
Ask HN: Remote Employees Double-Dipping? - le-mark
Confession time, has anyone ever done this? Given the number of bored developers in this thread[1], it seems like a given that this happens. Have any of you maintained more than one remote job at at time? If so what obstacles did you encounter? Would you do it again? Any tips or techniques to go unnoticed?<p>[1] https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=14290518
======
ghshephard
I had a DBA, very senior, who was working for me on contract while maintaining
a full time job at another Silicon Valley company. I was paying him $50K/Year
to ensure that none of our Oracle Systems ever had an issue, and in the event
of a problem, he would fix it.

What I liked about this arrangement is that he was highly incentivized to
ensure that he would have to do the least amount of work, so his deployments
were highly automated (including the back end monitoring), and pristine, by
the book. I'm pretty sure his other manager knew that he was working two jobs,
but because his work here didn't interfere with his job there, everything was
kosher.

~~~
cylinder
What happened if you​ did have an issue? Did you mandate service credits into
the contract?

~~~
ghshephard
In the 2 1/2 years he worked for us, we had a total of two issues. First time
it was a storage array went down, and our regular DBAs were having difficulty
bringing the dataguard replica back online - Our Senior DBA resolved it within
5 minutes. Second issue was an application corruption that we got stuck into
the weeds with until, once again, Our Senior DBA just stepped in, restored a
backup and then rolled us forward just before corruption occurred.

And no service credits, he was just an extraordinarily talented DBA - we were
happy to have him set our architecture/monitoring/database deployment
mechanisms. I'm guessing he worked around 100 hours for that 50K over a year,
or about $500/hour, which, if you think about it, for someone at the very,
very top of their Oracle (or Cisco, or Java, or Hadoop, etc..) technical game
is really quite reasonable - particularly when you are only paying them when
they are absolutely needed, and the rest of the time your staff DBAs can
handle the day-to-day.

------
snarfy
I've seen it done onsite.

There was a guy who worked an 8-5 job in my building and the building next
door simultaneously. He would show up, look busy, then run next door and do
the same thing. He did this for about 8 months before one of his managers
caught on and told his other manager. He ended up losing both jobs at the same
time.

~~~
pkaye
There was an engineering director at one of my previous workplaces that was a
little hard to reach. People though he was attending high level meetings
including his reports. One of them called him once during work and he answered
by the name of another company unintentionally. They spoke with HR and through
some investigations found out the guy was coming to work and during the middle
of the day going to his other job at a startup where he was the CTO. They
fired him of course.

~~~
freestockoption
How did he answer the phone? Something like: "This is Mike Smith with Widgets
Corporation"

My greeting is usually short: "Hi, this is Mike."

~~~
pkaye
I would guess the former since he got caught.

------
zupreme
This actually happens all the time. We've had a couple of remote employees I'm
aware of who did this.

As a company we don't care. As long as they are getting all of our work done
in a timely and effective manner what they fill their time gaps with is not
our concern.

Note that our remote workers are not hourly workers. If they were, then we'd
take a much different approach to time management and dedicated focus.

------
acconrad
Since when is working two jobs a bad thing? Plenty of people work two or three
jobs to make ends meet. If you can make both work, and you aren't violating
any contracts or NDAs, I don't see why you should feel bad about that.

~~~
watwut
It is ok when you don't lie in the process. It is not ok when you pretend to
work full time while actually working only equivalent of part time in each
workplace (does not matter all that much whether drop in productivity is due
to burnout or cheating on time spent by working). The productivity of
programmers is often hard to measure, if you don't take advantage of it then
it is fine. There are jobs that dont require full time, it is cool to combine
them.

Workaday without overtime (and working that much is too little I was told by
people here) is 8 hours. Assuming you work it twice plus take 2 hours a day
for shopping, food and shower, you have only 6 hours sleep remaining. With
such persistent sleep deprivation, you wont be able to produce all that much
for each employer - your productivity will go down. Then it is just a question
of whether either management finds out.

~~~
candiodari
Isn't it wrong for a company to lie about things like remuneration and money
too ? Is it okay for companies to pay people they claim internally have the
same pay (for the same work), but pay them differently based on things like
location ?

~~~
alexandercrohde
That's actually a really interesting parallel to draw. I have certainly seen a
non-negligible amount of dishonest management ("Sure we'll promote you, we
just need a few more cycles" to a friend who was about to be fired). From a
legal perspective I'm sure what's signed in writing makes the difference.

But we're not really talking legal here, we're talking ethical. And ethically,
I'm not sure why dishonesty on paper is worse than dishonesty in a 1-on-1.

