Same here, it's something wider than just this tweet. I get the same on the timeline.
Link preview in slack works, however. Here's the tweet text:
"A friend of a friend at Google interviewed at Facebook right as the virus hit. Accepted new job in March. Didn’t quit old job. Apparently does both jobs at home in 55 hours/week. Neither company knows yet. Might have reversed the co’s, not sure. I have so many thoughts on this."
"Friend of a friend" - nothing suspicious there, it must be true. "Might have reversed the co's" - yup, might or might not, 100% true story. edit: And a bit further down the thread: "I don't know him."
In some remote case this is true, 2 full-time contracts can be downright illegal to have. And tax office might be very interested at the end of the year.
Yeah, best to remain skeptical. This seems like perfect material for a modern urban legend.
It's definitely plausible but not sustainable. If found out they might lose both jobs and alienate themselves from two major players in the IT business.
Another person in that thread said they did the same thing for 6 months during the quarantine. At least two other folks on that thread have said they know someone who did the same thing.
Im not a tax lawyer or accountant but I don't see the IRS getting involved here either, nor it raising red flags, unless this went on for greater than a year. A W2 doesnt indicate the dates you worked for an employer, though the stock vesting would indicate overlap. Not sure about California tax forms though.
Maybe not illegal from a tax point of view but illegal as hell for someone on a H1B visa (which quite a significant number of employees in these companies have).
> And tax office might be very interested at the end of the year.
As long as you didn’t do anything stupid about withholding (and even then, it’s just a $ penalty you pay April 15 if you way underpaid multiple years), I don’t see why they would care. They don’t care if you have multiple part time jobs either as long as you pay your income tax.
Correct. There are a lot of college students and adults with irregular employment that would have been rounded up and sent to jail otherwise. I worked simultaneously for three different employers in my late teens/early twenties including a part time job working for my city government. No one, especially the IRS, blinked an eye because this is 100% normal.
Now if you’re in an at will employment job then the employer can just fire you if they don’t like what you’re doing, but the same is true if they woke up cranky on a Tuesday. If you read your offer letter they make it sound like some sort of law from on high that lets them do this but it’s just a basic principle of employment in an At-Will arrangement.
I'm not understanding why this should be considered bad? Presumably both companies are satisfied with his work output, and if not, are free to fire him.
Disagreements on which company owns the IP generated by the employee might end up costing both companies more than the value the employee generates. Legal costs quite a bit.
Another consideration, if this person is able to complete their work in half the time then this person was brought on at a responsibility level that was too low. Theoretically, the job should be taking 40 hours. It's the company's responsibility to load balance the tasks for their employee's to fill an FTE's schedule.
A point to keep in mind, tasks does not necessarily equate to writing code. Think for example, writing a design doc, responding to email, or reviewing any kind of metrics. If this person was hired as a manager or a technical lead then the person might be doing non-code work.
I wonder if it would be considered "bad" if one of the jobs didn't produce IP (code) and the other one did. Or if both didn't produce IP. Or if the companies were not direct competitors.
If I had some "marketing manager" title at Facebook, why couldn't I also do the same work at Chase Bank or some other non-competitor, if both were willing to hire me on a WFH basis? What ethical line does that really cross?
It's an interesting consideration. This would be a great time for any lawyer to chime in.
Personally I'd think it a matter of taste or etiquette. If I were a full time employee (FTE) at one company, working for another company would personally be a bit of a betrayal of my first employer.
Why does it matter if you can get your job done faster? Are you being paid for your time or your work? Seems reasonable to take an easier job than you are qualified for if you want to have free time. Who is losing?
A tech employee is being paid for their work. The company assesses the employee's ability and dictates the level, which determines how much work they believe the employee can handle in a typical 40 work week. The balance a company hedges against is the company paying overtime for overestimation of the employee's ability, or under utilizing the resource i.e. the employee.
Generally, if you want to work less it's an option to take an easier job. However, in this instance it seems a severe underutilization to pay a tech salary (40hrs) for potentially (55/2)hrs of work. The company isn't getting it's due, and likely the employee isn't either.
Taking pay with the understanding that it's hard to be fully productive during covid, while going to work at a competitor, is sus. Firing may be coming soon, perhaps with lawsuit.
The guy could be a contractor for both, and some details may have been lost in the telephone game.
Also, the only thing that's a problem is the employment contract. They both surely have clauses about working for someone else in the industry, and/or listing any side businesses.
I contracted for 4 companies at the same time. Not seeing a problem here. If the employee is
1) not using the IP of either company at each job
2) accomplishing his objectives at each company
Where is the harm here? If you are a FTE what is the implication that you can’t work elsewhere as well? Is it in the employment agreement? If so I would say that seems illegal.
Why would they care at all? If he's full-time on both, then he's having the taxes deducted from his wages. In fact, he'll get a refund at the end of the year because he's overpaying FICA (6% up to $110k on both jobs, when his maximum contribution should just be 6% up to $110k (not exact numbers)).
If he's a contractor, then he has to pay estimated taxes on both jobs, just like someone would with 1 job.
In either case, as long as he does proper accounting like anyone with 1 job would need to, he'll be fine in the IRS's eyes.
They wouldn't. They'd get their cut and not do anything more.
IRS basically never starts investigations from what was in tax returns as long as they get their money so they don't scare off people from filing tax returns and paying taxes.
I mean, this certainly violates the employment contract of both Facebook and Google. I've seen only one of those, but I can't imagine the other doesn't have a non-compete against working for a competitor while employed (which is at least potentially enforcable in California).
You might be able to negotiate that away, if you really tried.
