[telchior]

Anecdotal, but my wife was doing 2.5 remote jobs simultaneously for a while, and apparently performing above expectation in all of them. However -- meetings were her major complaint, and she eventually burned out and quit the two full time jobs due to excessive and (according to her) pointless meetings.

One of the companies asked her to stay on as a consultant. They ended up hiring someone full time... who spent all their time in meetings, while my wife did the actual work. For significantly less pay, of course.

So yes, overemployed remote workers really exist, but at least in her case it was largely due to incompetent management.

[gsk22]

> So yes, overemployed remote workers really exist, but at least in her case it was largely due to incompetent management.

I mean, incompetent management may have allowed the situation to persist. But your wife "working" 2.5 jobs for (presumably) the expected hours of just one of those jobs can't be blamed on management. She chose to accept all 3 of those positions with the knowledge that she wouldn't meet the conditions of employ.

I'm not a "send 'em to jail!" type, and I have little sympathy for large corporations, but let's not pretend it's anything less than time theft.

[wpietri]

What makes it "time theft", whatever that means?

US employers have worked very hard to make many of their workers "exempt" [1] such that they don't have to pay for overtime and can make people work egregious hours without getting in legal trouble.

If that's not "time theft", then I don't see why an exempt worker who can do the work of two people shouldn't get paid for doing the work of two people. It would be different if they were hourly workers and they were double-billing for the same hour, of course. But I don't think that's what's happening here.

[1] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/exempt-employee.asp

[gsk22]

You can still "double-bill" in an exempt position.

Most employment contracts I've seen stipulate an expected work week of 40 hours. If I sign 3 contracts like that, now I would need to work 120 hours to fulfill the obligation. And as long as someone collects the paychecks from all 3 jobs without fulfilling the contractual requirements of those jobs, well, that is sort of the definition of theft. Money gained without performing the work necessary to earn it.

[wpietri]

I don't think I've ever seen an employment contract for an exempt position that specifies the number of hours to work. So yes, if somebody is foolish enough to sign that, they might get in trouble. But again, I doubt that's the case here.

[telchior]

I think you're making an unwarranted leap here. The management never complained about or monitored hours worked; the requirements of the job were simply completing tasks. Which she did, as I said, at or above expectations (the company she continued consulting for is still trying to rehire her at "full time", but they really just mean adding more responsibilities and tasks).

Sure, there are lots of jobs where "time theft" is a useful concept, but there are a lot of others where it isn't. I'd go so far as saying that thinking in those terms can be another sign of incompetent management.

[gsk22]

Are you really claiming that all 3 companies would have approved the situation if they knew?

Of course not, which is why overemployed people hide this information from their employers.

[telchior]

That's a bit different than claiming time theft, isn't it? That's more of a suspicion that someone couldn't possibly be doing a good job if their attention is split.

The two full-time companies objected strenuously to her leaving and made various offers to keep her around. Would they have suddenly decided that they were deluded and that she was actually a horrible employee if they knew the truth? Possibly, but that doesn't mean they're in the right.

The real problem here is that a large portion of managers actually have no idea what constitutes a good employee or good job done. So they try to figure it out through second order observations like how many hours are worked, how convincingly the employee acts like they're good at doing their job, or how they report on their progress in meetings; and they get upset when they find out information that makes it seem like the employee should be doing a worse job.

I'm being a bit harsh, since I'm not immune to the same thoughts and uncertainties; I have an employee of my own who has two other part-time jobs and at times I've questioned whether that's OK. When I really examine the work he's doing, though, the answer is always the same: he's doing a good job, and the rest of his time is none of my damn business.

[gsk22]

> That's a bit different than claiming time theft, isn't it? That's more of a suspicion that someone couldn't possibly be doing a good job if their attention is split.

The reason employers would not approve isn't because the employee's attention is split, but because the employee would not be meeting the conditions of employment!

40 hours is the commonly accepted definition of "full time" in the US, and this is often written into employment contracts as well. Additionally, employers generally have expected working hours where the employee is available for meetings, mentoring, pair programming, etc.

