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I've been a hiring manager for remote positions for a long time. If your recruiting channels are good, most of your candidates are going to be honest and good i

I've been a hiring manager for remote positions for a long time. If your recruiting channels are good, most of your candidates are going to be honest and good intentioned. But interview enough people, and you'll start encountering people trying to abuse remote work. They're not interested in contributing to your company. They're only interested in collecting paychecks while they do as little work as possible for as long as possible. They might already have a full-time job or other remote jobs, or maybe they're just trying to travel the world and do a "four hour workweek" thing where they answer e-mails once a day and phone in a couple hours of work at key times during the week. The common theme is that they aren't really interested in fighting too hard for the position. As soon as the interview or job turns out to be something they can't just talk and smile their way through, they're out, just like this: > I think my last update for a while: as soon as HR got on the call with him, before they could get through their first question, John said the words “I quit” and hung up the calls. He has since been unreachable!! Always makes me wonder how many dysfunctional companies are out there letting deadbeat remote employees collect paychecks and do as little work as possible because nobody cares enough to press the issue.

thrower123 5y ago
> Always makes me wonder how many dysfunctional companies are out there letting deadbeat remote employees collect paychecks and do as little work as possible because nobody cares enough to press the issue. I can't imagine it's much worse than it was in the before-times. Wally has always been able to skate along with a certain amount of meeting-attending.
- mavhc 5y ago
  If you can't tell whether your employees are working, why do you even have employees? Imagine how much money you'll save.
  - smorgusofborg 5y ago
    Then you have to get out of all the work you were assigning them yourself. Much better to leave it to a specialist!
    - nmstoker 5y ago
      Yes, but remember in the scenario you're replying to, you cannot tell if they've done the work. So assigning to the specialist you mention might as well mean tossing the job requests into the bin.
  - gedy 5y ago
    Most companies I've worked for use "I can see them at their desk" or meeting attendance as the primary measure of "your employees are working".
    - mavhc 5y ago
      don't they do work you can see?
  - lordnacho 5y ago
    It's like the adage about advertising: you don't know which ones are effective.
- rcurry 5y ago
  I worked for a computer security company once, it was my first real programming job and I had no experience with the kind of crazy stuff that goes on with hiring, I was really naive and had no clue that certain kinds of people existed in the workforce. So one day my boss (CTO) calls me up and says “Hey, we are hiring another Windows guy, can you do a quick interview and check him out?” (I was the only Windows dev at the time) So they send me the guy’s resume and he’s a PhD in Electrical Engineering. I feel really nervous about having to interview the guy because he had a PhD, but I figured other people had already checked him out so I meet with him and just have kind of a softball interview, not going into a technical deep dive or anything like that. He seems alright and has a ton of experience, so I figured what the hell. Well about a month later my boss calls me again and he’s like “Hey, we’ve been having some concerns about John Doe, can you check in on him and see how he’s doing?” So I go over to John Doe’s office and sit down with him and talk about what he’s been doing. He shows me that he’s having trouble with some things that are so basic that it’s almost like he’s never even seen a Windows machine, much less done any programming on one; and I’m not exaggerating, it was really that bad! Long story short, they let him go. A few days after, I’m in the break room and one of the Unix guys walks in. He asks me how things are going and I’m like “Well, not so good, we’re back to just one Windows developer because they had to let the new guy go.” He says “Who was that?” So I tell him “this guy John Doe…” and before I can go any further he exclaims “Good God! Not THE John Doe?!?” Apparently this guy was a legend in the IT community in the city - he would fake resumes and get hired for as long as he could run the scam.
vultour 5y ago
What you described can just as easily be done on-site. Remote work merely lets these people actually do something they might enjoy instead of sitting in a chair and pretending to work for 8 hours. I’ve met people likely this and they’d rather pretend to be busy than actually do something.
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  > What you described can just as easily be done on-site. You can't get two on-site jobs at the same time. One of them is going to notice that you're not there.
  - sarchertech 5y ago
    True but compared to the number of people who are just unproductive at their single job, there’s no point in worrying about people working 2 jobs.
  - kelnos 5y ago
    I think the point was that many on-site employees get their work done just fine, but spend half of their in-office hours goofing off on Facebook or reading HN or whatever. So in principle that "wasted" time (assuming it is indeed a waste) could be put to use for a different company, with double the compensation. Obviously there are severe logistical issues if you're on-site!
rootusrootus 5y ago
