just rewarded with more hard work, and isn't compensated at a rate that's worth it, what else do you expect? I wish I could find the link, but I read about a study which showed explicitly that this is true (the reward for hard work is more work), and, surprisingly, that hard workers didn't like that. Seriously, why would you bother?
- midjji 5y ago
  Skilled leadership.

bellyfullofbac 5y ago

Haha, the error message is a bit ironic when talking about working 2 full time jobs: Resource Limit Is Reached - The website is temporarily unable to service your request as it exceeded resource limit. Please try again later.

zekenie 5y ago
Hilarious

bearbin 5y ago

Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20211117171239/https://overemployed.com/set-low-expectations-at-your-two-remote-jobs/ https://web.archive.org/web/20211117171239/https://overemplo...

bdidicn 5y ago
This is an endless redirect loop for me on mobile
pph 5y ago
Unfortunately that site seems to keep reloading forever (/e/ Browser which is a Chromium/Bromite fork). I haven't been able to check the original site though, so the issue might be present there as well.
- bearbin 5y ago
  Ah, uMatrix saved me from that... Reader mode seems to work well on Firefox to stop the redirection as well.
kuyan 5y ago
Redirect loop for me but I can load the page if I disable Javascript. Here's a copy of the text (keywords: mirror, archive): > How To Set Low Expectations At Your Two Remote Jobs > On April 12, 2021 By Chloe T. In Corporate Life, Multiple Remote Work, Tactics > One of the keys to success while working two remote jobs is communications and setting low expectations with your boss. You want to give the perception of meeting standards while striving to overachieve in your primary “keeper” job. You want to set yourself up for success, and by success, we mean keeping the two remote jobs for as long as possible. Naturally, with working two jobs, one job will be more demanding than the other. The strategy is to set the workload low in at least one of the two jobs so you can navigate spikes in workload. Remember, the end goal here is to have dual income streams and reach financial freedom sooner. > Why Is Perception And Setting Low Expectations Important For Remote Work > We’ve heard it before, perception is everything. This HBR article illustrates a great example of how perception matters at the end of the day, not the real story. The fact is if you’re perceived as a hard worker, it doesn’t matter what you do behind the scenes. In the two job game, you want to be perceived as someone who meets expectations. While in reality, your aim is to do the minimum and get by; don’t get fired while secretly hoping to get laid off. A strategy to achieve a positive perception (and outcome) is accomplished by setting low expectations with your manager. > Why Setting High Expectations With Your Boss Is A Waste Of Time > Let’s first start by going over what everyone tells you to do – set high expectations, get promoted. Yes, this leads to more money. That’s great. But let’s look at the ROI because all great employees and MBA’s should care about the ROI on behalf of the company. > But what about your Personal ROI’s? Indeed’s research concluded that the average employee raise is 3%. It may be a bit higher in tech, so let’s say 5 – 10%. > You might need to put in 30% more hours, more stress, more work to get a minimal increase in your salary. To me, setting those high expectations to get a promotion is a waste of time. You can get a second job and easily give yourself an 80% “raise” for your work. Also, I’m a good employee by being mindful of ROI’s, my own. > What I’ve Learned About Setting Low Expectations From Years of Working > What I’ve learned is expectations need to be set from day 1. I once worked with a new senior manager who always left at five o’clock since his very first day. New hires usually stay late to ramp up quickly. Not this guy. He set the expectation that he would leave the office by five and stuck by it every day. It was genius. A year into the job, he’s still shutting down at five while the rest of us kept working. > For managers, it’s typically hard to have that conversation, “can you put in more hours?” If your manager adds new tasks, just be clear you cannot complete them in the timeframe given. If you’re labeled as the “guy who leaves at five,” people won’t give you more work knowing you can’t get to it. More work is assigned to you once you do a great job, and it is an endless circle. This story is just one example, but the lesson is to set expectations early and set them low. That way, the only place to go is up. > Once you set high expectations, you’re always going to fail if you don’t meet them. Like the concept behind the HBR perception article, you can have done great work but once you fail to meet the expectations that’s what people remember. How many times you think you did a great job, but when you have your review, your boss mentions all the “failures” and missed expectations. Sound familiar? > How To Set Low Expectations At Work With Your Manager > Let’s get into how you can set low expectations while working your two remote jobs. As we mentioned, set these expectations early. > Be The One To Drive The Conversation > Don’t ask what your boss’s expectations are; set them yourself. Instead of going into the conversation by asking what their expectations are, set and communicate them to your manager. By asking what their expectations are, you are putting yourself in a corner. In developing your own low expectations and communicating them, you are placing the burden on your boss to have that difficult conversation with you to say otherwise. Psychologically, it’s harder to say no, than to say yes. Let your boss be the one to say no to you. As a new employee, you’re most likely to slide by for the first review cycle with this method. > Communicate Often And Early > Being a great communicator can be a great asset. Think about those who do great work and are not great communicators. What about those who do mediocre work but can communicate. Who do you think will be looked upon more favorably? Set your expectations and make them visible to everyone to know what to expect. Take this as an opportunity to improve your communication skills. With practice comes mastery. ... > As you can see from this example, the employee overcommunicating comes across as more trustworthy and in control. That’s the perception you want to convey. Even though something is not on track, or you haven’t started at all, just the fact you are communicating the details along the way, people are more comfortable. Also by communicating frequently, you can soften the blow of the miss. > Explain The Reasons Behind Your Low Expectations > While setting expectations is excellent, if you can back up your thought process to come to those expectations, you have a better case. Always come to the table with your examples of how you thought through your goal-setting process. For example, if you are new to a particular field, you can put the small milestones to achieve “xyz” goal. With each milestone, you can explain how difficult it was to reach that milestone and drag out the timeline to the next set of milestones to achieve “xyz” mastery. > Good communicators always over-communicate. They are perceived to be in control, even what’s said is the same message just repeated many times. If you have project updates, and the updates are the same for weeks, you’re still being perceived as a good project manager since you are visible and proactive in communicating. Again it’s about perception. Like the deft hands of magicians, mastering resetting expectation is just as important as setting low expectations at the beginning. Leverage Your Newbie Card In Setting Low Expectations > Being new has its advantages. No one knows you, so you start off with a clean slate. You can take advantage by setting low expectations with your manager for your first review cycle. There are many barriers to mastering your remote jobs, such as ramp-up time, company culture, new systems, and different procedures. Let these barriers shine in setting your low expectations – and all the more reasons to have unambitious goals. > Leverage The Review Cycle > Understand when the review cycle starts and ends. Set and time your goals to the review cycle. Usually, people set goals for the year, but keep in mind you’re evaluated on review cycles. There’s no use in setting goals for eight months when the review is only four months away. > Be A Follower Not A Leader > Realize that not everyone needs to be a leader in every job. Everyone is different and it takes employees of all types to make the company hum. There’s nothing wrong with being a follower and doing what’s expected. Remember, there are no leaders if there are no followers. Avoid the slippery ladder in your career. Take the side door instead. > Setting Low Expectations And The Two-Job Game Plan > The game plan for two remote jobs is to set the expectations low with your manager and prolong your hustle until your exit to another job or you’re laid off with a severance. For the second non-primary job, you’re there for one reason only, to collect a paycheck. A paycheck that is 500%+ more than a raise. The goal is to keep the paycheck going for as long as you can with minimal effort. > 30 days – The first 30 days are easy due to ramp up but are critical to set low expectations. Set yourself up for success in working two jobs. Be that guy or girl who always logs off at five o’clock (even better at four), and let people know. Once you start extending yourself, answering emails and messages after hours, your co-workers will see that as the norm and more work will creep up on you. If you’re never available after a certain time, your colleagues won’t message you because they know you won’t respond. > 60 days – In the 30-60 day window, you should set goals with your boss if that’s not already done. Drag out the newbie card and claim slow ramp-up time. Identify what absolutely needs to be done, communicate that as your goal, and meet them. Again, it’s all about the perception that you meet expectations, not the work you’ve actually done. You can do little work but as long as you met the communicated expectations you’re golden. > What If You Don’t Feel Right Low Balling Expectations At Work – Put The Ego Aside > We’re primed at a very young age to be the best we can be. We look up to leaders in society. If your ultimate end goal is financial freedom, you have to strategize and optimize for that and put your ego aside. You’re aiming to be a leader in your personal life and the truly ambitious one land two jobs. Who cares if you’re not a leader in the public eye of a workplace. You can channel the guilt, if any, towards donating the extra money to a good cause, like the YMCAs. Go do something you care about. Work is just means to an end. Join us in the counterculture towards work.

