24 ms·

Equifax used records it collects from companies to fire employees with 2nd jobs

600 points by master_crab 4y ago

master_crab 4y ago
First thoughts after reading this: 1. Is this legal in all jurisdictions an employee could conceivably be based in? 2. When will Equifax monetize this as a service to other companies (because you know they will).
- tpmoney 4y ago
  It's already a service. "The Work Number" is their employment verification service available to anyone https://theworknumber.com https://theworknumber.com
  - master_crab 4y ago
    Yeah TWN is referenced in the story, but it doesn’t sound like it’s being used to weed out multiple jobs. Mostly just used for government agencies and financial institutions doing credit checks. Either employers haven’t caught on to that or the data it provides does not offer the required detail.
    - tbyehl 4y ago
      The sales pitch is near the bottom: The company sells a product called Talent Report Employment Monitoring so other companies can keep tabs on potential moonlighting by their employees, too.
      - ok_dad 4y ago
        People say we don’t need unions when companies are forming groups to collude in the market against the interests of employees. If they can’t detect a performance drop due to working two jobs and have to spy like this, then why even care about it?
        selcuka 4y ago
        Because there are departments in every (larger than a certain size) company that need to justify their existence and keep their jobs. That's why we have tons of useless metrics for measuring performance instead of simply looking at the output.
  - konaraddi 4y ago
    There are at least 2 big problems with this. 1. Does this have any external accountability or oversight? Closest I see is being able view your report but first thing it asks for is an employer instead of asking for information for identifying an individual: https://employees.theworknumber.com/employment-data-report https://employees.theworknumber.com/employment-data-report Somewhere out there is an unemployed person being rejected from jobs or not getting interviews because this service is providing an incomplete or erroneous employment history. It’s critical that services like this have a means of both easily identifying and rectifying errors. 2. Equifax offers the option to delete or freeze your data but what does that mean for future employers looking to validate your employment? Employers that lean too heavily on this are going to reject candidates that deleted or froze their data. Employment history verification is something the government is in a good position to provide.
    - astura 4y ago
      >Somewhere out there is an unemployed person being rejected from jobs or not getting interviews because this service is providing an incomplete or erroneous employment history. Relax, you can give them any employer you ever had, not just your current one. To get my record I put in a previous employer who doesn't even exist as a company anymore.
      - flutas 4y ago
        > Relax, you can give them any employer you ever had, not just your current one. Not if they don't show up at all like mine. (Tried all four of my past jobs and none of them have shown up.)
        astura 4y ago
        Then none of your employers have reported to TWN.
      - yosito 4y ago
        I've put in my last four employers and they say "No employers were found."
  - yosito 4y ago
    I looked up my data in this system. They show only 2 of my past 11 employers, and those two have incorrect data about my start and end dates, and how much I was paid. With this information being so inaccurate, I'm wondering if it's even worth my time to try to correct it. To be honest, I think I'd rather just not work for companies who would use this kind of service anyway.
  - xani_ 4y ago
    Thank fuck for GDPR lmao
- gruez 4y ago
  >1. Is this legal in all jurisdictions an employee could conceivably be based in? I don't see why not. To my knowledge employment information isn't protected by law, and presumably whoever provided equifax that information turned it in willingly.
- trasz 4y ago
  >Is this legal It doesn’t matter. For this to matter it would require punishing the offenders, and since they are wealthy it’s not really an option in most western countries.
malikNF 4y ago
https://archive.ph/xc8ja https://archive.ph/xc8ja
Melatonic 4y ago
There is a way to "freeze" your job data I believe - totally different from freezing your credit. No idea how far it reaches but I have considered it myself. Anybody know how to do it?
- eek2121 4y ago
  The fair credit reporting act (FCRA) does not care about 'reasons'. Every company I have dealt with trying to go down that road has found themselves in a rather nasty end. Chex Systems, "WeWork", even a dating site. If you record data and then present it to others as factual history, you have to abide by the FCRA.
  - dymk 4y ago
    Are you saying a credit freeze does or does not prevent companies from looking at your employment history?
    - toomuchtodo 4y ago
      It should prevent other companies from getting your data. It does not stop Equifax from looking at the data they’re hoovering up. It’s going to take a law (something like the CCPA/CPRA) to destroy their Work Number product (by creating controls so tight on worker employment and compensation info a business can’t aggregate and sell it profitably). Call your state and federal legislative representatives. (It does appear California residents might be able to have The Work Number delete their data: https://myprivacy.equifax.com/personal-info https://myprivacy.equifax.com/personal-info ; I’m not a California resident, so please report back if this works) Edit: I qualified my first sentence because Equifax might just ignore your workplace data freeze and hand out your info anyway.
      - ziddoap 4y ago
        >It does prevent other companies from getting your data. I'm guessing that's what people in this thread are looking for? Surely not everyone here asking how to freeze (or providing instructions on how they did it) works at Equifax.
sys_64738 4y ago
Which in the service that has all your salary history? Don't lie about your salary as it'll show up as a discrepancy.
- saagarjha 4y ago
  Unless a significant portion of your compensation is equity…
- sidewndr46 4y ago
  I pulled my information from their service a while back. You can do the same. It stated that in one calendar year, I made slightly less than minimum wage. It also stated that during high school I was working for a civil engineering firm on the opposite end of the country doing engineering work. If an employer places any faith in that data, you probably don't want to work for them.
shusaku 4y ago
I look forward to another class action lawsuit against Equifax which will surely result in those harmed receiving a cash settlement/s
- TallGuyShort 4y ago
  I'm enjoying my free credit monitoring, because it's oh so transparent and useful.
  - raydiatian 4y ago
    I once missed a $10 payment on my credit card and lost 100 points on my credit score. I swear on my life.
    - aliqot 4y ago
      > I once missed a $10 payment on my credit card and lost 100 points on my credit score. I swear on my life. Is it an option to not use CC in your life? I don't but I understand people in the city may have a different experience.
      - TallGuyShort 4y ago
        Rental car companies will sometimes not rent to you unless you use a credit card specifically (not a debit card).
        aliqot 4y ago
        That is a good example, thank you. Have you ever overcome this limitation?
        lostcolony 4y ago
        You may be able to use a debit card but they'll need to be able to put a large hold on funds. I ran into this years back when I graduated college; I had a credit card, but it was secured, and the amount the rental car agency wanted to put on it, outside of the fees (the actual fees were being paid for by my place of employ as part of my relocation package) was too high to put on the card, and they refused to rent me anything. I still refuse to use that rental car company to this day.
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OutsmartDan 4y ago
Sounds like a terrible company to work for.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- zeruch 4y ago
  its a terrible company, period.
metadat 4y ago
> CEO Mark Begor this week informed employees that some of their "teammates" were fired for having "a second full-time job while maintaining their full-time role at EFX," which is the ticker symbol for Equifax. Don't punish people for being entrepreneurial, it's completely un-American. If you can't tell whether someone is producing adequate value or not without interrogating their finances, that's on you. What a conniving snake of an asshole. Can we abolish Equifax? Anyone have a link to the opt-out? what does someone who doxes the general public for chump change deserve? I wonder what skeletons Mark Begor has in his closet..
- tpmoney 4y ago
  If you believe the article, they were able to tell whether someone was producing adequate value since they claim the investigation was into people that were not performing as expected. The data in question was one piece of the information.