> Always makes me wonder how many dysfunctional companies are out there letting deadbeat remote employees collect paychecks and do as little work as possible because nobody cares enough to press the issue. I'll take a stab at it, and predict... all of them. Or nearly so. There seems to be an ever-present fraction of employees at any large corporation that are essentially worthless. Just along for the ride, raking in a paycheck while someone else does the meaningful work. We've had stories here on HN about people exploiting it. There's a moment, I think, in many developers' careers where it occurs to them that there is almost never any reward for hard work. And when you're a wage slave for a large corporation, it's easy to blur the morality until it feels okay to take advantage of the situation. When I find myself starting to think such thoughts, I know that it's time for me to move on to another opportunity. And a smaller company, even though it pays less, because it's better for your soul.
- soared 5y ago
  From my experience once you have ~1,000 employees AND a complicated org chart/raci/etc then it’s fairly easy for people to do little work and hide. In smaller orgs too many people see you, and in orgs that are running efficiently if you don’t do your job it causes issues. Tons of people hiding at oracle from my experience :)
  - pphysch 5y ago
    We had a remote freeloader find a position at Oracle before his short-term contract with us was done. Onward and upward :)
    - Tade0 5y ago
      I'll do you one better. My friends from a team I used to be in had a guy who simply didn't know how to code. My friend would at times act as a ghostwriter(for free) so that the poor bastard wouldn't get fired. Eventually the guy was promoted. The Dilbert principle is real.
      - 5y ago
skwirl 5y ago
>Always makes me wonder how many dysfunctional companies are out there letting deadbeat remote employees collect paychecks and do as little work as possible because nobody cares enough to press the issue. Probably the vast majority of companies! If you ever get an employee like this as a direct report and try to do something about it, the process is incredibly draining and shitty. Easily the worst I've felt about work in my career (so far!). I see why people try to ignore the issue, but it also feels pretty bad having your other team members constantly pick up the slack around a non-performing team member.
spaetzleesser 5y ago
“Always makes me wonder how many dysfunctional companies are out there letting deadbeat remote employees collect paychecks and do as little work as possible because nobody cares enough to press the issue.” It’s not only remote people. I have seen multiple people at my company who are basically incompetent or lazy and produce nothing of value or even negative output. Some of them get let go after years and some of them get promoted into management. Having a pleasant demeanor can get you very far without doing any work.
- db65edfc7996 5y ago
  My coworkers and I have a term for those that are providing no value, but seemingly impossible to remove. The "barnacles" are ever present and likely making more money than you. Such is life.
- vorpalhex 5y ago
  When I worked at an arcade, one the cleaning crew was well known to also be hired, for the same shift times, at the movie theater across the way. He would dash between the two (in the same all black uniform) just enough nobody noticed him missing.
cercatrova 5y ago
There is a whole community about this called Overemployed [0]. Their reddit posts are quite entertaining, like this guy who works 5 jobs and is making 1.2 million a year [1]. [0] https://overemployed.com/ https://overemployed.com/ [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/overemployed/comments/s12c8l/i_start_job_5_on_monday_12_mil_a_year_heres_my/ https://old.reddit.com/r/overemployed/comments/s12c8l/i_star...
- democracy 5y ago
  Yeah there is a lot of imaginary stories obviously. But at the same time as a contractor you could always work with multiple clients, not sure why it comes as a surprise in 2021. A full-time employee for 2 companies? Bullshit. Not a sustainable model.
- paxys 5y ago
  I'll caution people to take this (and the rest of Reddit) with a huge grain of salt. Subreddits like this one are almost always just creative writing.
  - ignoramous 5y ago
    > I'll caution people to take this (and the rest of Reddit) with a huge grain of salt. Subreddits like this one are almost always just creative writing. Time to get creative with our time and careers, as long as the skill is transferable, and health is manageable. That said, 5 jobs sound too much, but who knows...
  - quickthrower2 5y ago
    That said, people doing under-hours, and taking a second job must happen quite a bit, especially post pandemic.
  - wil421 5y ago
    Former coworkers did this. One guy have 2 full time jobs and a project based contract job that didn’t always have active work. A former intern of mine’s coworker has 3 “full time”jobs.
  - 5y ago
wly_cdgr 5y ago
There is no company out there that stays in business long paying their employees the full amount of the value they would generate if they were really working full+ time, so why should those employees do that unless they happen to enjoy it or it advances their own goals? That's just whipping yourself so massa doesn't have to
amrrs 5y ago
I'll present an alternate case, mine. I'm in a senior IC role sitting in India making almost 1/4th of what my US Counterpart makes. I work as much as them if not more. We as Indians are always taught to be sincere and obedient and I try to show that in my work trying to stay up finish the work so that my sincerity is never questioned. I'm always on the side to prove my quality - even though I'm highly underpaid for the same work. Overall, I'm someone who needs to prove everytime that I'm sincere and I'm intellectual while I'm known only for being a cheap resource.
- angrais 5y ago
  Are you paid a fair market rate for your geographical location in India? (i.e., are other local companies offering worse or better benefits?)
  - manmal 5y ago
    If they earn the equivalent of 30-50k (25% of a US senior IC), I imagine they can afford a decent standard of living, eg in Mumbai.
    - no1lives4ever 5y ago