bonestamp2 5y ago

It says a lot about our work culture when leaving at 5pm is considered setting your boss's expectations "low".

goldcd 5y ago
I think it depends. My current job is relaxed over hours - I'll checks emails at home, wander in mid-morning and leave when my works is done. Might be 5 if I get it done or have plans, or might be into the evening (quite pleasant/productive to work uninterrupted in a empty room). I've got other colleagues who'll be logged in at 08:30 (so I believe) and leave on the dot of 17:00. I think both approaches work for different people and for the company a mix gives them more flexibility without having to create a formal plan. I think what the article was bringing up was that if you set expectations and are seen to conform to them, everybody is happy (or doesn't think about it). If you're the person who's always there as the office opens and sticks around late - you may be noticed and get a pat on the back, but it's never going to compensate for the additional hours you put in. This might be fine if you have one job and a career - but if you're trying to hold down 2 jobs, those extra couple of hours each day are 50% of the effort of holding down that 2nd job. They're worth 50% of a whole new salary.
alkonaut 5y ago
Love being on an old fashioned “clock”. I log my time by the minute and if I work 41 hours one week I work 39 the next week. Worst case I aggregate maybe 20-30 hours over a few busy weeks and then I use it to take a day or two off.
jamil7 5y ago
German work culture outside of startups is a bit more like this, get in on time, work hard, don’t fuck around all day, punch out after 8 hours and don’t socialise with colleagues outside of work. Obviously I’m generalising a lot and exaggerating but it was something I observed.