But breaching a contract isn't illegal. There's no tax issues, the IRS and the FTB don't care how many employers you have. Without due care, withholding will be off more than normal, but both employers will withhold for employee social security, and assuming combined wages are over the contribution limit, there will be a refund of overcontributions. Having two employers in one year makes it possible to overcontribute to 401k, but that's managable.
I fail to see how upholding two contracts is unethical in the slightest. Do you think a company should be able to pay groups of people similar compensation but hold the rights to each individuals peak performance? I'd suggest it's very greedy for already megarich companies to expect anything beyond meeting the obligations specified in the contract.
It depends, for example I have to get approval for any second jobs to my employer. This is certainly in part for competition reasons, but it's also so they can ensure that I'm not materially increasing my risk of burn-out, which would cost them (and I think they have a legal obligation to ensure I'm remaining healthy within their scope, though I'm not sure where the boundaries of that lie.)
So if I said I was doing 5 hours or so per week for something else unrelated to my company, it'd probably be fine. If I instead was doing 30, there'd be cause to not give me approval, or step me down to reduced hours with them, or similar.
I think you mean well, but that's a strawman. If your contract obligates you to let your employer know of other jobs you'd be in breech of contract. It's not okay to just assume these people are in breech of contract just because you might be if you did the same.
As for future risk should a company be able to limit you from partying on a sunday simply because statistically you'd probably perform worse on monday? If that clause is not in the agreed employment contract then the company gets no say in what you do on sunday, right? It's amazing to me that people feel so morally beholden to companies that would dispose of them the second it would be obviously profitable to do so. Companies feel no moral obligation to employees, they behave just as ethically as the workforce and consumers demand they behave. They do not volunteer extra consideration just because it might feel right. The idea that any employee should afford them extra consideration beyond their contract is arguably wrong and potentially unethical. If the workforce holds that employees owe companies more than they receive, would that workforce not be partially responsible for setting up unfair relationships and toxic work environments?
Well, I was presenting as an example as to why such a thing might be the case thereby adding nuance, not really an argument per se.
They can't limit me from partying on Sunday, but they are legally obliged to prevent over-work, and that includes being aware of other employment. It's nothing to do with corporate morality or anything like that. It's just that they must do this because the government says they must.
Well, an explanation can't transform my wisecrack from being inscrutable to being hilarious now, but nevertheless I'll add one: it's not holding a full time job at two companies, I find evil; it's holding a full time job at two companies I find evil, I find evil.
oh lol, welp sorry for making an assumption about what you meant. That alternative interpretation never occurred to me. I should've been more charitable in my interpretation, oh well.
It's perfectly legal and good for country economy. What if the employee is really able to perform up to employer's expectations, but it was hard for them to convince employer to pay double?
When you leave an employer in the US you generally cash-out your PTO rather than getting paid gardening-leave if you have a NDA/non-compete (such niceties in the US? hah!) - at the same time, it isn't unheard of to instead use your PTO to spend time starting with your new employer - so that if things don't work-out (or rather: things going disastrously wrong in the first couple of weeks) you can go back to your old employer and pretend that you were legitimately on holiday somewhere far, far away for that time. Being able to safely "undo" something as major as an employment change is a huge stress-reliever and I think more people should consider doing it.
Granted, this isn't the same thing as actively working for both companies. However it's possible the subject of the tweet was someone who was a vendor/contractor at FB or GOOG - or vice-versa - which has certain appearances.
How does that work out in practice? At what point would you put in your two-week notice? If you wait until the last day of your PTO, that means you'd overlap in two jobs for two weeks.
the scamming was somewhat humorous, but aside from that if an employee of mine was also working for one of my direct competitors I would not be happy no matter how good their work was, especially as it would probably have the potential of opening me up to liabilities (and of course opening up my competitor to liabilities, but I worry about mine not theirs so much)
He claims he doesn't have any any responsibility to protect him, but he feels free to blast it on Twitter to his thousands of followers. If someone felt they had no responsibility, they'd just keep quiet. Arrington felt the need to snitch on this guy and ruin his livelihood...for what? What does Arrington gain from snitching?
Agreed. Should mind his own business and keep quiet. Arrington has nothing to gain from this other than some more engagement from his twitter followers.
This is sort of brag, but it's also sort of funny if you know my brother: he both works for a high profile think tank and a high profile consulting firm full time remotely. He's also running a charity org in his free(?) time.
It's hilarious too because despite how impressive that sounds he is the most ADHD and scatterbrained person I know. He is incapable of any sort of organization in his life. I think he manages his dysfunction by channeling his hyperfocus into his work.
I have ADHD too, and it's unfortunate that my brain seems to want to channel my hyperfocus into arguing about random things on social media instead.
> high profile think tank and a high profile consulting firm
The high profile consulting firm probably takes up the majority of his week. What's his role at the think tank? I've looked at some staff there and they just seem to do "research" and then write "articles" that they publish for their own prominence. So doing both may be reasonable.
I have no idea what he actually does for either of them, because he's very hard to get in contact with, and after writing my previous comment it suddenly makes sense why.
I don’t have ADHD, however I am bipolar with strong tendency to mania. Whenever it hits I also get into scattered hyperfocus. People thought I had ADHD.
I had to get rid of all social media because the things I shouted into it had a really bad effect on people around me.
Living without social media these days can be challenging, but I am not looking back.
Now I can actually freelance while having 3 customers at once.
Working 60% on two jobs as a consultant is something I’ve seen friends do. What they say is that because they know my friends has two jobs they always have an excuse that is: stressed at the other job. Thing is, they say that to both bosses so whilst they get money for 120% they in reality can go down to 80% working time. They can basically vanish from the earth and get an awh he’s working so much! when they come back.