      30k usd maps to 2.2million inr. Which is the kind of pay a quality junior employee with 3-4 years of experience can get in a quality firm. There has been an explosion in tech salaries in the last 4-5 years and these days most companies are finding it tough to fill up their positions. Quality resources can easily get 50% of what a equavalent role would get them in the US.
  - no1lives4ever 5y ago
    These days, equavalent salaries in india are between 1/4th to 1/2 of equavalent american or uk salary for the same job. Adjusting for cost of living is a bit tricky as there are many things which are cheaper in India, but many things that a sw developer may want to buy are not so. In general electronic items are a bit more expensive in India, but things like rent, cost of food, clothing, cost of a basic car are lesser here in India. OTOH, mostly it is not apples to apples comparison. e.g. you can get cars for 5-8000 usd here in India, but those cars would most likely be illegal to sell in the US. When the manufacturers sell the same exact model here in India, the prices are a lot higher. So if OP says that they get 1/4th of the salary that people from US get for same role, then I feel that he is most likely underpaid.
quickthrower2 5y ago
The irony of this is what does a business do. It tries to find a way to efficiently serve multiple customers, keeping them happy, giving them value etc. In order to make more money than you would make by serving a single customer. Look at is as more of a scrap on the blurred business/employee lines, as much as a moral outrage or failing. Often a job is "we want you to survive but not fly, .... so that we can".
pojzon 5y ago
Its funny because I remember a talk here on ycombinator from ppl who do exactly what you described here. Often extremely smart and talented. Working on own projects/business idea. Their argument is that they can in 1h deliver often as much as you average Joe in a week. “Put as little effort as possible, but I have expenses” Can give example of such ppl in: - Samsung - TomTom - Oracle - Amazon Too many of them tbh. Slowly choking the business.
- el-salvador 5y ago
  > Their argument is that they can in 1h deliver often as much as you average Joe in a week. Sometimes I've been able to fix in an afternoon, what someone has been trying to fix for days. From and outsiders' perspective it may seem that I am working less
- iwork3jobs 5y ago
  So what should I do when I realize that a lot of my coworkers are HIGHLY inefficient? And I can do their work in a lower amount of time? And I have a ceiling on how much I can earn? I just go looking elsewhere in parallel. OR - I build a startup. But I hate the buisiness ethos.
908B64B197 5y ago
> or maybe they're just trying to travel the world and do a "four hour workweek" thing where they answer e-mails once a day and phone in a couple hours of work at key times during the week. I’ve seen it work exactly once. The guy was absolutely brilliant, however. And a great communicator. But everything had to be done asynchronously for the most part, except a few slots where he was guaranteed to have good network and be able to hop on a conference call. He was also a performance advocate, since everything had to work great on his laptop with poor network and contributed several patches to make the dev experience better. He was a stellar communicator with emails and knew the codebase really well and since he responded in batch he gave a lot of context in his responses (because he wouldn’t often know what the response would be for another day or two).
- kelnos 5y ago
  I think the key thing here is that even though he was placing a burden on his employer and teammates, the arrangement was well understood by both parties, and the employer agreed to accept it. If someone wants to do something non-traditional and not inform the company about it, then the onus is on the employee to make sure their "odd" work habits don't impact others negatively.
Osiris 5y ago
I know a guy who's actively interviewing to take on a second remote job while keeping his first. He has no plans to make either party aware that he has other employment. His argument is that at his current job he can get all of his assigned work done in 10-20 hours a week (though he doesn't share with them that he's basically only working part time) so he has plenty of time to take on a second job where he also expects to get his daily work done in just a few hours a day. I don't have an issue with it IF both parties are aware that he's only working a few hours a day but are happy with what he's getting done. It's the inevitable lies when there are conflicting meetings, etc. that bother me. I told him so and he was undeterred.
- kelnos 5y ago
  I agree that the conflicting meetings bit could be tricky, but I don't think he has a moral obligation to inform either company of what's going on, assuming one company's work doesn't interfere with the assigned work from the other. Also I would hope that the two companies he ends up working at aren't even remotely in competition with each other, because that would be unethical. If both companies are happy with the guy's work output, then he is fulfilling the terms of his employment, at least in spirit and morally/ethically. (I'm aware that some companies include in their employment papers a clause that states that employees won't take on other employment. I believe I've signed such a thing at my current job. But I personally consider such clauses to be unethical in the first place, and would feel no qualms violating that if I was in a position to want to do so. Unfortunately I'm pretty sure nearly all salaried jobs will stipulate something like that, so it's not like people can vote with their feet.) I would personally find this sort of arrangement to be pretty stressful, and wouldn't do it, but if someone wants to give it a go, more power to them.
  - bityard 5y ago