  - metadat 4y ago
    I don't believe them. If they had low performers, Equifax could have let them go without the non-consentual financial rectal exam on the way out. The number of jobs is irrelevant, only performance should matter. This is a political / marketing move, as they could have also done the inspection without publicizing it.
    - phpthrowaway99 4y ago
      I was in car sales. Top performers were caught borrowing used cars for nights out, secretly loaning cars to favorite customers for long period of time, buying tradeins secretly off the books, crashing cars while basically driving recklessly while transporting company cars to customers or off-site facilities, and not fired. Low performers were fired because they answered incoming calls poorly twice in a week. So it IS possible top performers were allowed to have side gigs and not fired at Equifax.
      - lostcolony 4y ago
raydiatian 4y ago
> Executives, especially in the tech industry, have said they're worried that some remote employees are distracted. “Distracted” like the time that Equifax leaked hundreds of millions of pieces of personal data. Maybe instead of blaming the workforce they should worry about making the company a place that people want to work exclusively. Equifax does not matter at all as an organization.
- djbusby 4y ago
  Sadly, they do matter. Lots of power, low accountability. Equifax and the other two have a very large impact on USA citizens day-to-day. I hate it but, we can't pretend they don't matter.
- Fendii 4y ago
  Very weird attack from your side. They are big enough it's totally normal that not everyone knows what everyone else is doing. Not sure what the leak is telling you, it's not telling me too much
- thwayunion 4y ago
  Indeed. In an alternate universe, the Chief Information Security Officer of Equifax is giving interviews about the dangers of work from home for cyber security roles, informed by her masters in music composition and 0.0 years of IC experience as deep expertise. I'm still astounded no one ended up in jail over that. Software Engineering really does need some professionalization.
  - denkmoon 4y ago
    >Software Engineering really does need some professionalization. Consequences is what it needs. We can no longer allow it to be profitable to be so brazenly irresponsible. External selection pressure to kill off the maladaptive traits.
    - spydum 4y ago
      i mean ubers former CISO did just get convicted, so it could be starting? (granted his scenario seems more about intent to hide a breach vs ineptitude)
jjulius 4y ago
Do you want shitty publicity? Because this is how you get shitty publicity.
- superchroma 4y ago
  Doesn't matter to Equifax. I'm not sure you can trash a brand harder, but they have embedded customers.
- heavyset_go 4y ago
  This is just the kind of publicity that will have their customers call Equifax up and have them sift through their own payrolls to find employees to fire.
- nopenopenopeno 4y ago
  Equifax doesn’t care about that lol.
- o_1 4y ago
  Yeah I think this article is just irony of how poor decisions have no impact on financal institutions, and they still are eating your cake. The sad part is not enough are wise enough to understand, and it is likely even less would care.
- HWR_14 4y ago
  This is great publicity. It's Equifax talking about how their new product removed double-dipping employees. Don't you also want to find your distracted employees? For a modest fee to Equifax, you can too.
  - neither_color 4y ago
    Unless your employee is underperforming why would you care?
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
black_13 4y ago
brailsafe 4y ago
Kind of a shame that many company runners feel entitled to control the lives of their workers outside the scope of their duties. It's a thing
- tpmoney 4y ago
  If you believe the article, the employees were fired because they weren't doing the "scope of their duties".
  - lostcolony 4y ago
    The article calls out, multiple times, that the reason people were fired (all 24 of them, with another couple hundred contractors being flagged) were because they were moonlighting. It says nothing about their performance, except in the vaguest of terms ("weren't logged into the VPN enough" for instance), and the fact they were initially flagged to be investigated (presumably because of performance, but again, no details; certainly nothing to differentiate them from the 975+ that were investigated and not found to be moonlighting). Which is an interesting admission on Equifax's part. An investigation of over 1000, including interviews and the like, literally thousands of man hours...to find 24 people who had jobs on the side, but whose performance wasn't poor enough to warrant being let go in and of itself. Tells you something about Equifax's priorities.
    - brailsafe 4y ago
      The company that just acquired the one I was contracting for offered me an employment agreement that had a no-outwide-work clause. I put some writing in to get hat changed to be much more specific to only inckude things that either directly comoete with the company or actively interfere with my work.
justinc8687 4y ago
"Equifax flagged 283 contractors for potential 'dual employment,' documents show." Would this not be a big flag to reclassify these contractors as employees? Being able to have multiple clients is one of the factors to determine if you're a contractor...
- throwawaysleep 4y ago
  You get a lot of this up here in Canada. Companies hire you as a contractor, but prohibit you from working other roles.
  - revolvingocelot 4y ago
    I can provide another anecdatum to that claim.
  - kevincox 4y ago
    I'm pretty sure this isn't legal in most provinces.
    - throwawaysleep 4y ago
      It isn't, but everyone does it, including the federal government.
  - jejeyyy77 4y ago
    They can’t prohibit you from working other roles. That’s the whole point of being an “independent contractor”. Most contractors I know take on many clients.
- deleted 4y ago
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- dieselgate 4y ago
  Good to know. I’m a contractor and am just starting my own business separate from my main contracting role. Was curious what precedent there is for this dynamic Edit: I was under the impression being a contractor would give one flexibility to do whatever they want when they’re not billing hours, depends on the contract wording of course
darepublic 4y ago
Why separate church and state when they're so damn attractive to each other
- JetAlone 4y ago
  Tell me about it, man. I think you'd have to scrape the bottom of the barrel to find a hypothetical proverbial state + church configuration worse than what we've got today. Let's say, North Korea + Westboro Baptist Church, would be worse.
andreimackenzie 4y ago
I wondered about this exact risk as I learned about the "overemployed" phenomenon. It feels like a matter of time before credit bureaus offer this as a service to the many corps that already pay them for credit checks. It's hard to be legitimately employed without a data trail these days.
- astura 4y ago
  >It feels like a matter of time before credit bureaus offer this as a service to the many corps that already pay them for credit checks. Not only does it exist, Equifax itself offers this as a service, Equifax's offering is called The Work Number. You can access your record here - https://employees.theworknumber.com/?_ga=2.101852741.598322721.1665716649-669628988.1665716648 https://employees.theworknumber.com/?_ga=2.101852741.5983227... From the article - >For a company like Equifax, this trends represents a potential business opportunity. The company sells a product called Talent Report Employment Monitoring so other companies can keep tabs on potential moonlighting by their employees, too.
betaby 4y ago
Of course that is not applicable to 'boards' and 'CxO'. Quick search suggest some of them sitting at at least 2 'boards' or also 'partners' or something. So yeah, rules for thee but not for me.
- agotterer 4y ago
  In their defense, board seats are not a full time job. The commitment could be as little as a few hours a month or quarter. “Partner” could also mean quite a few things, such as a partner at a venture firm for example. Which also may not be a full time job. The difference here is that as an employee you commit to provide 40 hours of service to your employer. From the stories I’ve heard of these double jobs, this isn’t a weekend job working at the local coffee shop for an extra few bucks which doesn’t impact your primary responsibilities. Instead it’s a professional job with overlapping hours. Which means an employer isn’t getting what they paid for and these people are deceiving them.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    It is true that higher-level employees at companies not uncommonly sit on boards although I assume this is something that high-level employee discusses with their management--and as you say it's typically not a big time committment though can lead to conflicts. And it's not unusual for even individual contributors to be on some unpaid non-profit board but that would generally be out of scope of most employment agreements. Most CxO positions are full-time although there are, e.g. fractional CFO-type positions for smaller companies.