omosubi 5y ago

I love that we are collectively acknowledging that we're all lazy as hell. First that askHN about lying about working and now the HN hug of death for this article

Sebguer 5y ago
In case anyone was curious about the AskHN re: lying about work, and missed it like I had: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29581125 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29581125
nerdponx 5y ago
Lazy? Not true. We are getting more comfortable admitting that we don't give a shit about our employers beyond what is required. If only the rest of the economy had the same luxury.

xupybd 5y ago

Or believe in the work you do and get satisfaction from working hard and delivering above and beyond. I've burnt out before and lost motivation. It's horrible. I'd much rather buy into the company vision as much as possible. I'd hate to have two jobs that are purely about time in equals money out. I want one job where leadership inspires me to work hard and get more done than I would have without them.

rokob 5y ago
I really agree with what you are saying, but counterintuitively buying “into the company vision as much as possible” seems to result in the most burnout for me when reality eventually hits. I’ve been trying to figure out how to temper my natural tendency to go all-in with the reality that everything has some shit that sucks. I can understand the hope that there might be some psychological ease associated with dissociating yourself from the vision.
- redisman 5y ago
  I can only control small parts of the tech side of a company. It’s silly to worry about things outside of your control so I definitely don’t “buy into the company vision”. I just deliver good software and hope everyone else knows what they’re doing so I don’t need to find a new job.
- throwanem 5y ago
  Whether you're working W2, 1099, or an LLC, you're still running a business that trades in engineering labor, namely yours. That's the company whose vision you want to invest in. If you like your current clients' vision too, great! That kind of alignment is always preferable. But remember that you're always first representing your own interests, because you're the only one at the table for whom those interests are paramount. Good clients understand and respect that. Bad clients are what you use to avoid starving while you're out finding good clients.
xwdv 5y ago
So basically you want to be worked hard like a horse and feel satisfied at the end of the day when you lay your head down to rest that you have made a difference, don’t even care much about the money because the work is it’s own reward.

brosky117 5y ago

This is how you ruin remote work for everyone. Remote work is about trust.

VRay 5y ago
Not to mention that working two jobs poorly is a lot more work and a lot less money than boostrapping a decent SaaS EDIT: Pretty rich that I'm getting downvoted so much, despite multiple examples of successful SaaS creators showing up in the comments, and this being a forum started by a VC partly to promote and encourage tech startups. If you think that starting a tech business is so impossibly difficult that you're personally offended at the idea of someone recommending you do it, I'd say you should just go back to Reddit or Twitter. If you're bristling at me calling SaaS "easy", I just meant it's easier than running a multi-year scam and probably committing fraud, depending on the details of your employment contracts.
- hwers 5y ago
  Successfully boostrapping a decent SaaS sounds way more challenging in my eyes, got any tips on resources to read to make that be as obvious a task as it seems to be in your eyes?
  - andrewxdiamond 5y ago
    There’s a ton of content out there, but the best advice I’ve seen is simple. 1. Find a (ideally large) group of people you care about 2. Find a problem they have 3. Solve it
    - actually_a_dog 5y ago
      Can you make it so obvious someone working 2 remote jobs could do it?
  - VRay 5y ago
    My favorite example is the Expat Software guy: https://expatsoftware.com/articles/ https://expatsoftware.com/articles/ Another good one is Daedtech/Hit Subscribe

raincom 5y ago

Good advice even for one job--whether remote or in-person. Why put in 30% more effort, when you are not getting paid 30% more. That's why stick to the average pace of your team.

ithkuil 5y ago
May ai suggest a different spin? Try to put 30% more effort, but into learning stuff for your own sake. This will make you a better engineer. As a side effect you may be more worth to the company you work for and/of get a better job somewhere else later.
- raincom 5y ago
  That is possible for some people, also depends on the culture of the team one is part of. An average guy needs good mentors, good team mates who can teach, etc. Such teams are very hard to find. So, in that case, one has to be driven to learn on his own without any aid.
  - ithkuil 5y ago
    Sure. But it's also a matter of attitude. If you don't even try because "that looks like work and I'm not paid enough for this" you won't even know what is holding you back. It could be that you need mentors, it could need that you just need to read or watch videos or practice. That said, it's perfectly fine to just do your job and not like it. All I'm saying is that you shouldn't conclude that working more necessary means that you're giving away your time for free to your employer. Often you can get something in return, if you make sure you pick the right kind of extra work.
jacobr1 5y ago
The classic advice is for career advancement. For promotions and raises and for internal political capital to promote the projects you want, or the implementation you think best. Sure, if you just want to a be a cog in the machine, without broader responsibility (and the historically much higher compensation for that) then don't do more than the is necessary to ensure you remain employed. But it probably is more lucrative to achieve some success, and then leverage that to the next thing (which might need to be a different company).

