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This guy is committing fraud. Two of his jobs are hourly, and he bills each job 40 hrs. Obviously he’s not working the full 40. He’s probably rationalizing it

• randomdata 4y ago
  > but that’s not the agreement. What's the agreement? 40 hours alone is not sufficient information. 40 hours of what? Having personally done this "overemployed" thing in some form for 15 years now, I write it right into the contracts. I deliver 40 hours of availability, and bill as such, with recognition in the contract that I may choose to work elsewhere when I am not needed, including provisions to prioritize another engagement, even when my availability is needed, under certain circumstances. > Obviously he’s not working the full 40. If by work you mean fulfilling the obligations of the agreement, he might be, depending on the nature of the agreement. Per my contracts, I can theoretically, when my availability isn't called on, work 40 hours sitting on the couch watching TV. I sell hours of availability. If that availability is not used, that is not my concern and not my business. > It’s no different than if my mechanic, lawyer, etc does a project in 2 hrs, and bills me 4 hrs. If you hired a staff mechanic or lawyer then it is likely that you will pay for 4 hours (or, perhaps more commonly, 8 hours) of work even if they only have 2 hours worth of work to do. It turns out that not all agreements are equivalent. Which brings us back to the top. What's the agreement?
• ineedasername 4y ago
  Which guy? The author of the article, which I read over a second time after reading your comment to make sure, doesn't appear to mention being paid by the hour. A full time job by convention an social construct consists of a 40 hour work week but in practice the tend to encompass a certain body of work that's expected to be done every week. If that work can be done in 20 hours-- no random chit chat with co workers over bs non-work related stuff, foot travel to different meeting locations where you lose (at minimum) 15 minutes on both ends of the the meeting purely due to getting to a meeting location and waiting for others to arrive...remote work eliminates a lot of the BS overhead of in-office work of this sort. (don't get me wrong, some people-- including me-- find value and a certain amount of mental health balance in having that extra person contact. but not everyone) Eliminating this in the post covid era of more pervasive acceptance of WFH means that even more of an employees time is freed above & beyond what's required to get the job done. Sure, you might argue that you owe the full 40 hours, that you should find other projections, do more etc. But WHY! That isn't the agreement we make with employers. We agree to do a specific job for a specific wage and companies try somewhat to calibrate them into task chunks they feel should take roughly 40 hours a week. But the heart of the matter is that you're paid to do the job and NOT to fill a seat for 40 hours. Vanishingly few people get any sort of overtime or even comp time when those job tasks require 45, 50, 60+ hours of work each week. Why on earth should they be paid less or be prohibited from occupying their time more productively if their able to perform the ostensibly 40-hour chunk of work in only 15 or 20 hours? I really don't think the OE approach is for me, but apart from pushing through the cognitive dissonance imposed by the social construct of the 40 hour work week seared into the public consciousness, I see not ethical or a priori reason why OE is bad or fraudulent or unethical of anything of that sort. All stipulating that the person is actually performing the required tasks of all jobs at the expected level of competency