    > but I don't think he has a moral obligation to inform either company of what's going on, assuming one company's work doesn't interfere with the assigned work from the other. I strongly disagree. When you are hired as a full-time employee, the expectation is that you are giving your full 8 hours work day (or whatever) to the company in exchange for a paycheck. Otherwise, you are extracting full value from the company while they are getting half (or worse) value from you. There are lots of people with a "screw everyone else, I got mine" attitude who don't see anything wrong with lying to your employer about how you are spending your time. I lump these people in with people who justify various forms of stealing with the rationale that it doesn't _really_ hurt the victim since some insurance comapany pays for the loss anyway. It demonstrates a severe lack of integrity. I would never want to work with or associate anyone like that. I do however believe that "no moonlighting" clauses in employment contracts should be illegal. I ought to be able to use my skills to make extra money in my free time, as long is there is no apparent conflict of interest present (e.g. moonlighting for a competitor).
varispeed 5y ago
> Always makes me wonder how many dysfunctional companies are out there letting deadbeat remote employees collect paychecks and do as little work as possible because nobody cares enough to press the issue. There are corporations that over-hire and often provide no work at all for weeks or months, but they require that worker is always on stand-by in case there is a surge. I know full-time workers who throughout an entire year maybe done one or two small PR-s, but when suddenly there is an issue needing solving and product teams have full capacity, these people save the day. They are sometimes also utilised for pairing, when given product team members have no spare capacity. From someone not knowing this, they indeed may seem like deadbeat employees, but the key is - they have to be always available during work hours even if no one contacts them for weeks.
- JetAlone 5y ago
  Hmmmmm, it's sort of like renting an apartment with one more room than you actually need so you have a place to put extra stuff, or you can have a guest over. Personally, I would go absolutely crazy if I did nothing at my job, even if it was remote, for weeks on end.
  - varispeed 5y ago
    You are free to do side gigs, just you need to drop everything if the main job needs you.
- mbrodersen 5y ago
  It’s kinda the same way the military or firemen works.
scotty79 5y ago
This isn't limited to remote employees.
JoeAltmaier 5y ago
Worked at a place hired one of those. He scheduled meetings, then cancelled them at the last minute. Never accomplished a single task. Demanded a good reference and he would go get another job elsewhere - essentially extorted the reference. I guess some folks are sociopaths, and do whatever it takes to live well.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
ethbr0 5y ago
> They might already have a full-time job or other remote jobs Bingo. That was my first thought in this. Especially given how quickly they gave the job up. They paid someone to interview for them, collected wages for the period they were employed, and then went on to the next opportunity. Sadly, there is nothing in the story to discourage the person from doing it again. And at most companies, there would be enough egg on HR's face for letting this happen that I'd imagine everyone would quietly sweep it under the rug.
ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
Large corporations can have a lot of hysteresis. Once someone is hired, it can be quite difficult to fire them. Even the "90-day probationary" periods are not really useful. I think the only thing that they do, is if the employee quits before the 90 days are up, then they have to pay the company back for all the expenses incurred by the company (I had this happen to someone we hired. They were not expecting that. Too bad. They were actually very good, and dumped us for a job in a location they preferred. I felt bad about that. I actually didn't hold any rancor towards them). I suspect startups can be a lot more likely to be able to give someone the boot in an efficacious manner.
- iandanforth 5y ago
  This is a horrible idea and is likely illegal in many jurisdictions.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
    It's totally legal, in New York. I doubt that it covers interviewing expenses. I think it only covers stuff that happened after they signed the offer. And I really don't appreciate being dinged for the actions of my corporation. I was not involved at all in that part of things, and only heard about it afterwards. I had many disagreements with our HR department, which could be rapacious. However, it was run by highly skilled and experienced lawyers, and everything they did was legal (if not always what I considered ethical; but I have high ethical standards).
icelancer 5y ago
>> Always makes me wonder how many dysfunctional companies are out there letting deadbeat remote employees collect paychecks and do as little work as possible because nobody cares enough to press the issue. Nearly all of them. And it's why managers who get burned just a single time hate the idea of remote work. It's not about office rent or anything else that gets bandied about here; it's the fact that a very small but significant number of remote workers are grifters and create a ton of negative emotion (out of sight out of mind) for co-workers and managers. A ton of remote work is obviously the future, but every single negative case like this with legacy managers sets it back orders of magnitude more than the successes it generates. So it goes with everything new.
PickledHotdog 5y ago
I expect the number of employees taking advantage of companies pales into insignificance when compared to the number of companies taking advantage of employees
cafard 5y ago
Collecting paychecks: there is a story that I suspect is centuries old, but which I heard attached to John XXIII. Supposedly somebody asked him how many people worked at the Vatican, and he answered, Maybe one out of three.

