[Distozion]

It's interesting that a lot of people here seem to consider a second FT position as immoral/illegal. How about instead of a second FT job - studying FT for an unrelated degree? The time needed is arguably the same as a second FT and context switching is still there.

[jdlshore]

I think that people are assuming fraud—working two jobs at the same time (eight hours a day), rather than two full-time jobs (16 hours a day).

[jstx1]

Which is a fair assumption - putting 16 hours of work a day seems much less likely than someone working remotely and doing the bare minimum at 2 jobs for as long as they can get away with it.

[giraffe_lady]

Doing the bare minimum is both legal and ethical though. If it wasn't it wouldn't be the minimum.

[jdlshore]

Legal, maybe. Ethical? Not to me. Think of it this way: would you tell your employer you were planning to work two jobs, and put in the minimum effort into them? Would you be above-board and transparent about your conflicting responsibilities and schedules? If not, you're committing fraud: "intentional perversion of truth in order to induce another to part with something of value." (The value, in this case, is the fruits of your labor.) And fraud is most certainly unethical, even if not illegal in this case.

Employees trade their hours for the company's money. If you want to trade deliverables for money, you have to be a contractor on a deliverable-based contract. It's a lot riskier, which is why it pays more... sometimes. If you are in a full-time job, and not putting in full-time hours, you're defrauding your employer.

[giraffe_lady]

I'm not particularly making an assertion about whether working two jobs is ethical, just that doing the minimum is. Again, if the minimum isn't the least it is acceptable to do, then what is, then what does that word even mean?

What exactly an employer is paying for with a salaried employee is fairly nuanced and specific to the work. "They're paying for your time" isn't wrong but it's insufficient to explain a lot of the real dynamics there.

Specifically that would make every time you look away from the computer a privilege purely at the discretion of your employer. Not a condition many of us would accept given other options. So it seems to me either this isn't the pure moral reality of the transaction, or we're all transgressors here.

[jdlshore]

> I'm not particularly making an assertion about whether working two jobs is ethical, just that doing the minimum is.

Sure, I'll agree with that, up to a point. And I think, for me, that point is "would you behave differently if your employer had full knowledge of your actions."

Ultimately, people who work two simultaneous jobs are abusing the trust of their employers, and if it becomes commonplace, it's just going to hurt the rest of us. Instead of trusting employees to do the right thing, employers will put draconian employee tracking measures in place.