Probably, at the very minimum it is with respect to intellectual property. Of course it wouldn't matter b/c you can be fired for any reason.. but maybe the worker could claim that's not a legal reason to fire them. It would be interesting litigation though if they are exempt salaried workers.
This was has been my experience with other firms like IBM. I remember it being stated in my employment agreement that I needed permission to work a second job. It even limited your open source exposure. Whether it could be legally enforced is a different matter.
And if not exclusivity, they likely both have the standard anti-moonlighting, broad IP assignment clauses that we have all come to love: "Anything you produce using company equipment or your own equipment, on company time or on your time, belongs to us." All jobs I've had for the past decade come with something like that.
I heard a legend of someone who, through acquisitions and lax work-from-home auditing, actually held two positions at the same employer. By working for different international subsidiaries and using different spellings of his name, he got away with it for years.
For Elon Musk, working at only two companies would be a substantial reduction in employers. He currently works for Tesla, SpaceX, The Boring Company, Neuralink and OpenAI.
* Update: Apparently Elon quit OpenAI. So let's not count that one. But even 4 employers is still a lot!
Directors really aren't different and in fact one would argue have access to even more sensitive information. In that light, work 2 jobs if you want! I guess the only issue is that a director would have informed his official employer of the engagement.
I don't understand why people assume it's scamming or cheating.
It's perfectly legal, and I'd say it's even good for country economy.
The employer might state that "it's our mutual understanding" about anything in job offer, but it's not a legally binding statement. Anti-competitive statements can be binding, though, so it might be illegal for them to work at FB and Google, as their business might intersect. But it's a different story than just right to hold two "full-time" jobs.
One possibility I might think of -- if an employee is really a high performer, but couldn't negotiate compensation above "market price" for their level.
Is it legal though? As a salary paid employee you're a legal representative of the company, you're covered by indemnity and liability protections by law.
If you work for two companies in a salaried position, then you're potentially violating the law there.
If you're a hourly employee and you claim the same hour for two employers, You're potentially committing fraud.
there are 24 hours in a day though. And people have been working 2, even 3 jobs since forever, especially low-paid ones. Most tech workers were privileged enough to never experience it tho.
Hourly, yeah, I mean You can split it up, and not be working the same job in the same hours. Perfectly legal and acceptable, albeit not healthy. So it's not fraud.
But Salary, That's a different animal. Yes there are 24 hours in a day, but if you're Salary you're a legal representative for that company and covered under many employment laws because of that, for all 24 hours. So - I have doubts as to whether having two salary job is legal, even if you're working 12-8 and 8-4.
Nothing in the tweet says the positions were salaried, or even W-2. That's just something people are reading into what is already, without reading anything into it, an unreliable “friend of a friend” rumor.
Big companies guard their IP quite strongly. I'd be surprised if he or she isn't fired immediately once this is discovered for reasons related to that.
Just because something is "perfectly legal" does not mean that it's not cheating.
I typically wouldn't have an issue with someone working 2 jobs, but I do take slight issue if this situation is true. These aren't just 2 companies, these are two companies who are competitors with each other in many fields. These are two companies who pay very large salaries to hold on to talent in order for their competitors to not hire them, and this situation is only possible due to the current situation around "work from home".
As someone who works remote even outside of a pandemic, I would be worried that stories and potential situations like this will be a point in the "we require all employees to be back in the office" column. This employee taking advantage of work-from-home in order to violate a non-compete (which I am sure exists in their contract) puts a bad look on every one else.
They pay massive salaries because they make massive profits.
A software engineer at a big company really isn't that much better than a software engineer at a random smaller company. The businesses just make so much money that if they don't pay well someone else will and crush their business.
> Just because something is "perfectly legal" does not mean that it's not cheating.
In arms-length business relationships, including normal employment relationships, that's exactly what it means. The applicable law, including binding legal agreements like employment contracts, set the rules. Not violating the rules is not cheating.
> but I do take slight issue if this situation is true.
Why? Even if every word of the tweet is true, nothing says the positions aren't both contract positions with no, even informal, exclusivity expectation.
> agreements like employment contracts, set the rules.
Yes, however as far as I know employment contracts for both Google and Facebook would both prohibit having a full-time job at a competitor. Between that and IP ownership concerns, I would call this "cheating".
> nothing says the positions aren't both contract positions with no, even informal, exclusivity expectation
You're right, it's not explicitly stated, but it is high implied that these are employee-employer relationships (and not contracting) positions.
In a salaried position your offer letter (that you sign) specifies you won’t do other renumeratwd work without the permission of your employer. Technically that’s not violating the law but it’s a violation of contract.
Yes, in russia for one they can’t fire you just for moonlighting and any non-competes are illegal. I’m pretty sure most of european countries have similar employment laws.
Edit: “at will employment” is uniquely american thing afaik
In the USA? I've never had an offer letter that made a statement like that, nor did I ever sign an offer letter. I interviewed for the job, got a verbal offer over the phone, received a written letter with one or two sentences confirming the start date and salary, and that's it!
EDIT: I'm referring to highly compensated professional jobs. In two such positions, I only received a verbal offer, and there was nothing in writing. Normally, I'd insist on something in writing, but in these cases, I was hired by someone I trusted.
Pretty sure non-competes or non-disclosure agreements used by Google and FB in the Seattle area have language that restricts one from working at Google and FB at the same time without permission from the employers.
(I haven't looked at one for a couple of years, but generally they are pretty onerous around these parts.)
As an aside, I remember nonsense clauses in Incentive Stock Option agreements. Notably, there was a non-compete clause and also a paragraph stating that the clause was not enforceable in California (and I was in California).