  - villgax 4y ago
    You could give the same argument for second jobs as well, could be a small gig getting done in an hour, a music class that someone teaches to their neighbourhood kids or someone doing trading on the stock market. It is all additional income, just the semantics of how one gets them is different.
- Rebelgecko 4y ago
  Boards are usually explicitly not full time. At the previous place I worked, I know from the paperwork we gave the government that the board only worked 2-8 hours a week (and even that might be generous)
equifaxsux9999 4y ago
The company I work for integrated with Equifax. I ended up in a meeting with their work number folks where I had to explain that there was no reason for us to share (e.g.) SSNs with them. Suffice it to say if your personal data is in any platform that tracks employment or income information that you are directly vulnerable in the event of a data breach.
pb7 4y ago
Garbage company that collects data about people who are definitively not their customers or users in any way, shape, or form and then loses that data because of the aforementioned garbage qualities. It should have been liquidated and the proceeds split amongst the victims after that happened.
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anonreeeeplor 4y ago
I have three children. It is literally impossible for me to survive on any salary companies are willing to pay. I work multiple jobs. Idk the solution. It costs me $3,000 a month just for school. That’s a second mortgage. Either they increase pay 50%. Which they don’t want to do. Or I work three jobs. If they don’t like it, pay more. I actually don’t even have a choice, it isn’t even an option. School must get paid for. It isn’t a lifestyle expense. It is a necessity.
- judge2020 4y ago
  > That’s a second mortgage. Sounds like student loans.
- HWR_14 4y ago
  Instead of paying $12,000/kid/year you could just send them to public school.
  - unendingtorment 4y ago
    Or maybe get vouchers or tax refund for that dumpster fire.
    - itake 4y ago
      I think that's defeats the purpose of public school. As a society, we decided we need to collectively contribute to every child's education, regardless if they are own. I have no kids, but I pay my school taxes so that other people's children can have an education.
      - oatmeal_croc 4y ago
        Paying for other children's education gives you benefits like lesser crime and will keep the value of your property high.
        quickthrower2 4y ago
hintymad 4y ago
Is it in the contract that an employee can't take a second job? I know well reputed companies in the bay area has this term. My guess is that the intention of this term is to prevent conflict of interest and potential IP disputes.
computator 4y ago
> Equifax is now receiving records every pay period from 2.5 million companies. Information in the reports comes from employers and payroll processors. But why do employers and payroll processors give any data to Equifax? I can understand that credit card issuers, and mortgage and auto lenders want to know the credit worthiness of people they'll give credit to, and those types of businesses are likely required to share their own customers' info if they want to participate. But what benefit does the typical employer get by talking with Equifax at all? And why wouldn't an employer demand that their payroll processor not share anything with Equifax? (Their executives and founders presumably want some privacy for themselves.) I'm going out on a limb here and try to guess the reason: Is it because typical employees want their employer to share the info so they'll be seen as having income and therefore it's easier for them to get credit cards and mortgages and auto loans? And if this is the reason, how did this situation arise; did some employees petition their company to share info? Or did the company think it was doing a favor for its employees by giving them an employment history on Equifax?
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  Because they are lazy. In return for giving up your employee’s payroll data, Equifax provides employment verification through their automated IVR, offloading HR from the task.
  - lupire 4y ago
    More important, Equifax provides salary data so "competitors" can collude to reduce wages.
- jedberg 4y ago
  Anyone who signs up gets a report showing how their companies compare to others as far as comp goes. So they get to know if they are underpaying or overpaying. They also can pull salary history for an individual who is applying for a job in places where that is legal. But you have to submit your data to get access to everyone else's.
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villgax 4y ago
Did they forget what contractors or freelancers mean? If companies really want to go down this path then they will have to stop harassing employees who require reference letters or work experience letters as well without much fuss & also keep directors who are board members in other companies on a leash as well.
Hnrobert42 4y ago
Unpopular opinion: I’m okay with this. I feel angry at those who lack integrity and work two full-time, salaried jobs. At a previous job where we were all 100% remote, we dealt with an employee who did this. We caught him because his work quality was poor and he was unavailable for days at a time on Slack. It took a lot of time to investigate and justify the firing. After being fired, he laughed with folks about how long he got away with his subterfuge. This job paid $100k+. IMO, his actions were criminal. He stole from the company. I am usually EXTREMELY passionate about data privacy. My worry is that I don’t know for what purpose companies will use my data – that they will use it unfairly against me. Excepting errors, IMO, this is a fair use.
- deleted 4y ago
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- RosanaAnaDana 4y ago
  >We caught him because his work quality was poor and he was unavailable for days at a time on Slack And what if his work quality had been consistent and his availability what you expected it to be? Would you still have this reaction?
- snvzz 4y ago
  An employee having another job is basically none of the employers' business. Of course, if an employee's being useless, perhaps warn / eventually fire them, irrespective to whether they have a second job, which again should be none of the employers' business.
  - Hnrobert42 4y ago
    It is really difficult to objectively evaluate performance. If nothing else, evaluators have their own inherent biases. Multiple paychecks is an objective measure. It helps determine whether a borderline employee just needs help and support or had chosen to underperform. I believe companies have a duty to try to help struggling employees. The corollary is employee’s must do their best for their employer. If an employee is doing a great job, they can have 50 simultaneous jobs. I don’t care.
humbleMouse 4y ago
trilbyglens 4y ago
heh. Who would have thought that Equifax is a shitty company?
JamesianP 4y ago
"...and another who claimed he was at home while sitting in what looked like an office cubicle." Doesn't everyone set up a cubicle at their house to set the right mood?
- metadat 4y ago
  I hadn't considered it until now, but it could be a nice change. Kind of like a mini bunker in your own home.
throwaway787544 4y ago
phendrenad2 4y ago
This is why my second job is playing dota2.
gzer0 4y ago
> Equifax used one of its own products, The Work Number, to help it suss out who was holding down multiple jobs simultaneously. Anyone from California submit a CCPA deletion or request for all information they have on you? If so, what did they say?
JohnCClarke 4y ago
I suspect the reason we are hearing about this is that Equifax is about to start selling a new service: "How many jobs do your employees have?". Or maybe real-time alerting direct to HR.
can16358p 4y ago
I think there should be a law preventing companies from restricting their employees from having second jobs. As long as it doesn't affect their performance in their primary job and as they are not working at a direct competitor, it should be none of their stupid business (and should be illegal) to check for an employee's other jobs.
- Bost 4y ago
  > "teammates" were fired for having "a second full-time job while maintaining their full-time role at EFX," Except that having a second FULL-TIME job does affect the first one.
  - can16358p 4y ago
    That's exactly the problem. No company should force workers to have only their job. If full time equates to 8 hours, I might well take another 8-hour job (of course that's very tiring and ineffective though) and work 16 hours a day. Would I personally? No. But should anyone who wants to do it be allowed? Yes.
  - metadat 4y ago
    What about being a parent? From what I hear it's like having a second job or even more work than that.
- shubb 4y ago