You'll find all kinds of notions/norms in our culture that are inconsistent
with each other. Usually it takes a standup comedian to point out our own
hypocrisy.

~~~
candiodari
Given that I keep reading things like that some 90%+ of employees across a
wide range of companies would deny their employer a $1 million contract if it
got them, personally, $500 ...

Given those I think the norms in our society are very much consistent. It's
just that we assume we're all employees here, and therefore there is no need
to lie to each other.

But we'll lie to our employer, or at least leave stuff out. And our employer
will lie to us, and leave boatloads of stuff out.

This is the norm. It is also the norm to lie about it.

------
IanDrake
Double dipping is the wrong phrase here.

Having two jobs or two gigs is not double dipping.

Double dipping is typically a form of cheating by getting paid 2x for 1x
amount of work.

Say I was being paid to create a website for two clients and it took me 100
hours to finish it. Then I used the same codebase for another client, spent 5
hours modifying it, and then delivered it to them billing another 100 hours.

That would be double dipping.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
Even that's not double dipping. Depending on how your contract is structured,
it might be the smart thing to do.

If I tell you that I'll produce a certain product for $15,000 and you're OK
with that, does it really matter in the end if it took me 5 hours or 150?
Either way, you pay the same amount.

Now, if you have a contract that specified time & materials and I pad the
hours, then I can agree we could have a problem.

~~~
IanDrake
Agreed. Selling a product vs selling time are two different things.

------
jefecoon
Long time ago, in a dot.com startup epoch long ago:

Our Seattle/Bellevue based startup hired VP & Dir of outside sales in Silicon
Valley. Expensive hires, big payout to recruiting firm, then these two proved
extremely difficult to get on the phone, schedule meetings with, et al.

SVP Sales flew in unexpectedly, called & had them pick him up at San Jose
Airport. When he threw his bag into the trunk he noticed they had not only our
sales & mktg materials, but __SEVEN __other companies ' materials as well. He
grilled them on what work they'd accomplished, clients called / met, et al,
then ended up firing them before he flew home.

We passed along info to authorities, who later shared the recruiting firm had
been in on it, and they were trying to collect evidence to persecute. Sounded
like they were collecting recruiting fees & salaries, then sharing among all
'co-conspirators.' FBI was pulled into it, so I assume it involved fairly
substantial cash.

~~~
jabv
Crazy story! Just fyi, "et al." is usually used to mean "and other people,"
and "etc." is usually used to mean "and other such stuff."

------
logfromblammo
I'd love to have just one full-time remote job. Anyone managing to do two at
once more than makes up for any points lost on ethical grounds with the bonus
points for technical chops and sheer moxie.

If ever were in such an enviable position, these are the potential pitfalls I
might see.

    
    
      - The companies schedule mandatory meetings at the same time.
      - The companies schedule on-site days that make travel arrangements impossible.
      - Conflict of interest between companies.
      - The companies don't actually care, but you hide it anyway, and they care about that.
      - The companies do care, but you tell them, and they retaliate for the embarrassment.
      - Tax withholding comes out wrong, and you are fined for it.
      - Someone you met through both companies outs you.
      - One of your companies is acquired by or merged into the other.
      - Your life is converted to an 80s-style sitcom script, and you aren't even credited.

~~~
scalesolved
Have you applied to lots of remote jobs? What's been the biggest hurdle for
you in getting one?

~~~
logfromblammo
A big hurdle has been the part where jobs advertised as remote turn out to be
not _really_ remote in the initial phone interview. Having to be on-site for M
days per week or N weeks per quarter, or even requiring an initial on-site
training period of L weeks, still puts a geographic limit on what I can
actually accept. Either a lot of people are lying about remote work, or the
companies that are truly remote don't want to interview me--possibly both.

I haven't stopped applying, but my expectations have fallen pretty far since
the first one I tried in 2008. That was Universal Mind, and they told me I
didn't have enough experience in Adobe Flex to interview with them. I had
worked with it for about 8 months at that point, which isn't bad for something
released in 2004. So from my perspective, a lot of those companies seem to
think that since they can hire from anywhere, they should only hire the top
quintile of everyone, and my resume definitely doesn't radiate that rockstar
aura.

------
santoriv
I did a short term contract once at the same time as my main remote job. I
never lied about my hours or got overpaid though. I won't ever do it again as
it was a hellish amount of work for a few months. For me the cost of context
switching on my productivity was higher than I anticipated.

Of course you could probably get away with having two remote jobs at once....
for a while. Unless you're monstrously productive, it seems like either it
would get noticed eventually or you would get burned out. But everyone is
different I guess. I'd rather have a life that isn't so stressful and
complicated.