Sosh101 5y ago

I hate it.

narag 5y ago

I expected this to be a version of the underpromise overdeliver thing, but it seems more like oversleep under a rock. It was sad to see the epic 10x programmer die, now it's the time for the hillarious 0.1x pretender.

civilized 5y ago

> Resource limit exceeded Ironic, isn't it?

actually_a_dog 5y ago
No, it's merely unfortunate.
- civilized 5y ago
  Think about it. It's a post about how to avoid going over capacity while serving multiple concurrent requests. (Just because somebody taught you to snark at that Alanis Morissette song doesn't mean that every instance of irony that isn't immediately obvious to you is a false instance)
  - actually_a_dog 5y ago
    Ok. ... ... ... I have. I still agree with myself.
    - civilized 5y ago
      I'd say that's ironic, but in this case it really is merely unfortunate.
      - actually_a_dog 5y ago
        iro· ny | \ ˈī-rə-nē also ˈī(-ə)r-nē \ plural ironies [...] 2 : a situation that is strange or funny because things happen in a way that seems to be the opposite of what you expected --- It seems to you this is the expected result. Therefore, it is not ironic, merely unfortunate. The good news is that now you know what irony is. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/irony https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/irony
        civilized 5y ago

screye 5y ago

I genuinely don't get the point of 2 remote jobs. The tech wage scaling is absolutely bonkers right now and the value proposition of this system is not clear to me. Assuming you only work 20 of your 40 hrs/week in each job, you are still working a fulltime job with 2x your salary. If someone is competent enough to sustain 2 jobs, they will also get quickly promoted to 2x their salary if they are working one job. Now work a couple of years in this job, and soon you'll be able to complete its responsibilities in 20ish hrs/week. Every job gets easier overtime in that sense.

Roritharr 5y ago
I don't know what world you live in, but I have yet to see a company which let's anyone reach 2x of their starting salary in less than a decade. Might be because I'm european, but the idea sounds crazy to me.
- tibbetts 5y ago
  Depends when in your career, and what the company is doing. I went from my first starting salary of $72k at age 23 (in 2003) as engineer #2 to $150k as chief architect about 5 years later. After another 5 years we sold the company, and I was making better than $300k salary plus bonus in 2013. So that’s two doublings in 10 years. But it’s also probably the exception that proves the rule.
- bspammer 5y ago
  I'm sure it's harder to get when you're more senior, but I started working as a graduate in London for £30k 3 years ago and am now on £60k. I think this is pretty typical in London.
  - Roritharr 5y ago
    Okay if you start THAT low I can see it, but most start at 40-60 here, getting up to 80-120 is used to be at least a decade away.
- who_me_qmark 5y ago

revskill 5y ago

There's a time i worked like 4 jobs at the same time. Such a nightmare and my advice is, just keep at most 2 jobs only. The key to success to me, is to kill procastination as fast as possible, seeking for help as soon as possible. Relax well, eat well. The job is getting the job done, not broken.

lanevorockz 5y ago

Americans are finally catching up to Third World standards. It's pretty common to work two jobs and juggle between them, it's just that you used to be able to have a decent life with one revenue stream. It seems that after covid this will no longer be the case. ;)

bitexploder 5y ago
I know younger joking, sort of, but an averagely talented and experienced engineer can easily support a family with one income now. This article is really about how to do some game theory stuff to maximize income and be “financially free”. Something working two jobs in the third world will never provide.
thatguy0900 5y ago
Even funnier, the rich are needing to catch up to third world standards. The poor have been working multiple jobs in America for a very long time.

dreyfan 5y ago

Only two? [1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27454589 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27454589

vnchr 5y ago

As a remote manager, I find this list of red flags helpful for future reference.

mise_en_place 5y ago

Just be careful what you wish for. One coworker of mine at a previous company did this and burned out really quick. He had a family (16 year old son and 9 year old daughter) and could never use vacation to spend time with them. He would use vacation time at one company to catch up on work from the other. He offered me once to join a team to have two remote jobs but I declined. But I did admire his tenacity and sacrifice for his children.