  I think there are legitimate reasons why a business might need to restrict employees from having second jobs. However, if those circumstances apply, they should include it in the contract and it should impact salary negotiations. For instance, if an employee is working from home at two jobs at once, and makes an invention which they introduce in both jobs, then both companies might rely on this 'trade secret' to protect market share (including suing people whos 'steal' it. Some engineers are employed to come up with inventions, and if a business can't rely on their output to create competitive advantage then they are not providing the service they were hired for. Similarly, a sales rep working for 2 businesses, or working in procurement at a government customer and sales at a vendor, could create a very nasty corruption lawsuit. Finally, some jobs are responsive - for instance a site engineer or some cyber security roles. A lot of sitting around punctuated by sudden urgent work. I know a guy who repairs offshore wind turbines and he plays xbox all day then occasionally jumps in a helicopter and rides to the rescue. It would be a great job to do alongside another role, but if they company has chosen to pay you to be present in between assignments then they are very much paying you not to do that instead of just having you on call at a cheaper rate. It would be legitimate for them to contractually require you to give them what they paid for, and enforce. I think it comes down to, are you providing what you are actually being paid for - in the first case pristine inventions, in the final case literally your time. The other side of this is - in engineering we are trusted to tell the employer how much work we are able to do in a period. At sprint planning I tell my team I can get these 3 tasks done this week and that goes unchallenged. You could say that it is legitimate for employees to quote less than a full weeks work to their first job to leave room for some work from their second job, because if they aren't getting enough work done they will be fired. Honestly that assumes a much more aggressive, KPI driven environment than most of us are lucky enough to work in. Would you like to work for a company where your productivity is measured according to some arbitrary KPI like "lines of code" or "supervisor assigned work volume points" or "team agreed scrum points"* and if you aren't in the top 2/3rds in a quarter you get fired? This is normal in sales but generally not in our comfy software roles. Be careful what you wish for. * A lot of places do stack ranking but it is about getting rid of the negative outliers. Stack ranking to force average performance would be a lot worse.
heisenbit 4y ago
Equifax seems to have been given data for a specific purpose of their client and then used it for another internal purpose. From a GDPR perspective this would probably be seen as a massive violation exposing Equifax to serious fines. From a security certification perspective as this is now public knowledge and the company seems to be unrepentant Equifax clients can not claim their are entrusting their data to a company with proper security controls. Equifax should fail their next security certification audit for this.
xani_ 4y ago
"Equifax investigated and fired at least 24 remote workers for secretly holding second jobs." "secretly" ? Why you'd need to tell your employer that in the first place ?
- nijave 4y ago
  There employment contract probably had outside activities restrictions that mandated other employment be approved by the company (these are, u fortunately, pretty common at big U.S. companies)
Move37 4y ago
I would be interested if there is a correlation between their work performance as a contractor and their secondary contracts. I would assume there is none too significant, but would be interesting.
twodave 4y ago
On the one hand I get where Equifax is coming from. I’ve had coworkers before with multiple full-time jobs and only a very few can pull it off without it seriously impacting their expected productivity. The answer to this in that specific case is firing I think because it’s just dishonest. Not only are you not putting in the time, you’re also not making an equivalent business impact. The general answer is that people are doing this because they feel undervalued. Sure there are some who will try to bend or even break the rules always if they feel they can get away with it, but for those whose output is a multiplier above normal, why should they donate that productivity to an employer who won’t pay for it? Equifax is a horrible company overall, and this kind of monitoring is wrong. Their reaction to the facts isn’t necessarily wrong, though.
- Zak 4y ago
  > The general answer is that people are doing this because they feel undervalued. Merely feeling undervalued isn't enough to induce most people to work two full-time jobs. That's a brutal time commitment even for someone who isn't working very hard at either. People usually do that because neither job pays well enough on its own.
  - twodave 4y ago
    I mean, speak for yourself :D I guess I could take the same medicine.
  - brightball 4y ago
    Depends on the job. There’s a growing trend of people getting remote jobs then just hanging out in Slack/Zoom (camera off, never talking) collecting a check til they get fired. In some cases they’ll outsource some work overseas.
    - germinalphrase 4y ago
      How many of these people can there possibly be? Are there really that many jobs with such low visibility, low expectations that someone can get away with Just Not Working for more than a few days before it’s obvious?
batch12 4y ago
Nice advertisement for a service other companies will now be begging to use. The more angry people are, the more eyeballs this will find. Equifax is a credit company. Individuals aren't their customers, instead our data is literally their product. They can't really be hurt by shaming. Are people going to boycott?
arglebargle123 4y ago
So you're telling me I should only get paid via single-purpose LLCs, got it.
htrp 4y ago
If you don't like the service you can theoretically opt out.... https://employees.theworknumber.com/employee-data-freeze/ https://employees.theworknumber.com/employee-data-freeze/
VectorLock 4y ago
This could be a profitable service to Equifax to sell, help companies root out the "overemployed" that have proliferated since WFH became mainstream.
ChoGGi 4y ago
"We expect our team to be fully dedicated to EFX and have one role …their job at EFX," Begor wrote in a recent company-wide email, a copy of which was obtained by Insider. "I am sure you are as disappointed as I am." I kinda doubt that :)
DominoTree 4y ago
The part that gets me is that these folks knew who they worked for and the kinds of employment data Equifax has, and just... went for it anyways.
sschueller 4y ago
Isn't the whole thing of being classified a contractor that you are not bound to one employer? If you are bound then you are an employee. How skewed is the system when all the bad things of being a contract worker applies but any of the benefits are taken away? This is getting ridiculous.
_huayra_ 4y ago
Semi-related, but Equifax runs The Work Number, which is basically your "employment credit report / record"; they hoover up the data by agreements with employers that they will share employment info with them. You can freeze your employment record with them here: https://employees.theworknumber.com/employee-data-freeze/ https://employees.theworknumber.com/employee-data-freeze/ I highly recommend you do this, as any employer could just decide to look you up using this info and you wouldn't be notified at all (unlike, say, a hard pull on your credit in a regular credit report).
- CabSauce 4y ago
  Shockingly, this contains your salary information. Which is pretty dangerous for salary negotiation.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 4y ago
    Why? you either have a BATNA or you don't.
    - eutropia 4y ago
      Either you have a winning poker hand or you don't - oh wait: bluffing is a thing that people sometimes have to do - even in salary negotiations.
      - orev 4y ago
        It doesn’t even have to be bluffing. Salary for a new position should be decided based on how much value you can bring to the position, and how much each party is willing to accept. Previous history is the most irrelevant part of the process.
        Firmwarrior 4y ago
        I wish more engineers understood this If I started hunting for a new job now, I wouldn't take $current*1.05f, I'd go for $MARKET_RATE That's the only number that really matters here when push comes to shove. It doesn't matter how good you are, no local companies are going to pay you $500k/year to act as an individual contributor in Idaho or Tokyo, because the market rate is ~$90k. On the plus side, if you get an offer for a principal FAANG engineer position in the SF Bay, you can negotiate up to $500ish even if your last job was paying $90k.
smsm42 4y ago
Pro tip: if you try to work in two places, and hide it from your employer(s), make sure neither of them is a company that actually collects personal information, including hiring information, from the whole nation you live in. If you do this, you are likely to have a bad time eventually.
- moneywoes 4y ago
  > personal information, including hiring information, from the whole nation you live in How?