~~~
tracker1
I was thinking, upon reading the question that it might be possible to do two
mid-level jobs at the same time, making more than a single senior level job.
It isn't about being at your max level in both jobs... so long as you can
match peers for that job/level, and get work done in a timely manner,
shouldn't matter.

------
VLM
I've done plenty of volunteer work while working a salaried position over the
last couple decades. My day job has nothing to do with swinging a hammer,
being a youth group treasurer, serving on a youth group advisory board, grunt
work at the food pantry, grunt work on hiking trails, being a member of the
Army Reserve (although scheduling was an unholy PITA for that and the pay
rounded down to nothing once I got a real job). All of those volunteer jobs
are paid by someone, I just wasn't charging. Technically my salaried day job
owned all that I produced like a slave (which I was), so I was stealing from
the company when I cleared hiking trails with the club on a Saturday
afternoon, no different than if I broke into the cash box and helped myself.

~~~
excalibur
The fault here lies in their policies, not your actions. You are in fact
entitled to a personal life regardless of what they coerce you to sign.

------
jcadam
I'd like to land one (1) FT remote job, and here we've got folks talking about
working two at the same time :)

~~~
scalesolved
What problems have you had in trying to land a full time remote job?

~~~
jcadam
Things I've heard:

1 - You'd be bored (so?)

2 - We only allow remote work for people who've worked remotely full-time
before (always enjoy a good Catch-22).

3 - You haven't actually worked with language X (Clojure in the most recent
case) professionally (only on personal projects), so we'd want you in the
office (on the other side of the country) so you're closer to help as you
learn to code in a new language (a particularly insulting thing to say to a
senior software engineer).

4 - Oh, why did you turn down our offer for 40% less than your current pay?

and my personal favorite:

5 - :static: the interviewer just goes dark after I spend an entire Saturday
afternoon completing a homework assignment and then go through a 2 hour live
coding interview.

Eventually one stops trying. My experience interviewing leads me to believe
there is a gross oversupply of good software engineers looking for remote work
(If I may be so bold as to call myself a 'good' software engineer).

~~~
sheeshkebab
Here's how you do it: 1) find a remote _contracting_ gig, even part time
(interview is about 15 - 30 minutes for these, no bull shit white board coding
involved)

2) start and learn everything needed in about a week and work fast after that

3) be open to become full time - and you'll likely get an offer 1 to 3 months
in, or more like they'll switch you fte.

------
bowlich
"Double Dipping" as in working two jobs simultaneously and billing two
employers for the same hours? No.

My current employer about 60% of the employees are remote and my entire team
is remote. Almost everyone has their own on-the-side consultancy and is very
public about it. Team members swap stories about their after-hours clients.
The after-hours work allows us to diversify into new stacks, experiment with
tooling that might not be available to us during the day hours, and then bring
a lot of this experience back. Since we're all on very flexible schedules,
meetings during normal the normal 8-5 rarely conflict. As long as we don't
compete in our employer's industry (which is a very niche industry), we're
generally trusted to keep our client/employer work separate, prioritize our
employers meetings over client meetings in scheduling, then really it's quite
kosher.

I'm a little surprised more medium-to-large businesses aren't more encouraging
of it. Free training, keeps the engineering team sharp, and definitely keeps a
lot of the more ambitious engineers from getting bored with the pace of
building boring business software.

------
rb808
I knew of a guy who worked two jobs on-site - was about 3 months before he was
caught. I think he worked as a contractor and billed through two different
agencies. Started early on one job, late at the other on a different floor and
lots of meetings away from desk inbetween. :)

~~~
VLM
"worked two jobs on-site"

I did that twice, once at a dying company when a coworker quit until I lined
up a new job in a couple weeks, and another time was a horizontal transfer
where two engineering managers were rather vocal about my working solely for
them. In both cases I just kinda did what I wanted, knowing there was nothing
they could do.

I suspect the question they meant to ask was who was getting paid for two
jobs. I have a really boring story about that revolving around a company that
paid out severance gradually instead of lump sum, which given the time of year
was financially advantageous for me WRT marginal income tax rate.

~~~
Dunan
"I have a really boring story about that revolving around a company that paid
out severance gradually instead of lump sum"

Here in Japan, where I live, this is one of the reasons that people can't take
all their accrued vacation, even when quitting their jobs. When you leave a
job, your accrued days are paid out as if you were still working. So if your
last day in the office is June 30, but you have 30 days saved, your last day
as an employee is ~August 15.

