phillaholic

Can't say I agree. I'd guess it'll turn out like the Netflix shared passwords situation where everyone online predicted mass cancellations, and Netflix subs grew in actuality. Most people won't give up YouTube, they will either stop blocking ads or pay for Premium. At least enough to increase their profits.

I'm not disagreeing you, just stating the facts. If we aren't paying for it, and not watching their ads, we can't expect to be considered at all. I paid for Premium for a few months, just canceled it while I catch up on some other things. We still have the freedom to pick and choose which services we pay for which is fine by me.

I doubt they think about the "army of independents" much at all.

There will be impact for sure, but as long as you still perform your job to the satisfaction of both employers, then it does not matter.

If both employers know you are doing it and are ok with it there's no problem. Its when it's being hidden from them that it's a problem. I'll give you an example:

So say I'm a lead collaborating on a project with two people under me. Bob does great work, needs little to no assistance, and I can trust that he gets it done not only right, but also takes ownership of it and will bring things up if he sees problems. He doesn't just wait for me to find them as the lead. Jim on the other hand takes a lot longer to do his part. He doesn't bring up anything like Bob does even though it should be pretty obvious that it's wrong because it impacts his part of the work, he waits for me to review, find it, and then have to reach back out to him for it to be fixed or changed. He is also far less responsive than Bob to emails, IMs, and isn't able to multitask nearly as well. So clearly in this situation Bob is a better employee than Jim, and Bob receives bonuses and perhaps higher pay depending on other factors than Jim. However that's not to say Jim is a bad employee and should be fired does it? A lot of the work can be subjective. Maybe Bob found those errors because he has more experience in the job and has run into the problem in the past and Jim has not. I can't put "find problems in documents" in their job description so vaguely and then dock them every time they miss something, that would be absurd. People are different. Bob will likely be promoted to a higher role shortly, while Jim won't, even though they were hired at the same time for the same role. I'd like to see Jim take more ownership of his work and take it upon himself to not just wait to be told what to do on a micro-level but come to me with what he thinks needs to be fixed, and so on. These are things that can be covered at reviews, and often have, and for a little while he seems to get better at it.

So given this situation, am I wrong in keeping Jim as an employee? His work isn't as good as his peer who was hired for the same job at the same time, and he hasn't stepped up to take on the same responsibility in the work that I would expect someone being on the job as long as he does. Is the right thing to do to fire him outright?

But now what If It comes to my attention that during the time he was working on the project he was working a second job, and not focusing on the task he told me he was working on. Did he not find those errors because he wasn't paying attention due to working on something else? Was he avoiding any added work from found errors so he could do work for that other company? Is his lack of multitasking ability not actually true and he's doing work for someone else while ignoring me further delaying the project and taking my time up to help him?

"Well Enough for your standards" is entirely subjective. I don't treat my people like robots who can be mathematically judged. There isn't a binary existence of good or bad. I don't fire people immediately upon feeling they are sub-standard. I feel I often bend over backwards trying to help people get better, I push for bonuses and promotion when I think they are deserved. I don't at all believe that outcome that is all that matters. I truly believe that a person who puts in more effort and gets a worse result will be a better employee long term. I've seen it time and time again.

And to your last point about paying people enough; While that's certainly true in some cases, the article cites tech workers pulling in $500,000 through it. Clearly it's not about being under paid.

You can try to look it up if you want, but I'd suspect those sort of interactions are fractions of a penny on the dollar compared to revenue from Premium or Ads.

The truth is they can't, and that's how they get caught, and why it comes up.

Why should a company be allowed to prohibit employees from having a second job

Different Topic IMO. If someone wants to work 9-5 at an office job, then go work at Target from 6-10 in theory that's fine. I don't support it as someone that's read the studies about productivity of the 40 hour work week being poor, I know that doing so is not sustainable and it's not a good idea. Should a company be able to stop you from doing it? I don't know. I'm open to the idea. It's a far more nuanced topic though. Along the same lines are how to treat outside of work drug use. I see no reason a person can't smoke Pot off the clock, but I don't want to extend that to hard drugs.

...f it doesn’t conflict with the first one?