600 points by master_crab 4y ago

First thoughts after reading this: 1. Is this legal in all jurisdictions an employee could conceivably be based in? 2. When will Equifax monetize this as a service to other companies (because you know they will).

tpmoney 4y ago
It's already a service. "The Work Number" is their employment verification service available to anyone https://theworknumber.com https://theworknumber.com
- master_crab 4y ago
  Yeah TWN is referenced in the story, but it doesn’t sound like it’s being used to weed out multiple jobs. Mostly just used for government agencies and financial institutions doing credit checks. Either employers haven’t caught on to that or the data it provides does not offer the required detail.
  - tbyehl 4y ago
    The sales pitch is near the bottom: The company sells a product called Talent Report Employment Monitoring so other companies can keep tabs on potential moonlighting by their employees, too.
    - ok_dad 4y ago
      People say we don’t need unions when companies are forming groups to collude in the market against the interests of employees. If they can’t detect a performance drop due to working two jobs and have to spy like this, then why even care about it?
      - selcuka 4y ago
        Because there are departments in every (larger than a certain size) company that need to justify their existence and keep their jobs. That's why we have tons of useless metrics for measuring performance instead of simply looking at the output.
- konaraddi 4y ago
  There are at least 2 big problems with this. 1. Does this have any external accountability or oversight? Closest I see is being able view your report but first thing it asks for is an employer instead of asking for information for identifying an individual: https://employees.theworknumber.com/employment-data-report https://employees.theworknumber.com/employment-data-report Somewhere out there is an unemployed person being rejected from jobs or not getting interviews because this service is providing an incomplete or erroneous employment history. It’s critical that services like this have a means of both easily identifying and rectifying errors. 2. Equifax offers the option to delete or freeze your data but what does that mean for future employers looking to validate your employment? Employers that lean too heavily on this are going to reject candidates that deleted or froze their data. Employment history verification is something the government is in a good position to provide.
  - astura 4y ago
    >Somewhere out there is an unemployed person being rejected from jobs or not getting interviews because this service is providing an incomplete or erroneous employment history. Relax, you can give them any employer you ever had, not just your current one. To get my record I put in a previous employer who doesn't even exist as a company anymore.
    - flutas 4y ago
      > Relax, you can give them any employer you ever had, not just your current one. Not if they don't show up at all like mine. (Tried all four of my past jobs and none of them have shown up.)
      - astura 4y ago
        Then none of your employers have reported to TWN.
    - yosito 4y ago
      I've put in my last four employers and they say "No employers were found."
- yosito 4y ago
  I looked up my data in this system. They show only 2 of my past 11 employers, and those two have incorrect data about my start and end dates, and how much I was paid. With this information being so inaccurate, I'm wondering if it's even worth my time to try to correct it. To be honest, I think I'd rather just not work for companies who would use this kind of service anyway.
- xani_ 4y ago
  Thank fuck for GDPR lmao
gruez 4y ago
>1. Is this legal in all jurisdictions an employee could conceivably be based in? I don't see why not. To my knowledge employment information isn't protected by law, and presumably whoever provided equifax that information turned it in willingly.
trasz 4y ago
>Is this legal It doesn’t matter. For this to matter it would require punishing the offenders, and since they are wealthy it’s not really an option in most western countries.

malikNF 4y ago

https://archive.ph/xc8ja https://archive.ph/xc8ja

Melatonic 4y ago

There is a way to "freeze" your job data I believe - totally different from freezing your credit. No idea how far it reaches but I have considered it myself. Anybody know how to do it?

eek2121 4y ago
The fair credit reporting act (FCRA) does not care about 'reasons'. Every company I have dealt with trying to go down that road has found themselves in a rather nasty end. Chex Systems, "WeWork", even a dating site. If you record data and then present it to others as factual history, you have to abide by the FCRA.
- dymk 4y ago
  Are you saying a credit freeze does or does not prevent companies from looking at your employment history?
  - toomuchtodo 4y ago
    It should prevent other companies from getting your data. It does not stop Equifax from looking at the data they’re hoovering up. It’s going to take a law (something like the CCPA/CPRA) to destroy their Work Number product (by creating controls so tight on worker employment and compensation info a business can’t aggregate and sell it profitably). Call your state and federal legislative representatives. (It does appear California residents might be able to have The Work Number delete their data: https://myprivacy.equifax.com/personal-info https://myprivacy.equifax.com/personal-info ; I’m not a California resident, so please report back if this works) Edit: I qualified my first sentence because Equifax might just ignore your workplace data freeze and hand out your info anyway.
    - ziddoap 4y ago
      >It does prevent other companies from getting your data. I'm guessing that's what people in this thread are looking for? Surely not everyone here asking how to freeze (or providing instructions on how they did it) works at Equifax.

sys_64738 4y ago

Which in the service that has all your salary history? Don't lie about your salary as it'll show up as a discrepancy.

saagarjha 4y ago
Unless a significant portion of your compensation is equity…
sidewndr46 4y ago
I pulled my information from their service a while back. You can do the same. It stated that in one calendar year, I made slightly less than minimum wage. It also stated that during high school I was working for a civil engineering firm on the opposite end of the country doing engineering work. If an employer places any faith in that data, you probably don't want to work for them.

shusaku 4y ago

I look forward to another class action lawsuit against Equifax which will surely result in those harmed receiving a cash settlement/s

TallGuyShort 4y ago
I'm enjoying my free credit monitoring, because it's oh so transparent and useful.
- raydiatian 4y ago
  I once missed a $10 payment on my credit card and lost 100 points on my credit score. I swear on my life.
  - aliqot 4y ago
    > I once missed a $10 payment on my credit card and lost 100 points on my credit score. I swear on my life. Is it an option to not use CC in your life? I don't but I understand people in the city may have a different experience.
    - TallGuyShort 4y ago
      Rental car companies will sometimes not rent to you unless you use a credit card specifically (not a debit card).
      - aliqot 4y ago
        That is a good example, thank you. Have you ever overcome this limitation?
        lostcolony 4y ago
        You may be able to use a debit card but they'll need to be able to put a large hold on funds. I ran into this years back when I graduated college; I had a credit card, but it was secured, and the amount the rental car agency wanted to put on it, outside of the fees (the actual fees were being paid for by my place of employ as part of my relocation package) was too high to put on the card, and they refused to rent me anything. I still refuse to use that rental car company to this day.

