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Ask HN: Have yo heard of anyone practicing “/r/Overemployed”?

15 points by ryanmercer 5y ago

endisneigh 5y ago
Yeah, but it’s obviously dishonest. If you disagree, consider this: would any employer be ok with their employee practicing this? Most would not, most doing this don’t tell. Hence, dishonest. If someone is doing it and all employers know and are cool with it then more power to them.
Tolexx 5y ago
It's a growing and popular subreddit. It's a community where people that work remotely discuss on how to take on multiple jobs. A lot of their members are software engineers.
- mtmail 5y ago
  Clickable link https://www.reddit.com/r/overemployed/ https://www.reddit.com/r/overemployed/
mtmail 5y ago
This person said they work 4 full-time remote jobs https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30168122 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30168122
- ryanmercer 5y ago
  Wow, I saw a few threads involving people claiming 4 full-time jobs too. Interesting to see it here on HN.
ryanmercer 5y ago
A couple of weeks ago a friend sent me a link to /r/Overemployed, basically it's a bunch of people (mostly CS/tech types) working 2,3,4 full time jobs doing just enough work to not get fired. Per the sub founder: "Overemployed is a community of professionals looking to work two remote jobs, earn extra income, and achieve financial freedom. Be free from office politics and layoffs. Instead, negotiate a severance and invest in your life." I've read every thread in the sub the past two weeks and... just wow. Per the admission of some they/people they know have been doing this as far back as the 1990s. Are you aware of anyone doing this? I'm curious how widespread this is. Personally, this feels extremely dishonest to me, last year I worked over 450 hours of overtime just trying to keep freight moving for my company and the idea that there are people out there drawing multiple full time incomes for doing 5, 10, 15 hours of work a week between their multiple jobs (that's what people are claiming in the sub) just makes me sick.
- draw_down 5y ago
- tehwebguy 5y ago
  Do you get paid for overtime or is it a different type of scenario e.g. you own the company?
  - ryanmercer 5y ago
    Paid for OT. I was working 6 days a week, up to 11 hours a day, for several months. It sucked not having a lot of free time, especially once you added in class and religious pursuits, but man that extra money sure did let my wife and I get a lot of stuff done around the house and garden.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 5y ago
  It doesn’t feel dishonest to me - if the employee isn’t sharing company secrets and is doing what the employer asks of them, isn’t it the employer’s job to figure out what the employee should be capable of doing in 40 hours and handle performance review accordingly? To me it feels more like balancing the asymmetry between the employer/employee relationship. If the employer only owes money for results and is reasonably happy with the results, why would the employee owe anything beyond that? They certainly aren’t going to be compensated commensurate to the extra time spent, especially if they are intelligent enough to be 2/3/4x as productive as everyone else on their team.
  - FrenchDevRemote 5y ago
    Because that's quite literally a scam? Most employees are paid for the time they put in, if you're a contractor working for a fixed fee for delivering a project, it's different, but it's up to you to get that kind of contract, otherwise it's quite literally defrauding someone. If you tell some granny that fixing her toilet will cost her 5k€ because it will take you a month, and you do it in a day, you're basically taking advantage of someone's ignorance to scam that person. It's exactly the same if it's some tech illiterate small business owner, or even any relatively honest decent boss. Now of course I don't see the harm in doing that to evil abusive companies, but I think most of the companies who deserve to be treated that way would also never let you get away with that kind of thing.
FrenchDevRemote 5y ago
Yeah, he was a reaal pain to work with and it made me completely abandon the project.
codegeek 5y ago
Stunts like these are why employers would continue to do surveillance on their employees and then we will keep complaining. It is not that hard to find if someone has multiple W-2 these days and if you are dishonest about it, you will be in trouble sooner or later. I can't believe we are discussing this on HN of all places.
drakonka 5y ago
No, and when I read about this I couldn't imagine doing such a thing myself. It just seems so stressful.
cpersona 5y ago
I had an employee who worked two jobs during his last month with my company. He was generally unresponsive during the time and only admitted to doing this after being confronted with a lack of productivity and responsiveness. As we were winding down operations, we cut him his last check and terminated his contract. I won’t work with him again and would be hard pressed to provide a positive reference. He was someone I had previously worked with and was the first person that came to mind when I started my company so quite a bit of trust was lost in that month.
throwawayvibes 5y ago
The people complaining here are just envious that others can have the system and they can't.