In the USA, working full-time salaried in tech, and I also do non-tech freelance work. I checked my offer letter and employment contract and do not have any such provision to get permission for remunerated work for others. Checked with HR who confirmed this was true (they knew when they hired me, I disclosed it freely during the interview process).
Aside from the legality, what does this say about whatever role the friend was doing (assuming this is true of course)? I've heard from friends who work at FAANG that it's fairly easy to hide in the bureaucracy and do no real work. I've also heard the opposite, but perhaps the widely varying experiences are to be expected at a large company.
The difficulty is that you need to do nothing from the start and forever, to not be noticed.
As soon as as you start doing anything or replying to an email (definitely don't send any email), people will notice you and they might come back to you for it or for something else.
This also precludes working for some high visibility projects or parts of the organization. Better be on a pet project that nobody uses or cares about.
having worked at them its 100% possible. esp at google because they dont really fire anyone or give them bad ratings.. literally low single digit percents. A large percent of google is coasting... they just have 1 job
fb actually does fire people but its still not hard to get by.
It's normal if you work two blue collar jobs but two programming jobs and now people in here saying they should be investigated by the IRS, c'mon what are you doing. And this tweet, if true, what a weird way to snitch on someone trying to work.
It's not normal to work two full time blue collar jobs. They wear you out. You don't have the energy.
This original post is unbridled greed and while legal, it further cements my opinion about this industry and who it serves in society. It's a wealth transfer to the already wealthy and well connected. The work is laughably easy and the pay is at least an order or magnitude better than the average. The demographics skew hard towards white males.
The reason people start talking about going to the IRS is because they see the inequality and want someone to do something -- even though there is nothing they can do.
Ah yes, I meant common. It is not common that people have two 40+ hour blue collar jobs. Not at all. I would agree if you said its common to have two (nearly full time) part-time jobs at 30-35 hours per week each.
Well yeah, because most blue collar jobs don't want you to be classified as a full time employee. It's still de facto a full time job even if you are only on the time clock for 38, imo.
Exactly, they have to work those 38 hours while a tech worker can probably work half of those hours and still get their work done (and again an order of magnitude better pay).
All my colleagues that have been lazy have basically been “push-driven” while normal people are pull-driven (find more work to take). Problem is that it’s not the boss that gets blamed when the deadline is not delivered, its the team on the floor that has to take up the slack and push through. And everyone try to be nice and just accept that some people are slackers. I understand the anger some people might have, but at the end of the day there will always be more work.
MA: > Oh yes. A lot of people have zero social media in tech. I look forward to the day I can delete all this bullshit .
I like this quote.
Isn't this kind of work the kind we should expect as more and more people are working remotely? More of them will choose to go with gig work / independent work in order to arbitrage if they can do it, particularly the good ones. If implemented correctly this could be a huge boon to workers, and will take some powers away from employers.
I knew a guy years ago who after catching wind of mass layoffs went and got another job without notice to his current employer. Then he just came back to his old office for three months and worked from his new corporate laptop and even took remote conference meetings until eventually getting laid off (with huge severance) along with everybody else.
I've been doing this for 2 years, except I have 3 positions not two.
Also all 3 pay really well, but they are all small companies (less than 20 employees). All three are distributed teams with no offices.
I learned a long time ago when I was assigned a task, if I concentrated I could get my days work done in 2/3 hours, sometimes less. If it was a large task that was supposed to take a month, I could do it in two weeks.
I dont believe this is because Im special in any way, I just think people slack off and generally lose too much time at work.
Obviously I didn't start with 3, I had 1 and noticed I had a lot of downtime and applied and was selected for a second job. At first I was very nervous I had taken on too much, but after a few weeks it became clear I could finish both in about 6 hours a day.
I then added the third, and usually I can finish everything in 8/9 hours. Ive gotten into trouble a few times where things piled up and I had to work all through the weekend, but its rare.
Its also happened where I finish all my works' week by Wednesday and have Thursday and Friday pretty much off.
I dont get into trouble with meetings because all 3 jobs dont have that many (1 or 2 per week) and since the teams are distributed theres always some room for scheduling effectively.
At one point I even got a 4th job, that immediately was too much and I resigned after a week.
Final note, I see nothing immoral about this. I want to make money and keep busy, if I end up paying the price by pulling some all nighters or long weekends I accept that, and have done it.
In all three positions I get positive reviews and even raises.
(this is not my real HN account, I created it just to share this story without divulging my identity)
Thanks for sharing, I think everyone gets this same idea once you realize office jobs are ~80% wasted time but to most it seems too outlandish to actually try and do it.
Similar idea: you could get a remote job and only actually work for something like 2h/day. Would you say that is equally feasible?
How did you pick jobs? As in, what criteria did you set and how did you check them?
Yes I agree its feasible. Thats pretty much the situation I was in before I started taking on more.
I was selective in what jobs I took, aside from technical criteria,
1. had to be 100% remote
2. small teams
3. when interviewing, I tried to make sure that the company valued results over anything else. which a lot of remote office companies already are.
I remember when interviewing for a job I didn't take they wanted me to install a program that takes constant screenshots of my system. That obviously was a deal breaker.
> Thats pretty much the situation I was in before I started taking on more.
During that time, if you didn't work, would it have been possible to pursue a completely different activity such as going hiking for example? Or did you have to be "on standby" at home?
Why are you looking for small teams in particular? And how did you make sure that there aren't too many meetings in particular?
I've found distributed teams with members in different timezones already try to minimize meetings and are really good at organizing themselves through email,slack,scrum boards, etc.
This may sound like I got lucky finding companies that work this way, but I dont think it is, all remote companies usually have employees and even founders who want some liberty to organize their schedule and only care if work gets done at the end of the week.