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OutsmartDan 4y ago

Sounds like a terrible company to work for.

deleted 4y ago
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zeruch 4y ago
its a terrible company, period.

metadat 4y ago

> CEO Mark Begor this week informed employees that some of their "teammates" were fired for having "a second full-time job while maintaining their full-time role at EFX," which is the ticker symbol for Equifax. Don't punish people for being entrepreneurial, it's completely un-American. If you can't tell whether someone is producing adequate value or not without interrogating their finances, that's on you. What a conniving snake of an asshole. Can we abolish Equifax? Anyone have a link to the opt-out? what does someone who doxes the general public for chump change deserve? I wonder what skeletons Mark Begor has in his closet..

tpmoney 4y ago
If you believe the article, they were able to tell whether someone was producing adequate value since they claim the investigation was into people that were not performing as expected. The data in question was one piece of the information.
- metadat 4y ago
  I don't believe them. If they had low performers, Equifax could have let them go without the non-consentual financial rectal exam on the way out. The number of jobs is irrelevant, only performance should matter. This is a political / marketing move, as they could have also done the inspection without publicizing it.
  - phpthrowaway99 4y ago
    I was in car sales. Top performers were caught borrowing used cars for nights out, secretly loaning cars to favorite customers for long period of time, buying tradeins secretly off the books, crashing cars while basically driving recklessly while transporting company cars to customers or off-site facilities, and not fired. Low performers were fired because they answered incoming calls poorly twice in a week. So it IS possible top performers were allowed to have side gigs and not fired at Equifax.
    - lostcolony 4y ago

raydiatian 4y ago

> Executives, especially in the tech industry, have said they're worried that some remote employees are distracted. “Distracted” like the time that Equifax leaked hundreds of millions of pieces of personal data. Maybe instead of blaming the workforce they should worry about making the company a place that people want to work exclusively. Equifax does not matter at all as an organization.

djbusby 4y ago
Sadly, they do matter. Lots of power, low accountability. Equifax and the other two have a very large impact on USA citizens day-to-day. I hate it but, we can't pretend they don't matter.
Fendii 4y ago
Very weird attack from your side. They are big enough it's totally normal that not everyone knows what everyone else is doing. Not sure what the leak is telling you, it's not telling me too much
thwayunion 4y ago
Indeed. In an alternate universe, the Chief Information Security Officer of Equifax is giving interviews about the dangers of work from home for cyber security roles, informed by her masters in music composition and 0.0 years of IC experience as deep expertise. I'm still astounded no one ended up in jail over that. Software Engineering really does need some professionalization.
- denkmoon 4y ago
  >Software Engineering really does need some professionalization. Consequences is what it needs. We can no longer allow it to be profitable to be so brazenly irresponsible. External selection pressure to kill off the maladaptive traits.
  - spydum 4y ago
    i mean ubers former CISO did just get convicted, so it could be starting? (granted his scenario seems more about intent to hide a breach vs ineptitude)

jjulius 4y ago

Do you want shitty publicity? Because this is how you get shitty publicity.

superchroma 4y ago
Doesn't matter to Equifax. I'm not sure you can trash a brand harder, but they have embedded customers.
heavyset_go 4y ago
This is just the kind of publicity that will have their customers call Equifax up and have them sift through their own payrolls to find employees to fire.
nopenopenopeno 4y ago
Equifax doesn’t care about that lol.
o_1 4y ago
Yeah I think this article is just irony of how poor decisions have no impact on financal institutions, and they still are eating your cake. The sad part is not enough are wise enough to understand, and it is likely even less would care.
HWR_14 4y ago
This is great publicity. It's Equifax talking about how their new product removed double-dipping employees. Don't you also want to find your distracted employees? For a modest fee to Equifax, you can too.
- neither_color 4y ago
  Unless your employee is underperforming why would you care?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]

black_13 4y ago

brailsafe 4y ago

Kind of a shame that many company runners feel entitled to control the lives of their workers outside the scope of their duties. It's a thing

tpmoney 4y ago
If you believe the article, the employees were fired because they weren't doing the "scope of their duties".
- lostcolony 4y ago
  The article calls out, multiple times, that the reason people were fired (all 24 of them, with another couple hundred contractors being flagged) were because they were moonlighting. It says nothing about their performance, except in the vaguest of terms ("weren't logged into the VPN enough" for instance), and the fact they were initially flagged to be investigated (presumably because of performance, but again, no details; certainly nothing to differentiate them from the 975+ that were investigated and not found to be moonlighting). Which is an interesting admission on Equifax's part. An investigation of over 1000, including interviews and the like, literally thousands of man hours...to find 24 people who had jobs on the side, but whose performance wasn't poor enough to warrant being let go in and of itself. Tells you something about Equifax's priorities.
  - brailsafe 4y ago
    The company that just acquired the one I was contracting for offered me an employment agreement that had a no-outwide-work clause. I put some writing in to get hat changed to be much more specific to only inckude things that either directly comoete with the company or actively interfere with my work.

justinc8687 4y ago

"Equifax flagged 283 contractors for potential 'dual employment,' documents show." Would this not be a big flag to reclassify these contractors as employees? Being able to have multiple clients is one of the factors to determine if you're a contractor...

throwawaysleep 4y ago
You get a lot of this up here in Canada. Companies hire you as a contractor, but prohibit you from working other roles.
- revolvingocelot 4y ago
  I can provide another anecdatum to that claim.
- kevincox 4y ago
  I'm pretty sure this isn't legal in most provinces.
  - throwawaysleep 4y ago
    It isn't, but everyone does it, including the federal government.
- jejeyyy77 4y ago
  They can’t prohibit you from working other roles. That’s the whole point of being an “independent contractor”. Most contractors I know take on many clients.
deleted 4y ago
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dieselgate 4y ago
Good to know. I’m a contractor and am just starting my own business separate from my main contracting role. Was curious what precedent there is for this dynamic Edit: I was under the impression being a contractor would give one flexibility to do whatever they want when they’re not billing hours, depends on the contract wording of course

darepublic 4y ago

Why separate church and state when they're so damn attractive to each other

JetAlone 4y ago
Tell me about it, man. I think you'd have to scrape the bottom of the barrel to find a hypothetical proverbial state + church configuration worse than what we've got today. Let's say, North Korea + Westboro Baptist Church, would be worse.

andreimackenzie 4y ago

I wondered about this exact risk as I learned about the "overemployed" phenomenon. It feels like a matter of time before credit bureaus offer this as a service to the many corps that already pay them for credit checks. It's hard to be legitimately employed without a data trail these days.

astura 4y ago
>It feels like a matter of time before credit bureaus offer this as a service to the many corps that already pay them for credit checks. Not only does it exist, Equifax itself offers this as a service, Equifax's offering is called The Work Number. You can access your record here - https://employees.theworknumber.com/?_ga=2.101852741.598322721.1665716649-669628988.1665716648 https://employees.theworknumber.com/?_ga=2.101852741.5983227... From the article - >For a company like Equifax, this trends represents a potential business opportunity. The company sells a product called Talent Report Employment Monitoring so other companies can keep tabs on potential moonlighting by their employees, too.

betaby 4y ago

Of course that is not applicable to 'boards' and 'CxO'. Quick search suggest some of them sitting at at least 2 'boards' or also 'partners' or something. So yeah, rules for thee but not for me.