15 points by ryanmercer 5y ago

Yeah, but it’s obviously dishonest. If you disagree, consider this: would any employer be ok with their employee practicing this? Most would not, most doing this don’t tell. Hence, dishonest. If someone is doing it and all employers know and are cool with it then more power to them.

Tolexx 5y ago

It's a growing and popular subreddit. It's a community where people that work remotely discuss on how to take on multiple jobs. A lot of their members are software engineers.

mtmail 5y ago
Clickable link https://www.reddit.com/r/overemployed/ https://www.reddit.com/r/overemployed/

mtmail 5y ago

This person said they work 4 full-time remote jobs https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30168122 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30168122

ryanmercer 5y ago
Wow, I saw a few threads involving people claiming 4 full-time jobs too. Interesting to see it here on HN.

ryanmercer 5y ago

A couple of weeks ago a friend sent me a link to /r/Overemployed, basically it's a bunch of people (mostly CS/tech types) working 2,3,4 full time jobs doing just enough work to not get fired. Per the sub founder: "Overemployed is a community of professionals looking to work two remote jobs, earn extra income, and achieve financial freedom. Be free from office politics and layoffs. Instead, negotiate a severance and invest in your life." I've read every thread in the sub the past two weeks and... just wow. Per the admission of some they/people they know have been doing this as far back as the 1990s. Are you aware of anyone doing this? I'm curious how widespread this is. Personally, this feels extremely dishonest to me, last year I worked over 450 hours of overtime just trying to keep freight moving for my company and the idea that there are people out there drawing multiple full time incomes for doing 5, 10, 15 hours of work a week between their multiple jobs (that's what people are claiming in the sub) just makes me sick.

draw_down 5y ago
tehwebguy 5y ago
Do you get paid for overtime or is it a different type of scenario e.g. you own the company?
- ryanmercer 5y ago
  Paid for OT. I was working 6 days a week, up to 11 hours a day, for several months. It sucked not having a lot of free time, especially once you added in class and religious pursuits, but man that extra money sure did let my wife and I get a lot of stuff done around the house and garden.
SOLAR_FIELDS 5y ago
It doesn’t feel dishonest to me - if the employee isn’t sharing company secrets and is doing what the employer asks of them, isn’t it the employer’s job to figure out what the employee should be capable of doing in 40 hours and handle performance review accordingly? To me it feels more like balancing the asymmetry between the employer/employee relationship. If the employer only owes money for results and is reasonably happy with the results, why would the employee owe anything beyond that? They certainly aren’t going to be compensated commensurate to the extra time spent, especially if they are intelligent enough to be 2/3/4x as productive as everyone else on their team.
- FrenchDevRemote 5y ago
  Because that's quite literally a scam? Most employees are paid for the time they put in, if you're a contractor working for a fixed fee for delivering a project, it's different, but it's up to you to get that kind of contract, otherwise it's quite literally defrauding someone. If you tell some granny that fixing her toilet will cost her 5k€ because it will take you a month, and you do it in a day, you're basically taking advantage of someone's ignorance to scam that person. It's exactly the same if it's some tech illiterate small business owner, or even any relatively honest decent boss. Now of course I don't see the harm in doing that to evil abusive companies, but I think most of the companies who deserve to be treated that way would also never let you get away with that kind of thing.

FrenchDevRemote 5y ago

Yeah, he was a reaal pain to work with and it made me completely abandon the project.

codegeek 5y ago

Stunts like these are why employers would continue to do surveillance on their employees and then we will keep complaining. It is not that hard to find if someone has multiple W-2 these days and if you are dishonest about it, you will be in trouble sooner or later. I can't believe we are discussing this on HN of all places.

drakonka 5y ago

No, and when I read about this I couldn't imagine doing such a thing myself. It just seems so stressful.

cpersona 5y ago

I had an employee who worked two jobs during his last month with my company. He was generally unresponsive during the time and only admitted to doing this after being confronted with a lack of productivity and responsiveness. As we were winding down operations, we cut him his last check and terminated his contract. I won’t work with him again and would be hard pressed to provide a positive reference. He was someone I had previously worked with and was the first person that came to mind when I started my company so quite a bit of trust was lost in that month.

throwawayvibes 5y ago

The people complaining here are just envious that others can have the system and they can't.