That's been my argument since the start. Working two jobs during the same hours is conflicting. The stories I've read of high paid tech workers double-dipping during Covid were working both jobs during the same hours. Every time they ignore something from Job 1 because they are working on Job 2, it's conflicting. Same could be said for WFH users who treat it like they are home on a weekend doing chores, supervising children etc. It's not the same thing.

What is the difference in that case between working two jobs in the same industry in different market sectors vs working two retail jobs?

Usually a high level of proprietary or non-public information to start. But you wouldn't be working at Target and Walmart from 5-10 tonight walking back and forth between the two stores. So just at a base level they aren't comparable.

if I incorporated myself tomorrow...Do clients have the right to say I can’t take on other clients?

Absolutely allowed, but not likely. You are entering into a private contract with a company and agreeing between you on what you are do to be doing. Your contract is going to be far more specific than an employment agreement, and it's up to you to cover all the things they would have covered including: Health Insurance, Payroll taxes, Retirement, Liability Insurance, etc. Keep in mind creating your own LLC or Corp is different than being a 1099 subcontractor. There are certain IRS rules that you have to make sure are followed (well the employer side mostly) else they can get hit with penalties for misclassifying workers as non-employees.

We have some subcontractors on staff, but afaik they sign agreements on availability and are more or less treated like employees when it comes to work output. They may have specific clauses they've negotiated on availability or things like that, but that's also true of some employees too.

It has nothing to do with double dipping or the way the article describes it which isn't really what the word means. Having two jobs you work during different hours is usually fine. Working them during the same hours is the issue.

Yes, Bandwidth, servers, storage are all expensive. If everyone stopped paying or seeing ads they'd kill the product and you'd have nothing. There is no viable replacement for YouTube. Most channels would cease to exist. Only the larger ones would be able to afford to figure out how to keep going. The ladder would be pulled up for any small or new creator looking to break in.

To be clear: If you Tell two employers that you are working for them from 1pm to 2pm, you are double dipping. The title of the article doesn't line up with the content. Having a second job that you work outside of the hours / commitment of your first job is fine as long as you didn't agree not to do so with your first employer. If you want to work 9-5 earning 6 figures in a WFH white collar job, then go out and get a night job at Target and are somehow able to succeed during your first job the vast majority of employers aren't going to give a shit. The reason employers give a shit is this is a largely fake narrative. Studies have shown the 40 hour work week is too long. People working two jobs cannot keep it up for long and be as good at their jobs. Second, people are conflating having 2 separate jobs with working two jobs at the literal same time. Working 9-5 at two companies and juggling email and meetings between them. The article touches on this, but I completely disagree with the author. So much of business is based on collaboration that having to wait for a peer who is doing work for another company now costs the first company for every person that is waiting on them. Maybe 2% of my work can be done without a single other co-worker being involved in some way. During regular business hours the expectation is that you are being paid to work and collaborate with your co-workers on a regular basis outside of normal PTO etc.

There have been times in my career I wished it were more specific. I've found companies with loose employment agreements tend to make things your job by reclassification more often than not.

Well yea. If you are staying in the lines of your employment agreement, you're in the clear to do whatever else you want. I feel people are conflating all of these things into what this topic is really about. The problem here is when someone has two jobs as either reports the same time to both employers for payment, or agrees to certain availability and does work for the other company at the same time. It does not include hourly workers having a second job doing hourly work during different hours, or anything similar with Gig work. If you for example drove for Lyft and Uber, picked up 1 passenger for Uber and 1 for Lyft simultaneously, that would be an example of breaking the rules.

I've worked for a company that has been doing WFH for over three decades. It's very clear when someone has two jobs. They are unresponsive, their work isn't very good, and they take forever to do everything. This assumes they have two jobs in the same line of work. If they are going and getting a night job at Target or something no one cares if their work is fine.

I can't think of anyone I know that doesn't at least partially collaborate with their co-workers where their availability is key to their jobs. So doing work for another company during that time would never be ok. The exception to this would be subcontractors who are free to set their own schedules within reason. They are free to take other work, often required to do so, due to IRS rules, but individual contracts likely have the same sort of language where they'd need to be available during certain hours, or available for group meetings etc.