agotterer 4y ago
In their defense, board seats are not a full time job. The commitment could be as little as a few hours a month or quarter. “Partner” could also mean quite a few things, such as a partner at a venture firm for example. Which also may not be a full time job. The difference here is that as an employee you commit to provide 40 hours of service to your employer. From the stories I’ve heard of these double jobs, this isn’t a weekend job working at the local coffee shop for an extra few bucks which doesn’t impact your primary responsibilities. Instead it’s a professional job with overlapping hours. Which means an employer isn’t getting what they paid for and these people are deceiving them.
- ghaff 4y ago
  It is true that higher-level employees at companies not uncommonly sit on boards although I assume this is something that high-level employee discusses with their management--and as you say it's typically not a big time committment though can lead to conflicts. And it's not unusual for even individual contributors to be on some unpaid non-profit board but that would generally be out of scope of most employment agreements. Most CxO positions are full-time although there are, e.g. fractional CFO-type positions for smaller companies.
- villgax 4y ago
  You could give the same argument for second jobs as well, could be a small gig getting done in an hour, a music class that someone teaches to their neighbourhood kids or someone doing trading on the stock market. It is all additional income, just the semantics of how one gets them is different.
Rebelgecko 4y ago
Boards are usually explicitly not full time. At the previous place I worked, I know from the paperwork we gave the government that the board only worked 2-8 hours a week (and even that might be generous)

equifaxsux9999 4y ago

The company I work for integrated with Equifax. I ended up in a meeting with their work number folks where I had to explain that there was no reason for us to share (e.g.) SSNs with them. Suffice it to say if your personal data is in any platform that tracks employment or income information that you are directly vulnerable in the event of a data breach.

pb7 4y ago

Garbage company that collects data about people who are definitively not their customers or users in any way, shape, or form and then loses that data because of the aforementioned garbage qualities. It should have been liquidated and the proceeds split amongst the victims after that happened.

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anonreeeeplor 4y ago

I have three children. It is literally impossible for me to survive on any salary companies are willing to pay. I work multiple jobs. Idk the solution. It costs me $3,000 a month just for school. That’s a second mortgage. Either they increase pay 50%. Which they don’t want to do. Or I work three jobs. If they don’t like it, pay more. I actually don’t even have a choice, it isn’t even an option. School must get paid for. It isn’t a lifestyle expense. It is a necessity.

judge2020 4y ago
> That’s a second mortgage. Sounds like student loans.
HWR_14 4y ago
Instead of paying $12,000/kid/year you could just send them to public school.
- unendingtorment 4y ago
  Or maybe get vouchers or tax refund for that dumpster fire.
  - itake 4y ago
    I think that's defeats the purpose of public school. As a society, we decided we need to collectively contribute to every child's education, regardless if they are own. I have no kids, but I pay my school taxes so that other people's children can have an education.
    - oatmeal_croc 4y ago
      Paying for other children's education gives you benefits like lesser crime and will keep the value of your property high.
      - quickthrower2 4y ago

hintymad 4y ago

Is it in the contract that an employee can't take a second job? I know well reputed companies in the bay area has this term. My guess is that the intention of this term is to prevent conflict of interest and potential IP disputes.

computator 4y ago

> Equifax is now receiving records every pay period from 2.5 million companies. Information in the reports comes from employers and payroll processors. But why do employers and payroll processors give any data to Equifax? I can understand that credit card issuers, and mortgage and auto lenders want to know the credit worthiness of people they'll give credit to, and those types of businesses are likely required to share their own customers' info if they want to participate. But what benefit does the typical employer get by talking with Equifax at all? And why wouldn't an employer demand that their payroll processor not share anything with Equifax? (Their executives and founders presumably want some privacy for themselves.) I'm going out on a limb here and try to guess the reason: Is it because typical employees want their employer to share the info so they'll be seen as having income and therefore it's easier for them to get credit cards and mortgages and auto loans? And if this is the reason, how did this situation arise; did some employees petition their company to share info? Or did the company think it was doing a favor for its employees by giving them an employment history on Equifax?

toomuchtodo 4y ago
Because they are lazy. In return for giving up your employee’s payroll data, Equifax provides employment verification through their automated IVR, offloading HR from the task.
- lupire 4y ago
  More important, Equifax provides salary data so "competitors" can collude to reduce wages.
jedberg 4y ago
Anyone who signs up gets a report showing how their companies compare to others as far as comp goes. So they get to know if they are underpaying or overpaying. They also can pull salary history for an individual who is applying for a job in places where that is legal. But you have to submit your data to get access to everyone else's.
- 4y ago

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villgax 4y ago

Did they forget what contractors or freelancers mean? If companies really want to go down this path then they will have to stop harassing employees who require reference letters or work experience letters as well without much fuss & also keep directors who are board members in other companies on a leash as well.

Hnrobert42 4y ago

Unpopular opinion: I’m okay with this. I feel angry at those who lack integrity and work two full-time, salaried jobs. At a previous job where we were all 100% remote, we dealt with an employee who did this. We caught him because his work quality was poor and he was unavailable for days at a time on Slack. It took a lot of time to investigate and justify the firing. After being fired, he laughed with folks about how long he got away with his subterfuge. This job paid $100k+. IMO, his actions were criminal. He stole from the company. I am usually EXTREMELY passionate about data privacy. My worry is that I don’t know for what purpose companies will use my data – that they will use it unfairly against me. Excepting errors, IMO, this is a fair use.

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RosanaAnaDana 4y ago
>We caught him because his work quality was poor and he was unavailable for days at a time on Slack And what if his work quality had been consistent and his availability what you expected it to be? Would you still have this reaction?
snvzz 4y ago
An employee having another job is basically none of the employers' business. Of course, if an employee's being useless, perhaps warn / eventually fire them, irrespective to whether they have a second job, which again should be none of the employers' business.
- Hnrobert42 4y ago
  It is really difficult to objectively evaluate performance. If nothing else, evaluators have their own inherent biases. Multiple paychecks is an objective measure. It helps determine whether a borderline employee just needs help and support or had chosen to underperform. I believe companies have a duty to try to help struggling employees. The corollary is employee’s must do their best for their employer. If an employee is doing a great job, they can have 50 simultaneous jobs. I don’t care.

humbleMouse 4y ago

trilbyglens 4y ago

heh. Who would have thought that Equifax is a shitty company?

JamesianP 4y ago

"...and another who claimed he was at home while sitting in what looked like an office cubicle." Doesn't everyone set up a cubicle at their house to set the right mood?

metadat 4y ago
I hadn't considered it until now, but it could be a nice change. Kind of like a mini bunker in your own home.

throwaway787544 4y ago

phendrenad2 4y ago

This is why my second job is playing dota2.

gzer0 4y ago

> Equifax used one of its own products, The Work Number, to help it suss out who was holding down multiple jobs simultaneously. Anyone from California submit a CCPA deletion or request for all information they have on you? If so, what did they say?

JohnCClarke 4y ago

I suspect the reason we are hearing about this is that Equifax is about to start selling a new service: "How many jobs do your employees have?". Or maybe real-time alerting direct to HR.

can16358p 4y ago

I think there should be a law preventing companies from restricting their employees from having second jobs. As long as it doesn't affect their performance in their primary job and as they are not working at a direct competitor, it should be none of their stupid business (and should be illegal) to check for an employee's other jobs.