During what are agreed to be my regular work hours I am expected to answer chats, so hiking would not be an option.
When I only had one job I was wasting a lot of time playing bridge online.
I was looking for small teams because I was afraid large companies would have more measures in place to avoid situations like mine.
Interesting to hear this. An acquaintance worked for a big Telco, and one day his director walked up to him, and asked him "why he was idle yesterday". That's how he found out that every one is being monitored. This was not a remote job.
I've had low expectations tech jobs in the past where I could get the results my boss expected with ~10 hours of work a week. The rest was just sitting in the office. And I've had jobs that legit took 40 hours of head-down working (with no horsing around slack time) to barely keep my performance acceptable. I can tell you the "needs 40 hours" jobs did not pay 4x the "needs 10 hours" jobs. It would be tempting to take multiple low expectations jobs if it were allowed by all the jobs' employment agreements.
At this point, I feel like you should just run a software consulting shop. Time to start outsourcing tasks and hire subcontractors for support so you could pick up even more work.
What sort of skills do you need that are more favorable to being able to work several positions? Sys admin, devops, front end, backend, full stack or database? How do you get out of on call for all 3 positions. I'm in awe. Very nice!
Thanks for your answer! I wonder if I wrongly assume sys admin position naturally require you to be on call, server goes down/offline or some other operations issue.
>I dont believe this is because Im special in any way, I just think people slack off and generally lose too much time at work.
I can't speak for other people, but I think this is highly dependent on the person and job. I know a score of people who put in a solid 50+ hours at one job. Congrats to you if you have found 3 different jobs that require 2 hours/day.
Do you have noncompetes or employment contracts with each company? If so, how did you navigate this?
I don't have noncompetes, and all three jobs deal with software development but in completely different industries. Ethically I wouldn't work for two competing companies.
I agree there are tech jobs that are way more demanding, its true that I may have found good situations. I think theres also some truth to the fact that if you put your phone on do not disturb, and just concentrate on your work you can get a lot done. It also helps that although Im not a particularly talented developer, I do have almost 2 decades of experience so typically its just coding and not much research.
This can be tedious to be honest, but at this point in my life I have a family to take care of, Im prioritizing being a good provider over technical challenges that fulfill me.
I'm on pace to pay off my 20 year mortgage in 3 years. Once I'm debt free I may consider working less and doing something else with my time.
It's not illegal to have two jobs, but usually for a FTE salaried job, you employment agreement says must tell your employer about any other jobs you have, including part time and hourly. A big reason why companies don't want you to have another tech job is that you might not really being doing either job, you outsource one or both of them. That breaks confidentiality laws when you give your subcontractor access to documents, data, source code, names of your coworkers, etc.
I find it ironic that so many people are arguing about the morality and ethics of working 2 full time jobs when he's working at companies that have shown repeatedly they lack morality and ethics.
If true, that would be fascinating, and for a lot of companies (like if you did e-mail support) there would be nothing illegal about it -- you just don't want to be discovered.
But I'm legitimately curious about the ramifications of IP here -- both Google and (I'm assuming) Facebook claim to own all your intellectual output related to their business areas.
So you've basically just signed ownership of all your work for both companies to both Facebook and Google. IANAL, so I don't know what the term for this would be, but it does seem like you'd get in trouble -- fraud?
I assume you'd somehow slip eventually and get caught, and likely be sued by both companies, with an incredible headache for both companies' sets of lawyers as they try to figure out what to do with the code you committed, and if they can even use it anymore at all.
Given that both organizations treat complying with legal and contractual obligations as a risk management exercise, I see no problem with their employees doing the same. It sounds like the subject of the story did the analysis, determined that the potential downsides aren't really that bad (for him/her/them), and acted accordingly.
In defense of this hypothetical employee (who may or may not exist) I would give them the benefit of the doubt that they didn't go in to this thinking "I'm going to work 2 jobs" but rather:
- Interviewed at the other company, and received an offer
- Took time away from main job to start new job, with the intention of resigning after his onboarding (just in case)
- Came back and wanted to clean a few things up before resigning.
- Kept doing that
- Realized everything was fine and never quit
Not saying it doesn't still have issues, but it's easy to see how someone with "normal" intentions could have slowly ended up in this situation.
Regardless as to whether this is legal, and assuming this is indeed true, I'm just curious - one of these jobs the person is probably phoning it in a little bit more than the other. Does anyone have insight here?
For those saying it is not illegal, not so fast. If they lied to the second employer to get the second job (such as by saying that they had no other jobs or were quitting their other jobs) that may be fraud in some jurisdictions.
It's also very risky in terms of civil liability. If either employer introduces a product that comes anywhere near to something they worked on at the other employer, that other employer may sue the employee alleging trade secret theft.
That's a civil matter, not a criminal matter. Mostly, being civil not criminal is good for a defendant...but there is one important area where it isn't. That's the burden of proof. Prosecutors in criminal cases have to prove "beyond a reasonable doubt". Plaintiffs in civil cases just have to meet either "preponderance of the evidence" in most cases, and "clear and convincing" in a few.
I'm not fully sure, but I believe a trade secret appropriation suit would use "preponderance of the evidence". That's also known as "more likely than not". Working at plaintiff on stuff anywhere close to the allegedly misappropriated trade secret will be enough to to meet that for plaintiff, effectively shifting the burden of proof on the employee to prove that they did not supply the other employer with the trade secret.
The plaintiff would almost certainly sue the other employer too, not just the employee. If the plaintiff wins that suit, that other employer might sue the employer asking them to pay any damages they owe from that suit.
1. There is not enough information in the original tweet to determine if this person is working full-time at either company or part-time. Both companies employ enough contractors.
