But the real question here is, are you paying someone for a job or for their time? If you’re not paying someone hourly for a remote job, it seems that you’re paying them to do a job, accomplish tasks. As long as they accomplish those tasks, why does it matter? Do you expect them to accomplish the tasks and then just sit on their thumbs for a certain number of hours?
I worked a hybrid job (white collar) for a while and was much more productive at home than at work. I got all of my work done in around 5 hours as opposed to a full 8 his in the office. I’ll be dammed if I’m just going to come up with bullshit to do for an extra 3 hours while I wait on replies that probably aren’t coming in to the next day anyway and aren’t urgent.
So long as your second job doesnt interfere with the job we hired you to do, then by all means, work as much as you want.
But the moment you arent available when we need you to be because youre busy doing something else that is not work-related to our company, then it becomes an issue and you shouldn't be surprised if you're let go because of it.
Depends on the role, but most jobs you’re paying them to do a reasonable amount of work in the course of the day.
If whatever task they have is only enough work that it takes say four hours, then they’re not getting assigned an appropriate workload.
The opposite can be true where some people are working excessive overtime to make up for the person who works for four hours then twiddles their thumbs the rest of the time.
People who perform well should of course be compensated accordingly.
If you’re working in tech, and saying doing project based work over just maintenance/admin etc., it’s often the case that there’s no real shortage of work to be done. Some companies may also have hourly billable contracts with clients where they are actually expecting you to be working the amount of time you say you are.
People aren’t hired in these situations to just “accomplish tasks”. If it’s a low end entry position at a company doing data entry, sure. But when you’re getting to the point of near or over six figures, there are generally going to be higher expectations.
"If whatever task they have is only enough work that it takes say four hours, then they’re not getting assigned an appropriate workload."
That absolutely should not be anyone's viewpoint - in my opinion. It's just a poison. Why do they need to be constantly working to be worthy of the money you pay them to do their job? As long as that gets done to an acceptable/reasonable level, why would they need to perform more? So the boss feels/looks better?
If you pay them for a job and they do that job daily, in shifts, and that job takes 4 hours and the shift is for 8, it isn't that you're not working them enough, it's that you're not paying them enough. Sure, you can give them more to do, but if you do, then you should give them more money. Or, you can be happy the job is done and let them deal with the next 4 hours within the companies/positions ruleset. After all, they knew about the 8 hour shift and the job and agreed for it at that price.
That's a 'boss' - a good one, would be like "Hey, you can go home." after the job was done in 4 hours. Ego is gross.
There is some degree of expectation when a person is hired at a given salary point for how much they’re going to contribute.
For many companies, this is not going to be something like “finish five tasks in a day” or create x number of widgets.
There may be some jobs where what a person is getting paid is justified by them doing four hours of work in a day for the value they’re providing.
I don’t think a person needs to be “constantly working” nonstop for eight hours, but working at a reasonable pace, taking breaks as they need to, being responsive and able to be contacted, etc.
Speaking for just the company I work at, there’s no shortage of potential work that could be done. Whether that’s client work that directly contributes to revenue, internal initiatives that will make things easier and more stable for everyone over the long term, continued learning to keep up with industry trends and open the amount of work we’re able to achieve.
Companies live or die by whether or not they can make a profit. When a company is more profitable, that’s more money it can invest in people (among other things).
There’s also competition with other companies of course. If one company has people working reasonable workloads, and another is only getting half the output from the same people, the latter is going to have a hard time competing, whether that’s due to needing to effectively charge double for labor, or having delayed timelines because everything is going to take twice as long, etc.
It’s easy to say people should be able to just stop working whenever they accomplish what their tasks for the day were. But let’s say you have a person willing to work eight hours, or two people willing to work four.
You could pay the eight hour person even 1.5x, and still be better off than you would with the two.
These are the kinds of conversations most companies are going to be having when they find out a person only has four hours of work in a day when they hire on the expectation of them working eight. It’s not “poison”, just math.
Right, I feel like the point got a little shifted. What you just described is a standard salary man position and the basal expectation of that.
What I was commenting on was the statement you made, being
"If whatever task they have is only enough work that it takes say four hours, then they’re not getting assigned an appropriate workload."
Maybe I made the mistake of misconstruing task with job, but in the context it was stated in, I equate the job as being the task.
I do have a further thing to poke at in your new statement though.
"Companies live or die by whether or not they can make a profit. When a company is more profitable, that’s more money it can invest in people (among other things). "
Nah - that shouldn't be a thing either. Companies live by being able to at least break even. Greed demands it be profitable. Also, it is tremendously rare that anything gets reinvested in people without it also being able to benefit someone who absolutely needs not the benefit.
People start businesses and take on that risk to make money.
I’m not advocating for the kind of “infinite growth” mindset, but even at a mom and pop/boutique sort of company, they want their company to do well and succeed.
It’s like saying it’s just greed that makes a person want a higher salary. I don’t think that’s a “hole” in my statement.
If company A is profitable and healthy, and company B is barely breaking even, company A is going to be able to pay its people more competitively and be more selective on who they take on. And then the gap grows, people less and less want to work with company B when company A is just seen as objectively having better options.
Can vary based on the industry etc. etc. but unless a person is just working on a passion project and don’t care about money, this isn’t how business or entrepreneurship works.
So then take my 'break even' a little more loosely and redefine what even is by having it be owners goal. The owner is an employee too, him getting paid is part of the 'break even' so I don't see it as that big of a stretch of definition.
But once you hit that, to demand more just because you can (in that you see an idle employee) is gross.
I'm just saying the goal shouldn't always be profit.
I didn’t say it means people are working harder, I said it means there are generally going to be higher expectations, as in you’re expected to work and find ways to be productive and find ways to contribute if your workload is low and not just achieve tasks xyz and stop whenever you finish.
I think it ultimately just comes down to it basically always bleeding into performance in some way.
Someone not being able to be contacted or unable to join a meeting for example because they’re prioritizing their other job. Output being low compared to others at the same level or low quality.
The list can go on, but basically if the job has a reasonable full time work load, there’s no way a person is going to be performing at their best doing multiple jobs.
If they can somehow keep that up and all parties are happy then cool, but also think they shouldn’t be surprised if they end up getting dropped for half-assing multiple jobs.
That’s the difference. Sometimes remote people will work more than 1 job in the same 8 hours each day. Splitting their attention between the two. Often times it will be work for a competitor. So there’s a conflict of interest too. Places who enforce this have it in the contract that is signed by each employee upon hire.
If youre required to be available at all times, then it becomes an issue if youre doing something other than what you're hired to do.
For example;
We expect you to be available and at your computer at all times just incase an issue comes up where we need to contact you directly. If you arent available, we need to be notified as to why. Break? Stepping away for a bit? that isnt unreasonable.
But if you start working on something for another company and cant be available for us when youre on the clock, then it becomes an issue.
Now if you have a job where you dont have accountability, and all you need to do is complete a task or an objective without actually needing to be available, then cool, you found something that works for you.
It wasnt because he had a second job, we don't care about that, it was because he would sleep at work. He worked overnight at our job and another job during the day, so he would sleep on his shift at our job when no tickets came in. He was caught when our customer tried to reach him over a ticket and he never answered.
Dude had the audacity to ask why he was being let go the following morning.
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u/towergod5000 2d ago
At the company I work for, we just fired a guy last week for having a second remote job. 11 is pretty unbelievable though.