Bost 4y ago
> "teammates" were fired for having "a second full-time job while maintaining their full-time role at EFX," Except that having a second FULL-TIME job does affect the first one.
- can16358p 4y ago
  That's exactly the problem. No company should force workers to have only their job. If full time equates to 8 hours, I might well take another 8-hour job (of course that's very tiring and ineffective though) and work 16 hours a day. Would I personally? No. But should anyone who wants to do it be allowed? Yes.
- metadat 4y ago
  What about being a parent? From what I hear it's like having a second job or even more work than that.
shubb 4y ago
I think there are legitimate reasons why a business might need to restrict employees from having second jobs. However, if those circumstances apply, they should include it in the contract and it should impact salary negotiations. For instance, if an employee is working from home at two jobs at once, and makes an invention which they introduce in both jobs, then both companies might rely on this 'trade secret' to protect market share (including suing people whos 'steal' it. Some engineers are employed to come up with inventions, and if a business can't rely on their output to create competitive advantage then they are not providing the service they were hired for. Similarly, a sales rep working for 2 businesses, or working in procurement at a government customer and sales at a vendor, could create a very nasty corruption lawsuit. Finally, some jobs are responsive - for instance a site engineer or some cyber security roles. A lot of sitting around punctuated by sudden urgent work. I know a guy who repairs offshore wind turbines and he plays xbox all day then occasionally jumps in a helicopter and rides to the rescue. It would be a great job to do alongside another role, but if they company has chosen to pay you to be present in between assignments then they are very much paying you not to do that instead of just having you on call at a cheaper rate. It would be legitimate for them to contractually require you to give them what they paid for, and enforce. I think it comes down to, are you providing what you are actually being paid for - in the first case pristine inventions, in the final case literally your time. The other side of this is - in engineering we are trusted to tell the employer how much work we are able to do in a period. At sprint planning I tell my team I can get these 3 tasks done this week and that goes unchallenged. You could say that it is legitimate for employees to quote less than a full weeks work to their first job to leave room for some work from their second job, because if they aren't getting enough work done they will be fired. Honestly that assumes a much more aggressive, KPI driven environment than most of us are lucky enough to work in. Would you like to work for a company where your productivity is measured according to some arbitrary KPI like "lines of code" or "supervisor assigned work volume points" or "team agreed scrum points"* and if you aren't in the top 2/3rds in a quarter you get fired? This is normal in sales but generally not in our comfy software roles. Be careful what you wish for. * A lot of places do stack ranking but it is about getting rid of the negative outliers. Stack ranking to force average performance would be a lot worse.

heisenbit 4y ago

Equifax seems to have been given data for a specific purpose of their client and then used it for another internal purpose. From a GDPR perspective this would probably be seen as a massive violation exposing Equifax to serious fines. From a security certification perspective as this is now public knowledge and the company seems to be unrepentant Equifax clients can not claim their are entrusting their data to a company with proper security controls. Equifax should fail their next security certification audit for this.

xani_ 4y ago

"Equifax investigated and fired at least 24 remote workers for secretly holding second jobs." "secretly" ? Why you'd need to tell your employer that in the first place ?

nijave 4y ago
There employment contract probably had outside activities restrictions that mandated other employment be approved by the company (these are, u fortunately, pretty common at big U.S. companies)

Move37 4y ago

I would be interested if there is a correlation between their work performance as a contractor and their secondary contracts. I would assume there is none too significant, but would be interesting.

twodave 4y ago

On the one hand I get where Equifax is coming from. I’ve had coworkers before with multiple full-time jobs and only a very few can pull it off without it seriously impacting their expected productivity. The answer to this in that specific case is firing I think because it’s just dishonest. Not only are you not putting in the time, you’re also not making an equivalent business impact. The general answer is that people are doing this because they feel undervalued. Sure there are some who will try to bend or even break the rules always if they feel they can get away with it, but for those whose output is a multiplier above normal, why should they donate that productivity to an employer who won’t pay for it? Equifax is a horrible company overall, and this kind of monitoring is wrong. Their reaction to the facts isn’t necessarily wrong, though.

Zak 4y ago
> The general answer is that people are doing this because they feel undervalued. Merely feeling undervalued isn't enough to induce most people to work two full-time jobs. That's a brutal time commitment even for someone who isn't working very hard at either. People usually do that because neither job pays well enough on its own.
- twodave 4y ago
  I mean, speak for yourself :D I guess I could take the same medicine.
- brightball 4y ago
  Depends on the job. There’s a growing trend of people getting remote jobs then just hanging out in Slack/Zoom (camera off, never talking) collecting a check til they get fired. In some cases they’ll outsource some work overseas.
  - germinalphrase 4y ago
    How many of these people can there possibly be? Are there really that many jobs with such low visibility, low expectations that someone can get away with Just Not Working for more than a few days before it’s obvious?

batch12 4y ago

Nice advertisement for a service other companies will now be begging to use. The more angry people are, the more eyeballs this will find. Equifax is a credit company. Individuals aren't their customers, instead our data is literally their product. They can't really be hurt by shaming. Are people going to boycott?

arglebargle123 4y ago

So you're telling me I should only get paid via single-purpose LLCs, got it.

htrp 4y ago

If you don't like the service you can theoretically opt out.... https://employees.theworknumber.com/employee-data-freeze/ https://employees.theworknumber.com/employee-data-freeze/

VectorLock 4y ago

This could be a profitable service to Equifax to sell, help companies root out the "overemployed" that have proliferated since WFH became mainstream.

ChoGGi 4y ago

"We expect our team to be fully dedicated to EFX and have one role …their job at EFX," Begor wrote in a recent company-wide email, a copy of which was obtained by Insider. "I am sure you are as disappointed as I am." I kinda doubt that :)

DominoTree 4y ago

The part that gets me is that these folks knew who they worked for and the kinds of employment data Equifax has, and just... went for it anyways.

sschueller 4y ago

Isn't the whole thing of being classified a contractor that you are not bound to one employer? If you are bound then you are an employee. How skewed is the system when all the bad things of being a contract worker applies but any of the benefits are taken away? This is getting ridiculous.

_huayra_ 4y ago

Semi-related, but Equifax runs The Work Number, which is basically your "employment credit report / record"; they hoover up the data by agreements with employers that they will share employment info with them. You can freeze your employment record with them here: https://employees.theworknumber.com/employee-data-freeze/ https://employees.theworknumber.com/employee-data-freeze/ I highly recommend you do this, as any employer could just decide to look you up using this info and you wouldn't be notified at all (unlike, say, a hard pull on your credit in a regular credit report).

CabSauce 4y ago
Shockingly, this contains your salary information. Which is pretty dangerous for salary negotiation.
- HeyLaughingBoy 4y ago
  Why? you either have a BATNA or you don't.
  - eutropia 4y ago
    Either you have a winning poker hand or you don't - oh wait: bluffing is a thing that people sometimes have to do - even in salary negotiations.
    - orev 4y ago
      It doesn’t even have to be bluffing. Salary for a new position should be decided based on how much value you can bring to the position, and how much each party is willing to accept. Previous history is the most irrelevant part of the process.
      - Firmwarrior 4y ago
        I wish more engineers understood this If I started hunting for a new job now, I wouldn't take $current*1.05f, I'd go for $MARKET_RATE That's the only number that really matters here when push comes to shove. It doesn't matter how good you are, no local companies are going to pay you $500k/year to act as an individual contributor in Idaho or Tokyo, because the market rate is ~$90k. On the plus side, if you get an offer for a principal FAANG engineer position in the SF Bay, you can negotiate up to $500ish even if your last job was paying $90k.

smsm42 4y ago

Pro tip: if you try to work in two places, and hide it from your employer(s), make sure neither of them is a company that actually collects personal information, including hiring information, from the whole nation you live in. If you do this, you are likely to have a bad time eventually.

moneywoes 4y ago
> personal information, including hiring information, from the whole nation you live in How?