thrower123 5y ago

> Always makes me wonder how many dysfunctional companies are out there letting deadbeat remote employees collect paychecks and do as little work as possible because nobody cares enough to press the issue. I can't imagine it's much worse than it was in the before-times. Wally has always been able to skate along with a certain amount of meeting-attending.

mavhc 5y ago
If you can't tell whether your employees are working, why do you even have employees? Imagine how much money you'll save.
- smorgusofborg 5y ago
  Then you have to get out of all the work you were assigning them yourself. Much better to leave it to a specialist!
  - nmstoker 5y ago
    Yes, but remember in the scenario you're replying to, you cannot tell if they've done the work. So assigning to the specialist you mention might as well mean tossing the job requests into the bin.
- gedy 5y ago
  Most companies I've worked for use "I can see them at their desk" or meeting attendance as the primary measure of "your employees are working".
  - mavhc 5y ago
    don't they do work you can see?
- lordnacho 5y ago
  It's like the adage about advertising: you don't know which ones are effective.
rcurry 5y ago
I worked for a computer security company once, it was my first real programming job and I had no experience with the kind of crazy stuff that goes on with hiring, I was really naive and had no clue that certain kinds of people existed in the workforce. So one day my boss (CTO) calls me up and says “Hey, we are hiring another Windows guy, can you do a quick interview and check him out?” (I was the only Windows dev at the time) So they send me the guy’s resume and he’s a PhD in Electrical Engineering. I feel really nervous about having to interview the guy because he had a PhD, but I figured other people had already checked him out so I meet with him and just have kind of a softball interview, not going into a technical deep dive or anything like that. He seems alright and has a ton of experience, so I figured what the hell. Well about a month later my boss calls me again and he’s like “Hey, we’ve been having some concerns about John Doe, can you check in on him and see how he’s doing?” So I go over to John Doe’s office and sit down with him and talk about what he’s been doing. He shows me that he’s having trouble with some things that are so basic that it’s almost like he’s never even seen a Windows machine, much less done any programming on one; and I’m not exaggerating, it was really that bad! Long story short, they let him go. A few days after, I’m in the break room and one of the Unix guys walks in. He asks me how things are going and I’m like “Well, not so good, we’re back to just one Windows developer because they had to let the new guy go.” He says “Who was that?” So I tell him “this guy John Doe…” and before I can go any further he exclaims “Good God! Not THE John Doe?!?” Apparently this guy was a legend in the IT community in the city - he would fake resumes and get hired for as long as he could run the scam.

vultour 5y ago

What you described can just as easily be done on-site. Remote work merely lets these people actually do something they might enjoy instead of sitting in a chair and pretending to work for 8 hours. I’ve met people likely this and they’d rather pretend to be busy than actually do something.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> What you described can just as easily be done on-site. You can't get two on-site jobs at the same time. One of them is going to notice that you're not there.
- sarchertech 5y ago
  True but compared to the number of people who are just unproductive at their single job, there’s no point in worrying about people working 2 jobs.
- kelnos 5y ago
  I think the point was that many on-site employees get their work done just fine, but spend half of their in-office hours goofing off on Facebook or reading HN or whatever. So in principle that "wasted" time (assuming it is indeed a waste) could be put to use for a different company, with double the compensation. Obviously there are severe logistical issues if you're on-site!

rootusrootus 5y ago

> Always makes me wonder how many dysfunctional companies are out there letting deadbeat remote employees collect paychecks and do as little work as possible because nobody cares enough to press the issue. I'll take a stab at it, and predict... all of them. Or nearly so. There seems to be an ever-present fraction of employees at any large corporation that are essentially worthless. Just along for the ride, raking in a paycheck while someone else does the meaningful work. We've had stories here on HN about people exploiting it. There's a moment, I think, in many developers' careers where it occurs to them that there is almost never any reward for hard work. And when you're a wage slave for a large corporation, it's easy to blur the morality until it feels okay to take advantage of the situation. When I find myself starting to think such thoughts, I know that it's time for me to move on to another opportunity. And a smaller company, even though it pays less, because it's better for your soul.