This sometimes means you can't start your new job until after that, and
because employers typically want people to start ASAP, people end up
forfeiting the vacation time they never got to take while working. The new
employer wants them on July 7, so they take just the one week and then start
at the new place.

And given how hard it is to take time off, the typical employee has lots and
lots of unused PTO. My workplace has a cap of 40 and I am always at the cap.

------
sheeshkebab
Contractors/consultants do it all the time - in fact it's frowned upon,
including by US government/IRS, if you don't do work for multiple clients,
including in parallel.

What's the surprise?

~~~
vogt
I think OP is referring exclusively to people working 2 or more salaried full
time positions.

------
ShakataGaNai
There are more than a few stories of things like this happening (or my
favorite, outsourcing the actual dev work to China or india) but why would you
when it's a lawsuit waiting to happen? Freelancing on the side a little bit is
one thing (Basecamp's handbook which was recently posted on HN even had a
section on this
[https://github.com/basecamp/handbook/blob/master/moonlightin...](https://github.com/basecamp/handbook/blob/master/moonlighting.md)
), but working a full on second job? If either found out they'd probably
extremely concerned about IP theft either direction.

Plus, why have the stress of two jobs and two sets of potentially colliding
meetings? Mrs Doubtfire for the corporate world sounds like a funny movie,
terrible life.

------
ChicagoBoy11
I can see how this would go south really quick once skype meetings / in-person
events start to collide. I think for the RIGHT type of remote work one may be
able to pull this off for a while, but I can't imagine that full-time, well-
paying remote dev roles could be juggled like this.

~~~
tracker1
But think of it this way... can a senior person output more than twice what a
junior/mid person can? If you take two mid-level FTE roles, putting mid-level
throughput would that pay more than a single senior FTE role? It might be
worth considering.

------
_a1
I've done it for exactly two months, I am a remote contractor and had started
a new contract when I already had one running, did not think it was something
I could've kept doing for long but I'm happy I tried it.

I was working two full time jobs in two different startups. Scheduling
meetings between different parties was not an issue at all, I did scrum
meetings in the morning in the first contract which happened every other day
on the same hour, and I would make sure to schedule the other meetings in the
other contract towards the end of the day. What I did notice is that, although
I could pull it off if I really wanted to and needed both jobs, and although I
love working, I had to trade off creativity in my work, as in I couldn't pull
an all-nighter working on new idea for an aggregation framework or try to get
ahead and impress anymore, and only felt like working to get the work done and
get through the day. I believe that the quality of my work remained the same,
but I lost all the fun in it, and strongly felt that my time wasn't my own
anymore. Needless to say, it kills all your time and [depending on the nature
of your job] you gravitate towards robot-like behaviour and lifestyle.

Wouldn't do it again, I can afford to make less, but happy I got a glimpse of
what was humanly possible for me to do, even if it's only for a span of two
months!

~~~
marktangotango
Thanks you, this is the only reply with real experience doing this.

------
omgthowaway
Remote full-time employee here for a SF-based company.

I occasionally do 1099 work for friends, but always on evening or weekend
hours. I always use my own time and computing resources for the work.

------
vincagi
Does it matter? In software engineering you should be judged by the quantity
and quality of the code, nothing in those metrics disqualifies double-dipping.
If anything contracting on the side gives employees exposure to tech stacks
and processes outside their normal day to day.

~~~
throwaway46263
Quantity and quality are hard to nail down. What is an 'honest day's work' for
a developer?

~~~
tracker1
That would be determined in comparison to your peer group for the labelled
role..

------
tzs
I wonder if there is anyone who is working remote has outsourced themselves?
Get a remote job that pays quite a bit more than you need to live comfortably
in your area, then hire a remote worker from India to do the work for you.

~~~
misiogames
\-->
[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jan/17/sacked...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jan/17/sacked-
model-modern-employee-outsourcing)

------
amjadcsu
I was working 2 part time jobs as software developer/system admin in different
cities . Though it does not count in the context of this thread as neither was
remote and not full time But both my managers knew that what i was working.
8-12 one job then other job 1-4. Mind you the two jobs where in different
cities and there was a commute of 30 mins between cities. Though i was junior
most in both places . i guess the managers gave me leeway . I guess it all
depends on your honesty and your responsibilities,

------
pplonski86
No! I'll feel bad to cheat someone else - and I don't like to feel bad:)

~~~
moduspol
I don't want to be "that guy," but...

If it's a salaried position, you're presumably not filling in an hours sheet
dishonestly.

Is it truly cheating if both companies are happy with your work and you're not
breaking either company's rules? Even if you don't explicitly tell them you're
doing it?