newnamenewface 5y ago
Can I ask, was this sacrifice necessary? Were you earning decent wages or was he actually struggling to make ends meet? It is far more selfish to pursue more money than you (or your kids) need and miss out on your children's formative years than to just hold a single decent paying job.
- mise_en_place 5y ago
  So the company was a startup in the Bay Area, SF-based. At that time the wages were very competitive, and he was more senior than I was so most likely he was getting paid very well. He told me he wanted to save up as much as possible while maximizing his income, so he could buy a house in a cheaper cost of living area. He did succeed in that endeavor, and last I spoke with him still does the two job thing. I know for me personally, one job is enough, especially considering that I like to maintain a very generous work-life balance (leaning heavily to the life side of the ratio). Not sure if his sacrifice was necessary, as I was also able to buy a house, it just took me longer. But some people are very type A workaholic types.

herpderperator 5y ago

My expectations were pretty low. The website delivered: https://www.dropbox.com/s/oaiipqmos484ojs/low_expectations.png?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/oaiipqmos484ojs/low_expectations.p...

synergy20 5y ago

The page is inaccessible now, resource limit reached. for any given hi-tech job these days, the employee agreement always states this is your sole job per contract and all your inventions belong to your employer too(not just the 40 hours per week), especially for full-time w-2 jobs. How could you have two in parallel? are we violating the hiring contract here? Assuming two jobs have no conflict of interests of course, otherwise it's illegal in most cases and nobody wants to do that(other than it's too unethical)

actually_a_dog 5y ago
In California, yes, you can, provided the employers don't compete in the same areas of business. Your work on your off time is yours, provided it doesn't relate to your employer's businesses.

novok 5y ago

A pattern I've noticed with double job workers: 1. They tend to work double jobs at frankly lower tier companies with lower standards and significantly lower pay. Because the companies are lower tier, they stagnate in their career growth because the company is not teaching them good skills. And you cannot put both jobs in your resume, only one on top of that, and this will show up in future background checks. 2. Because of double working, they are pretty much guaranteed to not get promoted beyond the standard terminal level. 3. They think that promos (like this article), are at most only %10, while promos are more like a x1.5 to x2 of your income. 4. You cannot work at proper startups and learn a ton, because the workload would be way too high for this strategy. Real example: One person I know has 2 $150k jobs for a total of $300k. If they joined as a jr engineer at a FANGMULA or equivalent, they would be making $300k, not be fucking stressed about the duplicity that is working 2 jobs, learn more because it's a better company and get promoed to sr engineer within a year or two and make $400-500k instead. If they have ambition, they can cross the leadership rubicon (either through becoming a staff engineer or manager) and make even more, reaching up to $700k-$1M eventually. Maybe if your having a hard time breaking into startups or FANGMULA and your just starting out, this might be an ok strategy, but beyond that, it's not a good idea.

riffic 5y ago
> And you cannot put both jobs in your resume, only one on top of that, and this will show up in future background checks hah. yes you can. No one cares if you have multiple concurrent jobs on a resume. And no one cares about what the background check is going to show. This is all easily explained away.
odonnellryan 5y ago
For a short time I was "working two jobs" as part of a transition (everyone was aware) and I found it almost impossible to even manage one or two meetings a week at each job - conflicts were crazy. What are you supposed to do when you have a conflict, if you're keeping things secret? "that time doesn't work for me" "uh, why? I just hired you. You have another meeting?"
- 5y ago

picodguyo 5y ago

AKA How to end up with zero remote jobs. Seriously, don't do this. Just because you can exploit a system doesn't mean you should.

throwaway5371 5y ago

jiveturkey 5y ago

disagree with the overcommunication. overcommunication means your boss has too much sense of where you are or where you are claiming to be. and more work will be tossed over to you. always accept new work and just drop 50% of it without further reporting on it. otherwise, yeah I always set low expectations. On day 1, I show up late to orientation. always. It's worked great for me over a long career. (single jobs, not dual, although in school I always maintained 3-4 concurrent part time gigs) website worked for me but the menu part didn't load correctly. it looks quite poor. too bad it's not intentional. there's only 1 time of year when you perform. the 2 months before perf eval.

meirelles 5y ago

OMG, again? Are we going to see this every week now? This guy has two jobs already and still has time to brag about and promote his blog? Please don't ruin the remote work for us.

xwdv 5y ago

This is a litmus test. If your mentality is that you are paid for your time, not for your value, then I guess you will always carry guilt about working multiple jobs. If however you feel zero guilt, it is because you have internalized your true self worth. It shows you understand the value you bring to a company and the value of a company having a fully onboarded developer hot and ready to go whenever a crisis happens. You are not merely an ass sitting in a chair. Once you learn that your value as a developer has no relation to time and space, you can truly ascend to the next level of social class.