soared 5y ago
From my experience once you have ~1,000 employees AND a complicated org chart/raci/etc then it’s fairly easy for people to do little work and hide. In smaller orgs too many people see you, and in orgs that are running efficiently if you don’t do your job it causes issues. Tons of people hiding at oracle from my experience :)
- pphysch 5y ago
  We had a remote freeloader find a position at Oracle before his short-term contract with us was done. Onward and upward :)
  - Tade0 5y ago
    I'll do you one better. My friends from a team I used to be in had a guy who simply didn't know how to code. My friend would at times act as a ghostwriter(for free) so that the poor bastard wouldn't get fired. Eventually the guy was promoted. The Dilbert principle is real.
    - 5y ago

skwirl 5y ago

>Always makes me wonder how many dysfunctional companies are out there letting deadbeat remote employees collect paychecks and do as little work as possible because nobody cares enough to press the issue. Probably the vast majority of companies! If you ever get an employee like this as a direct report and try to do something about it, the process is incredibly draining and shitty. Easily the worst I've felt about work in my career (so far!). I see why people try to ignore the issue, but it also feels pretty bad having your other team members constantly pick up the slack around a non-performing team member.

spaetzleesser 5y ago

“Always makes me wonder how many dysfunctional companies are out there letting deadbeat remote employees collect paychecks and do as little work as possible because nobody cares enough to press the issue.” It’s not only remote people. I have seen multiple people at my company who are basically incompetent or lazy and produce nothing of value or even negative output. Some of them get let go after years and some of them get promoted into management. Having a pleasant demeanor can get you very far without doing any work.

db65edfc7996 5y ago
My coworkers and I have a term for those that are providing no value, but seemingly impossible to remove. The "barnacles" are ever present and likely making more money than you. Such is life.
vorpalhex 5y ago
When I worked at an arcade, one the cleaning crew was well known to also be hired, for the same shift times, at the movie theater across the way. He would dash between the two (in the same all black uniform) just enough nobody noticed him missing.

cercatrova 5y ago

There is a whole community about this called Overemployed [0]. Their reddit posts are quite entertaining, like this guy who works 5 jobs and is making 1.2 million a year [1]. [0] https://overemployed.com/ https://overemployed.com/ [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/overemployed/comments/s12c8l/i_start_job_5_on_monday_12_mil_a_year_heres_my/ https://old.reddit.com/r/overemployed/comments/s12c8l/i_star...

democracy 5y ago
Yeah there is a lot of imaginary stories obviously. But at the same time as a contractor you could always work with multiple clients, not sure why it comes as a surprise in 2021. A full-time employee for 2 companies? Bullshit. Not a sustainable model.
paxys 5y ago
I'll caution people to take this (and the rest of Reddit) with a huge grain of salt. Subreddits like this one are almost always just creative writing.
- ignoramous 5y ago
  > I'll caution people to take this (and the rest of Reddit) with a huge grain of salt. Subreddits like this one are almost always just creative writing. Time to get creative with our time and careers, as long as the skill is transferable, and health is manageable. That said, 5 jobs sound too much, but who knows...
- quickthrower2 5y ago
  That said, people doing under-hours, and taking a second job must happen quite a bit, especially post pandemic.
- wil421 5y ago
  Former coworkers did this. One guy have 2 full time jobs and a project based contract job that didn’t always have active work. A former intern of mine’s coworker has 3 “full time”jobs.
- 5y ago

wly_cdgr 5y ago

There is no company out there that stays in business long paying their employees the full amount of the value they would generate if they were really working full+ time, so why should those employees do that unless they happen to enjoy it or it advances their own goals? That's just whipping yourself so massa doesn't have to

amrrs 5y ago

I'll present an alternate case, mine. I'm in a senior IC role sitting in India making almost 1/4th of what my US Counterpart makes. I work as much as them if not more. We as Indians are always taught to be sincere and obedient and I try to show that in my work trying to stay up finish the work so that my sincerity is never questioned. I'm always on the side to prove my quality - even though I'm highly underpaid for the same work. Overall, I'm someone who needs to prove everytime that I'm sincere and I'm intellectual while I'm known only for being a cheap resource.