2. As other comments said, this might not be ethical but may still be legal. Full-time employees are not hourly, and as long as they do their job hours shouldn't matter.
3. If in California, there is no non-compete.
4. Due to it being FB and Google, they can get into trouble from an IP standpoint of they leak or use IP from one at the other.
5. Logistics can be interesting. But it is certainly possible for a person to claim they are remote from different timezones at each company to minimize conflicts.
6. Still I can't see how they can continue this for long if friend of friend already knows about this. Someone in there social circle will get jealous and report them.
does the no-non-compete apply when you are still at your old job?
the reason non-competes are bad is because they could prevent you from having any job at all, but that doesn't mean that you should be allowed to have two competing jobs at the the same time.
“A friend of a friend” is a standard signal that what is being repeated is a rumor, of which the speaker has no personal knowledge, often an urban legend.
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[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 182 ms ] threadTried reloading the page a few times, same problem.
Link preview in slack works, however. Here's the tweet text:
"A friend of a friend at Google interviewed at Facebook right as the virus hit. Accepted new job in March. Didn’t quit old job. Apparently does both jobs at home in 55 hours/week. Neither company knows yet. Might have reversed the co’s, not sure. I have so many thoughts on this."
weird, as it was just working a second ago before the errors started piling up
"Friend of a friend" - nothing suspicious there, it must be true. "Might have reversed the co's" - yup, might or might not, 100% true story. edit: And a bit further down the thread: "I don't know him."
In some remote case this is true, 2 full-time contracts can be downright illegal to have. And tax office might be very interested at the end of the year.
It's definitely plausible but not sustainable. If found out they might lose both jobs and alienate themselves from two major players in the IT business.
As long as you didn’t do anything stupid about withholding (and even then, it’s just a $ penalty you pay April 15 if you way underpaid multiple years), I don’t see why they would care. They don’t care if you have multiple part time jobs either as long as you pay your income tax.
Now if you’re in an at will employment job then the employer can just fire you if they don’t like what you’re doing, but the same is true if they woke up cranky on a Tuesday. If you read your offer letter they make it sound like some sort of law from on high that lets them do this but it’s just a basic principle of employment in an At-Will arrangement.
Another consideration, if this person is able to complete their work in half the time then this person was brought on at a responsibility level that was too low. Theoretically, the job should be taking 40 hours. It's the company's responsibility to load balance the tasks for their employee's to fill an FTE's schedule.
Who on earth has the ability to do that?
If I had some "marketing manager" title at Facebook, why couldn't I also do the same work at Chase Bank or some other non-competitor, if both were willing to hire me on a WFH basis? What ethical line does that really cross?
Personally I'd think it a matter of taste or etiquette. If I were a full time employee (FTE) at one company, working for another company would personally be a bit of a betrayal of my first employer.
Generally, if you want to work less it's an option to take an easier job. However, in this instance it seems a severe underutilization to pay a tech salary (40hrs) for potentially (55/2)hrs of work. The company isn't getting it's due, and likely the employee isn't either.
Also, the only thing that's a problem is the employment contract. They both surely have clauses about working for someone else in the industry, and/or listing any side businesses.
If the roles are very different, it could be clear cut. If the roles have substantial overlap though...
I know when the agency I worked for worked with Disney we signed an exclusivity agreement that we could not work with paramount MGM universal etc.
If there is something specific in the contract, it is a civil issue.
Where is the harm here? If you are a FTE what is the implication that you can’t work elsewhere as well? Is it in the employment agreement? If so I would say that seems illegal.
Why would they care at all? If he's full-time on both, then he's having the taxes deducted from his wages. In fact, he'll get a refund at the end of the year because he's overpaying FICA (6% up to $110k on both jobs, when his maximum contribution should just be 6% up to $110k (not exact numbers)).
If he's a contractor, then he has to pay estimated taxes on both jobs, just like someone would with 1 job.
In either case, as long as he does proper accounting like anyone with 1 job would need to, he'll be fine in the IRS's eyes.
IRS basically never starts investigations from what was in tax returns as long as they get their money so they don't scare off people from filing tax returns and paying taxes.
You might be able to negotiate that away, if you really tried.
But breaching a contract isn't illegal. There's no tax issues, the IRS and the FTB don't care how many employers you have. Without due care, withholding will be off more than normal, but both employers will withhold for employee social security, and assuming combined wages are over the contribution limit, there will be a refund of overcontributions. Having two employers in one year makes it possible to overcontribute to 401k, but that's managable.
So if I said I was doing 5 hours or so per week for something else unrelated to my company, it'd probably be fine. If I instead was doing 30, there'd be cause to not give me approval, or step me down to reduced hours with them, or similar.
As for future risk should a company be able to limit you from partying on a sunday simply because statistically you'd probably perform worse on monday? If that clause is not in the agreed employment contract then the company gets no say in what you do on sunday, right? It's amazing to me that people feel so morally beholden to companies that would dispose of them the second it would be obviously profitable to do so. Companies feel no moral obligation to employees, they behave just as ethically as the workforce and consumers demand they behave. They do not volunteer extra consideration just because it might feel right. The idea that any employee should afford them extra consideration beyond their contract is arguably wrong and potentially unethical. If the workforce holds that employees owe companies more than they receive, would that workforce not be partially responsible for setting up unfair relationships and toxic work environments?
They can't limit me from partying on Sunday, but they are legally obliged to prevent over-work, and that includes being aware of other employment. It's nothing to do with corporate morality or anything like that. It's just that they must do this because the government says they must.
Granted, this isn't the same thing as actively working for both companies. However it's possible the subject of the tweet was someone who was a vendor/contractor at FB or GOOG - or vice-versa - which has certain appearances.