baobabKoodaa 5y ago
Whatever helps you sleep at night, I guess
- xwdv 5y ago
  I sleep very well at night knowing I’m making a lot of money.

codelord 5y ago

Encouraging people to take two full-time jobs by lying and cheating their way around is such a terrible advice even if you only look at it purely based on self-interests with no moral considerations. Negotiate well when starting a new job (If you haven't find a new job and negotiate well). Do great work. Use the extra time to invest on yourself: read, exercise, learn new skills, etc. You'll be happier and more successful in the long run.

actually_a_dog 5y ago
The premise here, which you haven't engaged with, is that you can get 2 remote jobs and end up with 80% more income than you would have with just one of them, all without negotiating well or needing to do "great" work. You can claim that's BS or not, but, you really need to bring more to it than "nuh uh."
- codelord 5y ago
  The proof is in the pudding. Re: negotiating. You negotiate your comp once, it takes 1 hour maybe. Compare that to the effort it takes to maintain a fragile career based on lies.
  - actually_a_dog 5y ago
    If you can negotiate +80% on your comp every time, then, sure, that pays off comparatively. But, I doubt you can. Furthermore, you only have a few chances to do so throughout a career, and your first few attempts will likely be bad.
- TameAntelope 5y ago
  You can oftentimes just walk into homes and take the things lying around in that home, and if you pick the right homes and the right times, you will avoid the negative consequences that come with getting caught. The premise here is that you can stand to benefit from lying and stealing. What is there to engage with about that? Of course it’s true, but you weigh that against the negative consequences of your deception being discovered.

starklevnertz 5y ago

If you’re a developer, your employer is using git checkins as the primary measure of whether you are working. You’ll need a script to automate credible git activity.

WanderPanda 5y ago
What is a git checkin? Sounds like a shiny new time-tracking feature :p
OnionBlender 5y ago
My former skip level manager was bad for this. He told everyone they are not allowed to squash commit and that they should commit every work day. He was located in another city from my team and this was how he checked to see who was a slacker. When one of my co-op student's term ended he wanted to hire him full-time because he thought he was a rock-star from his high number of commits. In reality the student wasn't very good and we just gave him simple tasks to write unit tests. He wasn't even good at writing unit tests because when he was unsure about edge case behavior he would just see what the function currently outputs and then write a test to expect that result. The worst is when a unit test would start to fail so he'd change the existing test to expect the wrong result. Before anyone asks, I eventually left the company and I did repeatedly tell the student how to write better unit tests in his code reviews.
maximus-decimus 5y ago
Is this a joke? Counting git commits is using LOCs as a performance metric with extra steps.

soheil 5y ago

Word of caution: don't over develop this habit as it will stay with you for the rest of your life and in all areas of your life. You think you're being clever and getting away with 2x more money, but in the end you're hurting yourself the most. If you pretend you are working, if you're not moving as fast as you can, you won't be sharpening your skills. You're in fact most likely not only sharpening your skills, but making them more dull. It's when we challenge ourselves that we grow.

kmac_ 5y ago

It's unethical, manipulative and looks like a fraud.

nnoitra 5y ago
Right, welcome to the real world.

PLenz 5y ago

"Resource Limit Is Reached" which is actually quite on-brand

I-M-S 5y ago

> In the 30-60 day window, you should set goals with your boss if that’s not already done. Drag out the newbie card and claim slow ramp-up time. Identify what absolutely needs to be done, communicate that as your goal, and meet them. In my experience, this will already make you more valuable than most employees working at big companies

actually_a_dog 5y ago
Finally! Someone who actually gets it! Truth be told, you can substitute "realistic" or "sustainable" with "low" and have a good guide to performing well at one remote job here.

headmelted 5y ago

Keep getting Resource Limit Reached errors, which is pretty ironic.

Hippocrates 5y ago

This makes no sense unless both jobs are coast-mode situations with no worthwhile upward mobility. Every job I have had and every career trajectory I have seen in the industry involves a growth curve that looks way better.

MattGaiser 5y ago
Is this true for most devs though? Company churn seems to say no.

iwork3jobs 5y ago

I work 3 gigs is in paralel. AMA, if you want, I guess.