angrais 5y ago
Are you paid a fair market rate for your geographical location in India? (i.e., are other local companies offering worse or better benefits?)
- manmal 5y ago
  If they earn the equivalent of 30-50k (25% of a US senior IC), I imagine they can afford a decent standard of living, eg in Mumbai.
  - no1lives4ever 5y ago
    30k usd maps to 2.2million inr. Which is the kind of pay a quality junior employee with 3-4 years of experience can get in a quality firm. There has been an explosion in tech salaries in the last 4-5 years and these days most companies are finding it tough to fill up their positions. Quality resources can easily get 50% of what a equavalent role would get them in the US.
- no1lives4ever 5y ago
  These days, equavalent salaries in india are between 1/4th to 1/2 of equavalent american or uk salary for the same job. Adjusting for cost of living is a bit tricky as there are many things which are cheaper in India, but many things that a sw developer may want to buy are not so. In general electronic items are a bit more expensive in India, but things like rent, cost of food, clothing, cost of a basic car are lesser here in India. OTOH, mostly it is not apples to apples comparison. e.g. you can get cars for 5-8000 usd here in India, but those cars would most likely be illegal to sell in the US. When the manufacturers sell the same exact model here in India, the prices are a lot higher. So if OP says that they get 1/4th of the salary that people from US get for same role, then I feel that he is most likely underpaid.

quickthrower2 5y ago

The irony of this is what does a business do. It tries to find a way to efficiently serve multiple customers, keeping them happy, giving them value etc. In order to make more money than you would make by serving a single customer. Look at is as more of a scrap on the blurred business/employee lines, as much as a moral outrage or failing. Often a job is "we want you to survive but not fly, .... so that we can".

pojzon 5y ago

Its funny because I remember a talk here on ycombinator from ppl who do exactly what you described here. Often extremely smart and talented. Working on own projects/business idea. Their argument is that they can in 1h deliver often as much as you average Joe in a week. “Put as little effort as possible, but I have expenses” Can give example of such ppl in: - Samsung - TomTom - Oracle - Amazon Too many of them tbh. Slowly choking the business.

el-salvador 5y ago
> Their argument is that they can in 1h deliver often as much as you average Joe in a week. Sometimes I've been able to fix in an afternoon, what someone has been trying to fix for days. From and outsiders' perspective it may seem that I am working less
iwork3jobs 5y ago
So what should I do when I realize that a lot of my coworkers are HIGHLY inefficient? And I can do their work in a lower amount of time? And I have a ceiling on how much I can earn? I just go looking elsewhere in parallel. OR - I build a startup. But I hate the buisiness ethos.

908B64B197 5y ago

> or maybe they're just trying to travel the world and do a "four hour workweek" thing where they answer e-mails once a day and phone in a couple hours of work at key times during the week. I’ve seen it work exactly once. The guy was absolutely brilliant, however. And a great communicator. But everything had to be done asynchronously for the most part, except a few slots where he was guaranteed to have good network and be able to hop on a conference call. He was also a performance advocate, since everything had to work great on his laptop with poor network and contributed several patches to make the dev experience better. He was a stellar communicator with emails and knew the codebase really well and since he responded in batch he gave a lot of context in his responses (because he wouldn’t often know what the response would be for another day or two).

kelnos 5y ago
I think the key thing here is that even though he was placing a burden on his employer and teammates, the arrangement was well understood by both parties, and the employer agreed to accept it. If someone wants to do something non-traditional and not inform the company about it, then the onus is on the employee to make sure their "odd" work habits don't impact others negatively.

Osiris 5y ago

I know a guy who's actively interviewing to take on a second remote job while keeping his first. He has no plans to make either party aware that he has other employment. His argument is that at his current job he can get all of his assigned work done in 10-20 hours a week (though he doesn't share with them that he's basically only working part time) so he has plenty of time to take on a second job where he also expects to get his daily work done in just a few hours a day. I don't have an issue with it IF both parties are aware that he's only working a few hours a day but are happy with what he's getting done. It's the inevitable lies when there are conflicting meetings, etc. that bother me. I told him so and he was undeterred.

kelnos 5y ago
I agree that the conflicting meetings bit could be tricky, but I don't think he has a moral obligation to inform either company of what's going on, assuming one company's work doesn't interfere with the assigned work from the other. Also I would hope that the two companies he ends up working at aren't even remotely in competition with each other, because that would be unethical. If both companies are happy with the guy's work output, then he is fulfilling the terms of his employment, at least in spirit and morally/ethically. (I'm aware that some companies include in their employment papers a clause that states that employees won't take on other employment. I believe I've signed such a thing at my current job. But I personally consider such clauses to be unethical in the first place, and would feel no qualms violating that if I was in a position to want to do so. Unfortunately I'm pretty sure nearly all salaried jobs will stipulate something like that, so it's not like people can vote with their feet.) I would personally find this sort of arrangement to be pretty stressful, and wouldn't do it, but if someone wants to give it a go, more power to them.
- bityard 5y ago
  > but I don't think he has a moral obligation to inform either company of what's going on, assuming one company's work doesn't interfere with the assigned work from the other. I strongly disagree. When you are hired as a full-time employee, the expectation is that you are giving your full 8 hours work day (or whatever) to the company in exchange for a paycheck. Otherwise, you are extracting full value from the company while they are getting half (or worse) value from you. There are lots of people with a "screw everyone else, I got mine" attitude who don't see anything wrong with lying to your employer about how you are spending your time. I lump these people in with people who justify various forms of stealing with the rationale that it doesn't _really_ hurt the victim since some insurance comapany pays for the loss anyway. It demonstrates a severe lack of integrity. I would never want to work with or associate anyone like that. I do however believe that "no moonlighting" clauses in employment contracts should be illegal. I ought to be able to use my skills to make extra money in my free time, as long is there is no apparent conflict of interest present (e.g. moonlighting for a competitor).