Hey anonymous programmer dude scamming the big COs, the friend of your friend is your for reals enemy!
Naming it "full-time" doesn't change it, it's only name. It's up to employer to evaluate their work and decide if it meets employer expectations.
It's hilarious too because despite how impressive that sounds he is the most ADHD and scatterbrained person I know. He is incapable of any sort of organization in his life. I think he manages his dysfunction by channeling his hyperfocus into his work.
I have ADHD too, and it's unfortunate that my brain seems to want to channel my hyperfocus into arguing about random things on social media instead.
The high profile consulting firm probably takes up the majority of his week. What's his role at the think tank? I've looked at some staff there and they just seem to do "research" and then write "articles" that they publish for their own prominence. So doing both may be reasonable.
Too relatable
I had to get rid of all social media because the things I shouted into it had a really bad effect on people around me.
Living without social media these days can be challenging, but I am not looking back.
Now I can actually freelance while having 3 customers at once.
Seems like if you didn't agree to be exclusive, you should be able to do this as long as the work is getting done.
* Update: Apparently Elon quit OpenAI. So let's not count that one. But even 4 employers is still a lot!
The employer might state that "it's our mutual understanding" about anything in job offer, but it's not a legally binding statement. Anti-competitive statements can be binding, though, so it might be illegal for them to work at FB and Google, as their business might intersect. But it's a different story than just right to hold two "full-time" jobs.
One possibility I might think of -- if an employee is really a high performer, but couldn't negotiate compensation above "market price" for their level.
If you work for two companies in a salaried position, then you're potentially violating the law there.
If you're a hourly employee and you claim the same hour for two employers, You're potentially committing fraud.
But Salary, That's a different animal. Yes there are 24 hours in a day, but if you're Salary you're a legal representative for that company and covered under many employment laws because of that, for all 24 hours. So - I have doubts as to whether having two salary job is legal, even if you're working 12-8 and 8-4.
Nothing in the tweet says the positions were salaried, or even W-2. That's just something people are reading into what is already, without reading anything into it, an unreliable “friend of a friend” rumor.
I typically wouldn't have an issue with someone working 2 jobs, but I do take slight issue if this situation is true. These aren't just 2 companies, these are two companies who are competitors with each other in many fields. These are two companies who pay very large salaries to hold on to talent in order for their competitors to not hire them, and this situation is only possible due to the current situation around "work from home".
As someone who works remote even outside of a pandemic, I would be worried that stories and potential situations like this will be a point in the "we require all employees to be back in the office" column. This employee taking advantage of work-from-home in order to violate a non-compete (which I am sure exists in their contract) puts a bad look on every one else.
A software engineer at a big company really isn't that much better than a software engineer at a random smaller company. The businesses just make so much money that if they don't pay well someone else will and crush their business.
I think you just agreed with what I said? They pay well in order to hang on to their talent to prevent their competitors from hiring them.
In arms-length business relationships, including normal employment relationships, that's exactly what it means. The applicable law, including binding legal agreements like employment contracts, set the rules. Not violating the rules is not cheating.
> but I do take slight issue if this situation is true.
Why? Even if every word of the tweet is true, nothing says the positions aren't both contract positions with no, even informal, exclusivity expectation.
Yes, however as far as I know employment contracts for both Google and Facebook would both prohibit having a full-time job at a competitor. Between that and IP ownership concerns, I would call this "cheating".
> nothing says the positions aren't both contract positions with no, even informal, exclusivity expectation
You're right, it's not explicitly stated, but it is high implied that these are employee-employer relationships (and not contracting) positions.
It’s funny though!
Edit: “at will employment” is uniquely american thing afaik
EDIT: I'm referring to highly compensated professional jobs. In two such positions, I only received a verbal offer, and there was nothing in writing. Normally, I'd insist on something in writing, but in these cases, I was hired by someone I trusted.
(I haven't looked at one for a couple of years, but generally they are pretty onerous around these parts.)
Nothing in the friend-of-a-friend rumor being repeated here mentions that either position is salaried, or even W-2.
So, even in the unlikely event that there is a basis in fact to this story, it is reading into it to assume either of those.
https://www.cwclaw.com/article/the-california-legislature-ap...
If carrier A pays a bunch of claims for you and then they learn you also have similar coverage from carrier B, carrier A may demand a reckoning.
As soon as as you start doing anything or replying to an email (definitely don't send any email), people will notice you and they might come back to you for it or for something else.
This also precludes working for some high visibility projects or parts of the organization. Better be on a pet project that nobody uses or cares about.
Wouldn't the manager notice?
fb actually does fire people but its still not hard to get by.
This original post is unbridled greed and while legal, it further cements my opinion about this industry and who it serves in society. It's a wealth transfer to the already wealthy and well connected. The work is laughably easy and the pay is at least an order or magnitude better than the average. The demographics skew hard towards white males.
The reason people start talking about going to the IRS is because they see the inequality and want someone to do something -- even though there is nothing they can do.
had to share that...
I like this quote.
Isn't this kind of work the kind we should expect as more and more people are working remotely? More of them will choose to go with gig work / independent work in order to arbitrage if they can do it, particularly the good ones. If implemented correctly this could be a huge boon to workers, and will take some powers away from employers.
Also all 3 pay really well, but they are all small companies (less than 20 employees). All three are distributed teams with no offices.
I learned a long time ago when I was assigned a task, if I concentrated I could get my days work done in 2/3 hours, sometimes less. If it was a large task that was supposed to take a month, I could do it in two weeks.
I dont believe this is because Im special in any way, I just think people slack off and generally lose too much time at work.