raincom 5y ago
A few questions: (a) what kind of gigs? (b) how you manage meetings? (c) how you manage the delivery expectations?
- iwork3jobs 5y ago
  They are long term consulting (or you can call them outsourcing, rather) jobs for quite big companies. I am weary of saying the domain, but it's... Really not the domain most people would expect. I guess I'm just lucky stuff doesn't overlap. I try to keep meetings at a minimum and solve things as promptly as possible so I avoid being dragged in them. If I have some overlap I reschedule or if it's not critical I simply don't join. The expectations are pretty fucking abysmal to boot. People in this domain do not know how to fucking write software and I've been at it for a while and I know my stuff petty well. The funny part is the customers are quite happy with my work. If you also them, they will say I am one of the higher performing members of their team. I do tend to solve trickier problems and I understand the parts I build quite well so if issues arise I am quick at solving them. But, again, the level of competence is really really low! Clients will suffer most in a couple of ways. It will probably take me longer to do things than if I were to be uniquely employed for them. But, again, expectations so low, they don't have a good comparison. If one of the clients has a really serious problem, I will pour most my time in it to fix the burning issues, so the others will get neglected for a bit. Sometimes I run out of gas and I have mini burnouts so I will have these mini slumps, but I quickly snap out of it and get back on track. Just to expand how bad competence is here, at one point we had a team we worked in and out of about 4 people I basically did the whole work, while working 2 contracts at the time. As mentioned, this field is deeply dysfunctional. I worked in it as a normal consultant for a long time and really really tried improving client's stuff but.. I gave up. Most clients don't even use git and they won't fucking listen when we tell them the decisions they take are bad. They just go ahead out of inertia with horrible horrible standards and bad approaches. So I guess I'm now jaded and kind of... Resigned to be just a pawn and just bill hours.

firstplacelast 5y ago

I’m amazed by the amount of resentment and anger in these comments and how off-base they are to my own experience. I had two full-time jobs during the pandemic for 1.5years. One I had been at for 3 years previously and 70% of the time I had a very manageable work-load. I was only 100% remote for 3 months at the start of the pandemic, then in hybrid office/wfh, they are highly flexible and I can work Saturday instead of a Wednesday if I want, etc. Other position was 100% remote (even before pandemic), semi-flexible, and was for such a large organization and had so many stake-holders on every project that I barely needed to think. Pick-up a ticket, follow instructions. A typical day for me would be to wake up at 6am and start job B, have a scrum at 9am for job B, then head into job A (10minutes commute), work at job A until 1pm, come home for a 2 hour lunch and work job B, then back to the office for job A, around 6pm come back home and finish up any work for job B and job A. When things piled up I would work 10-15 hours on the weekend. At job B, I saw many coworkers fired for underperformance. At job A a few were also fired during this time period, but not in my dept. I did burn out after 1.5years and left job B, also gained a bunch of weight from sitting at a desk so often. I would do it again, I saved up a down-payment for a condo in HCOL. I have put both positions on my resume and will happily talk about this experience, have had no qualms talking to recruiters about this. Some like it, some don’t. Have been talking to one about a potential role in sales, they seem to be pretty ok with this/slightly impressed. Also, for those that didn’t grow up poor, this is called making things work. This isn’t some crazy decision with no rationale behind it. I am used to putting my head down and working hard for long periods of time. I had a full-time job my senior year of high school (still able to earn a double ride to undergrad), I’ve had a full-time + part time job some college summers, have had 3 part-time jobs other college summers. I worked part-time through 50% of college and 70% of high school. I worked a full-time job while in grad school part-time. So as you can see, from just wanting to exist and get ahead in life, I have unintentionally trained to be able to work two full-time jobs for awhile without fucking anyone over and delivering fair value in return for my paychecks.

ativzzz 5y ago
Your experience is not what the linked article is about. You sound like you essentially put in 80 hours of work a week to work two full time jobs. The entire website is about how to not actually do any work for either job while talking making it seem like you are with the ultimate goal of getting laid off on one job to collect severance.

lifeisstillgood 5y ago

My theory is that you have 2 sets of 4 hours per day. If you work 8 hours for the same employer then that is kind of 1x results for you. If you do 4 hours work and 4 hours "networking" then that often becomes 2x results - at that one company. This is considered good career moves. It's what all these 300K job discussions revolve around. You could do 4 hours and 4 hours slacking off. That's usually 1X as well. sometimes more ! You could do 4 hours work and 4 hours writing blog posts. That sometimes is 2-3x or more. Not often. Finally you could do 4 hours at each of two companies. This seems 2x as well.

canjobear 5y ago

I really hope this site is run by that guy who posted on HN about how he is doing 5 remote jobs at the same time. One of my all-time favorites

musesum 5y ago

At its peak (1990s), Microsoft was allowing engineers to moonlight. It was regarded as a retention tactic.

monkeycantype 5y ago

I have a younger relative, making a very very comfortable living, who has taken on the developing the software for a number of small companies as a solo dev, each pay him for features and a pretty decent (non software decent) annual wage for ongoing maintenance. He makes no secret that he has multiple clients, there's no duplicity, and he gets to have a flexible life where he travels when he wants and exercises a couple of hours a day. Every client he's ever picked up has kept him on. He's got the full skill set to be able to be sales negotiator, designer, tester, dev. It may be that many of us don't and are more valuable, and will be paid more, in a team that blurs our deficiencies.