~~~
rubidium
Most salaried positions require you don't have any other paying jobs.

~~~
logfromblammo
Most of my salaried positions have been "at will" with no employment contract
in place, so the only thing that corporate policy tells me in the employee
manual is that I may be fired if they find out. But as an "at will", I could
also be fired for any reason, or no reason at all.

As an "at will" employee, the one and only consequence I have to fear is being
fired. There is no contract to breach. And in that situation, I would feel a
lot more comfortable about going from two jobs to one than from one to zero.
The incentive is overwhelmingly in favor of doing it and hiding the evidence,
rather than not doing it at all.

If you do everything that is expected at both jobs, neither has any reason to
investigate.

------
Pokepokalypse
My friend's ex-boss bullied their small company's owner to give him the title
"CIO". (IT department staff: grand total of 3).

Next. . . he's working maybe 10-15 hours per week. Telling one person one
thing, and another person something else, about where he is. (business is
multi sites, so they do travel a bit). Many times he claims he's "working from
home" \- but a check of the AD Server's audit log shows that he hasn't even
logged in for days.

(also: he's a terrible boss. Bullies people into working overtime, screws them
out of billing hours, and takes credit for other's successes, and blames
others for his screw ups).

This goes on for months until he up and resigns.

Then, HIS girlfriend, on FB, starts promoting the book he wrote and is selling
on Amazon.

(The book is called "IT Management" \- and yeah, it's as stupid as it sounds.)

------
Daishiman
It's possible, but really it's actually no different than holding an office
job in which you're not being checked upon. More than one person has been
selling things on the side, outsourcing work to their own devs, and schemes
like that.

Not really a good idea as far as developing a reputation for trustworthiness.

------
oliwarner
I'm on retainer for a few people. Different situation because they all know my
service has a contention, they just care that I'm available when they need it.

Sounds like you're trying to get paid a full time salary for part time work.
Unless you're actually going to moonlight, you're depriving one or both
companies of the time they're paying for.

It's stuff like this that makes it hard for remote workers. Stop it.

------
partisan
Sadly, I suspect I've seen this. The particular developer is a coding monster
and I suspect he was just underutilized.

~~~
scalesolved
Sounds like he was massively underutilised and underpaid!

------
marktangotango
I heard second hand about a guy at a Carribean resort who was doing this. I've
been tempted to do it myself :)

------
throwaway46263
As a heads up: We have a remote employee (who is on HN). He's not
exceptionally fast, and we suspect he is doing this. We'll fire him if we can
prove it. From our stand point, we're paying a full time salary but not
getting full time results. Pretty much theft. We think...

~~~
tracker1
Had to reread to catch the "not exceptionally fast" ... is s/he fast enough
that the work gets done predictably? I find that from a business perspective
predictable, and generally accurate time tables are more important than
absolute throughput. Now if this person is putting less than half the work
than his nearest peer is, then I might have issue.

All said though, if the work is getting done and in a timely manner, then it
shouldn't matter. In reading through this thread, I've been thinking, if I
could get two mid-level dev positions, I could pretty easily do both at a mid-
level quality/pay which combined would be more than my very senior level is
currently.

------
senatorobama
Great idea, but do remote employees get paid the same? Say 100k+ for an SF
based company?

~~~
EduardoBautista
Lol I had to negotiate to get about a quarter of that salary. I know Travis CI
limits your pay to your region. GitLab as well. Difference from Mexico to San
Francisco is about 4x.

~~~
MichaelGG
That's messed up. Unless there's a separate component like local-cost-of-
living-adjustment where you get extra for living in a high-rent area.

~~~
fragmede
...yes?

Cost of living between Mexico to San Francisco probably in the neighborhood of
4x, depending on which part of Mexico. 500000 MXN rounds to $25k, which is 1/4
of $100k.

~~~
viljar
Cost of surviving(food, shelter, boose) - yes. What about cost of having trip
around the world for vacation, building your retirement fund, price of the
iphone, car?

~~~
jldugger
Well, the retirement fund might be more CoL adjusted, if you intend to retire
to the same region you currently reside.

~~~
MichaelGG
You shouldn't have to decide that up front. Plus someone living in a high-rent
area then gets a huge retirement bonus and allows them the option to move
somewhere else. Someone in a low-rent area doesn't get that option at all.

~~~
jldugger
All true, and yet I imagine a lot of people think in different terms about
retirement.