Obviously I didn't start with 3, I had 1 and noticed I had a lot of downtime and applied and was selected for a second job. At first I was very nervous I had taken on too much, but after a few weeks it became clear I could finish both in about 6 hours a day.
I then added the third, and usually I can finish everything in 8/9 hours. Ive gotten into trouble a few times where things piled up and I had to work all through the weekend, but its rare.
Its also happened where I finish all my works' week by Wednesday and have Thursday and Friday pretty much off.
I dont get into trouble with meetings because all 3 jobs dont have that many (1 or 2 per week) and since the teams are distributed theres always some room for scheduling effectively.
At one point I even got a 4th job, that immediately was too much and I resigned after a week.
Final note, I see nothing immoral about this. I want to make money and keep busy, if I end up paying the price by pulling some all nighters or long weekends I accept that, and have done it.
In all three positions I get positive reviews and even raises.
(this is not my real HN account, I created it just to share this story without divulging my identity)
Similar idea: you could get a remote job and only actually work for something like 2h/day. Would you say that is equally feasible?
How did you pick jobs? As in, what criteria did you set and how did you check them?
I was selective in what jobs I took, aside from technical criteria,
1. had to be 100% remote 2. small teams 3. when interviewing, I tried to make sure that the company valued results over anything else. which a lot of remote office companies already are.
I remember when interviewing for a job I didn't take they wanted me to install a program that takes constant screenshots of my system. That obviously was a deal breaker.
> Thats pretty much the situation I was in before I started taking on more.
During that time, if you didn't work, would it have been possible to pursue a completely different activity such as going hiking for example? Or did you have to be "on standby" at home?
Why are you looking for small teams in particular? And how did you make sure that there aren't too many meetings in particular?
Sorry to bother you with so many questions.
This may sound like I got lucky finding companies that work this way, but I dont think it is, all remote companies usually have employees and even founders who want some liberty to organize their schedule and only care if work gets done at the end of the week.
During what are agreed to be my regular work hours I am expected to answer chats, so hiking would not be an option.
When I only had one job I was wasting a lot of time playing bridge online.
I was looking for small teams because I was afraid large companies would have more measures in place to avoid situations like mine.
None of the three positions have on call duties.
In practice emergencies happen once a year, so Im happy to get out of bed and help out however I can.
I can't speak for other people, but I think this is highly dependent on the person and job. I know a score of people who put in a solid 50+ hours at one job. Congrats to you if you have found 3 different jobs that require 2 hours/day.
Do you have noncompetes or employment contracts with each company? If so, how did you navigate this?
I agree there are tech jobs that are way more demanding, its true that I may have found good situations. I think theres also some truth to the fact that if you put your phone on do not disturb, and just concentrate on your work you can get a lot done. It also helps that although Im not a particularly talented developer, I do have almost 2 decades of experience so typically its just coding and not much research.
This can be tedious to be honest, but at this point in my life I have a family to take care of, Im prioritizing being a good provider over technical challenges that fulfill me.
I'm on pace to pay off my 20 year mortgage in 3 years. Once I'm debt free I may consider working less and doing something else with my time.
But I'm legitimately curious about the ramifications of IP here -- both Google and (I'm assuming) Facebook claim to own all your intellectual output related to their business areas.
So you've basically just signed ownership of all your work for both companies to both Facebook and Google. IANAL, so I don't know what the term for this would be, but it does seem like you'd get in trouble -- fraud?
I assume you'd somehow slip eventually and get caught, and likely be sued by both companies, with an incredible headache for both companies' sets of lawyers as they try to figure out what to do with the code you committed, and if they can even use it anymore at all.
If it's even true at all.
- Interviewed at the other company, and received an offer
- Took time away from main job to start new job, with the intention of resigning after his onboarding (just in case)
- Came back and wanted to clean a few things up before resigning.
- Kept doing that
- Realized everything was fine and never quit
Not saying it doesn't still have issues, but it's easy to see how someone with "normal" intentions could have slowly ended up in this situation.
Austen definitely has an opinion: https://twitter.com/Austen/status/1311530531725602816
It's also very risky in terms of civil liability. If either employer introduces a product that comes anywhere near to something they worked on at the other employer, that other employer may sue the employee alleging trade secret theft.
That's a civil matter, not a criminal matter. Mostly, being civil not criminal is good for a defendant...but there is one important area where it isn't. That's the burden of proof. Prosecutors in criminal cases have to prove "beyond a reasonable doubt". Plaintiffs in civil cases just have to meet either "preponderance of the evidence" in most cases, and "clear and convincing" in a few.
I'm not fully sure, but I believe a trade secret appropriation suit would use "preponderance of the evidence". That's also known as "more likely than not". Working at plaintiff on stuff anywhere close to the allegedly misappropriated trade secret will be enough to to meet that for plaintiff, effectively shifting the burden of proof on the employee to prove that they did not supply the other employer with the trade secret.
The plaintiff would almost certainly sue the other employer too, not just the employee. If the plaintiff wins that suit, that other employer might sue the employer asking them to pay any damages they owe from that suit.
This would not be pleasant for the employee.
2. As other comments said, this might not be ethical but may still be legal. Full-time employees are not hourly, and as long as they do their job hours shouldn't matter.
3. If in California, there is no non-compete.
4. Due to it being FB and Google, they can get into trouble from an IP standpoint of they leak or use IP from one at the other.
5. Logistics can be interesting. But it is certainly possible for a person to claim they are remote from different timezones at each company to minimize conflicts.
6. Still I can't see how they can continue this for long if friend of friend already knows about this. Someone in there social circle will get jealous and report them.
the reason non-competes are bad is because they could prevent you from having any job at all, but that doesn't mean that you should be allowed to have two competing jobs at the the same time.