TameAntelope 5y ago

I’m firing someone after the holidays who tried to set expectations low, and couldn’t do the work I gave him in anything remotely resembling a reasonable time frame. He may have been doing something like this, but honestly it doesn’t matter. The work I need done takes 40 hours to do, and sometimes more. How it gets done, or what he does otherwise isn’t really my concern, as long as it gets done. By the way, you can do this legitimately by working as a contractor. Some companies will ask you only work on their project, but many will not. The deception is not necessary.

RobRivera 5y ago
what communication did you provide as to say 'this is insufficient'?
p_l 5y ago
And the requirement to only work on their project could actually open you to legal issues at times, so it's best to push back.

exdsq 5y ago

This feels so wrong. I always understood this to mean a really good developer taking on two easy jobs, perhaps a senior developer taking two junior-mid roles that paid similarly to the senior role, so they can meet the expectation of the employer while only needing to work 10 hours a week. I thought it was cheeky but fair. To actually try and cheat employers out of wages by taking jobs and knowingly doing the minimum required to hopefully not get fired pisses me off to be honest. Over employed examples I want to hear about is from people getting jobs in admin roles and automating themselves, or senior developers taking manual testing roles and finishing their work in an hour a week.

actually_a_dog 5y ago
Let me ask you, then: if you're paying me $X, why are you entitled to more than $X worth of effort from me?
- cglace 5y ago
  Does that mean during a week if you don’t deliver $X of effort the company can claw back pay?
  - welshwelsh 5y ago
    If the company feels that your contributions aren't worth $X they can fire you
- WalterBright 5y ago
  Because you agreed to work 40 hrs/week for that $X.
  - actually_a_dog 5y ago
    I've never seen that in any offer letter or document I've signed for any tech job. Nor have I ever verbally agreed to such.

ucm_edge 5y ago

Not that I endorse this, but this seems the wrong way to do this. Take one job and do well at it. Get a reputation that you don't need to be managed. Work hard. Identify a niche for work that needs to be done but is currently underserved. Take over some of that niche while telling everyone how hard it is. In reality the niche takes 20 or fewer hours a week. Get the second job lined up. Take some vacation from the first and come out the gate hard at the second job. Attempt to more or less repeat what you did. If you can get yourself setup on the right little niches you could probably keep three or four jobs going. If you are just kind of jelly fishing along though eventually people will notice how all the other juniors in the same surface area out perform you. You want to be the person who went off, slew some dragons in a specific area, and we need to keep this person around to ensure the dragons don't repopulate. I basically get promoted doing that. Of course I'm using my spare hours to go help other people in the org, build relationships, get noticed, etc. All while having an easily defended core area to handle. Just do that but collect other jobs instead of promotions.

throwaway1492 5y ago
This is basically how I did it. Max for me was three jobs. I started pre pandemic. I was thoroughly burned out after five years. Took a break before getting back in. I could retire, but keep working for healthcare and the lulz. (One job) There are a lot orgs out there where if you can spell java, your golden.
actually_a_dog 5y ago
Not that I particularly endorse this practice, either, but your way wouldn't work. You're missing the part where the reward for hard work is more hard work. You definitely can get promoted this way, but, you can't really use it to maintain a whole other job, IMO.
- ucm_edge 5y ago
  That's why I said you define the niche and overstate its work. You work hard and build trust and then yes if you ask for more work, you get more work. However there is a window in which to define what you do next and make it seem like more work than it really is.

yummy_box 5y ago

Lovely to see the "how dare you to have 2 jobs!" boomer crowd going nuts. All those comments about , "you are destroying you career", and "you wont get promoted" , are so cringe. If you hire a dev, that is delivering and is a decent person. Why do you about care what he/she/* does on the side? That's like saying you should only be able to own one business. In the other hand, if a employee is not performing , you should fire him/her/* regardless of how many jobs the person has.

danbmil99 5y ago

A more upfront way to do this is to get contract work as a consultant, and have at least some of your clients paying by project or retainer rather than strict hourly billing. This discussion of the TKPV ladder is relevant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29360119#29362849 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29360119#29362849

boublepop 5y ago

The two job setup is just a brilliant way of exposing the fact that almost every tech worker is in a position where pay/effort is falling as pay increases. We all know there are 10x’s but you’ll never see anyone getting 10x the pay no matter how productive they are. So for most its better to take two jobs at 50% the effort at 75% the pay each.

raincom 5y ago

All outsourcing companies follow the same formula: set low expectations, add more billable hours. Just go and look at how WITCH(wipro, infosys, tcs, etc) operate. In fact, many Indian middle managers get bribed by transferring money and assets to their relatives back home. Next time look at these managers and why they have 20 contractors in their team and not delivering any improvements. The moment employees slack, mortal wizards come from the wood work.