So, how can you fulfill the expectations of multiple "full time" jobs while only putting in the time for one?

[telchior]

If the expectation is just hours worked, then you can't fulfill 2 (or more) full time jobs. But I'm not sure where that applies, outside of something mind-numbing like a call center.

Realistically, it's a technical field and there are a lot of very, very poor candidates out there who will fill the seat for 40 hours but completely fail on performance. And I think that's why nobody was judging performance based on hours of butt in seat.

[ipaddr]

Many employers would not approve of the friends you keep or the ladies you date. None of their business.

[deely3]

Counterpoint: friends and ladies relations not defined in signed contract. Working hours - yes.

[anikan_vader]

>> time theft

But her time is not their property, and so there is nothing illegal about her doing with it as she pleases. You can’t steal something that is already yours.

[spoonjim]

It’s the company’s fault for not working their employees to the bone. If they did, this would be impossible.

[LocalH]

I think the collective employer sphere has stolen way more time from their employees than the other way around

[yjftsjthsd-h]

> while my wife did the actual work. For significantly less pay, of course.

What kind of consultant is paid less?

[haswell]

That probably depends a lot more on her previous title than the consulting title.

I could definitely imagine scenarios where a meeting-heavy middle/upper management job pays quite a bit more than consulting.

[telchior]

Ah, just to clarify: she was also working far fewer hours. The meetings really were the primary time sink.

[KMag]

This is where we figure out that overemployed people are using deepfakes to be in multiple Zoom meetings at once.

[spoonjim]

Either your wife is a massive outlier in skills, or the company just isn’t working her hard as they could be. As remote work opens jobs to the broader world, Americans are quickly going to find out that if they can’t generate the business impact of a Serbian or Chinese developer working 60+ hours a week they are going to find themselves in a very unpleasant situation. Some Jeff Dean sorts could do that in 5 minutes a week but most people can’t.

[telchior]

Sure, you're right. I wouldn't say that the problem is that the companies are not working her as hard as they could be; I'd say that what they think is a full time position should actually be part time. But they've refused to see it that way, for one reason or another.

We (Westerners in general) would indeed be screwed if you could just replace people with cheaper workers from other countries. It's not that simple, though. Language and cultural differences are a massive barrier. I say that as someone who has worked with a lot of East and Southeast Asians who are brilliant, hardworking people -- but it still takes a lot of effort to figure out how to work together, and that's at a startup scale where you can really pay attention to each person. Larger companies tend to have a lot of outsourcing horror stories.

[spoonjim]

Certainly, today, an on-shore American developer has more ability to generate business impact than an offshore Southeast Asian developer. But I think that's more because of the bias-laden and chummy way that companies are managed, which is an artifact of office-driven culture. Remote work cultures will be more based on written communication and demonstrated results, and then American developers not in the FAANG skill bracket are going to find out that they are not a very attractive buy when someone almost as good is available for 1/5 the cost.

[telchior]

Yeah, I thought so too. Then I started hiring (for my very small startup) in SE Asia. And, well, maybe I'm biased and chummy, but it just wasn't incredibly smooth sailing. This is purely remote, almost all written communication, etc.

I have no regrets and still employ the same people today, but it just wasn't so straightforward as you're making it out to be. I think it's actually easier for a startup to have, let's say, an entirely Indonesian team including the founders, targeting an American market, versus a startup having an American founding team then start hiring in Indonesia. (For big companies I don't know, but I'd imagine it all gets even more complicated.)

[Firmwarrior]

Haha, man, I had the same thinking ("Surely I can find some genius programmers in Asia or Eastern Europe willing to do the same work for a fraction of the price") but the reality is very different

I had no luck with it at all myself. I'd get completely useless low-quality crap work out of these guys when I got anything out of them at all.

I think you'd have to hire some local managers and maybe send over some experienced devs from the USA to train up the locals, at which point it'd only be a matter of time until they realize their new worth and jump ship for FAANG or whatever.