varispeed 5y ago

> Always makes me wonder how many dysfunctional companies are out there letting deadbeat remote employees collect paychecks and do as little work as possible because nobody cares enough to press the issue. There are corporations that over-hire and often provide no work at all for weeks or months, but they require that worker is always on stand-by in case there is a surge. I know full-time workers who throughout an entire year maybe done one or two small PR-s, but when suddenly there is an issue needing solving and product teams have full capacity, these people save the day. They are sometimes also utilised for pairing, when given product team members have no spare capacity. From someone not knowing this, they indeed may seem like deadbeat employees, but the key is - they have to be always available during work hours even if no one contacts them for weeks.

JetAlone 5y ago
Hmmmmm, it's sort of like renting an apartment with one more room than you actually need so you have a place to put extra stuff, or you can have a guest over. Personally, I would go absolutely crazy if I did nothing at my job, even if it was remote, for weeks on end.
- varispeed 5y ago
  You are free to do side gigs, just you need to drop everything if the main job needs you.
mbrodersen 5y ago
It’s kinda the same way the military or firemen works.

scotty79 5y ago

This isn't limited to remote employees.

JoeAltmaier 5y ago

Worked at a place hired one of those. He scheduled meetings, then cancelled them at the last minute. Never accomplished a single task. Demanded a good reference and he would go get another job elsewhere - essentially extorted the reference. I guess some folks are sociopaths, and do whatever it takes to live well.

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ethbr0 5y ago

> They might already have a full-time job or other remote jobs Bingo. That was my first thought in this. Especially given how quickly they gave the job up. They paid someone to interview for them, collected wages for the period they were employed, and then went on to the next opportunity. Sadly, there is nothing in the story to discourage the person from doing it again. And at most companies, there would be enough egg on HR's face for letting this happen that I'd imagine everyone would quietly sweep it under the rug.

ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago

Large corporations can have a lot of hysteresis. Once someone is hired, it can be quite difficult to fire them. Even the "90-day probationary" periods are not really useful. I think the only thing that they do, is if the employee quits before the 90 days are up, then they have to pay the company back for all the expenses incurred by the company (I had this happen to someone we hired. They were not expecting that. Too bad. They were actually very good, and dumped us for a job in a location they preferred. I felt bad about that. I actually didn't hold any rancor towards them). I suspect startups can be a lot more likely to be able to give someone the boot in an efficacious manner.

iandanforth 5y ago
This is a horrible idea and is likely illegal in many jurisdictions.
- ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
  It's totally legal, in New York. I doubt that it covers interviewing expenses. I think it only covers stuff that happened after they signed the offer. And I really don't appreciate being dinged for the actions of my corporation. I was not involved at all in that part of things, and only heard about it afterwards. I had many disagreements with our HR department, which could be rapacious. However, it was run by highly skilled and experienced lawyers, and everything they did was legal (if not always what I considered ethical; but I have high ethical standards).

icelancer 5y ago

>> Always makes me wonder how many dysfunctional companies are out there letting deadbeat remote employees collect paychecks and do as little work as possible because nobody cares enough to press the issue. Nearly all of them. And it's why managers who get burned just a single time hate the idea of remote work. It's not about office rent or anything else that gets bandied about here; it's the fact that a very small but significant number of remote workers are grifters and create a ton of negative emotion (out of sight out of mind) for co-workers and managers. A ton of remote work is obviously the future, but every single negative case like this with legacy managers sets it back orders of magnitude more than the successes it generates. So it goes with everything new.

PickledHotdog 5y ago

I expect the number of employees taking advantage of companies pales into insignificance when compared to the number of companies taking advantage of employees

cafard 5y ago

Collecting paychecks: there is a story that I suspect is centuries old, but which I heard attached to John XXIII. Supposedly somebody asked him how many people worked at the Vatican, and he answered, Maybe one out of three.