A small, dedicated group of white-collar workers, in industries from tech to banking to insurance, say they have found a way to double their pay: Work two full-time remote jobs, don’t tell anyone and, for the most part, don’t do too much work, either.
Alone in their home offices, they toggle between two laptops. They play “Tetris” with their calendars, trying to dodge endless meetings. Sometimes they log on to two meetings at once. They use paid time off—in some cases, unlimited—to juggle the occasional big project or ramp up at a new gig. Many say they don’t work more than 40 hours a week for both jobs combined. They don’t apologize for taking advantage of a system they feel has taken advantage of them.
One way to afford that $8M house in Real Los Altos:
He took a second job last year, figuring he would tap paternity leave at both companies once his pregnant wife delivered their baby, and then return to one job. But, even with the baby born, he can’t seem to quit the game. He is earning nearly $500,000, and working as much as 100 hours a week.
“It’s 100% overwhelming, and my wife’s like, ‘How long can you do this?’ ” he says. But “every other Friday, when those paychecks drop, I am reinvigorated.”
My boss once asked me to attend two meetings concurrently as I was double booked. I have 2 screens, 1 pair of zoom windows per screen. Zoom mixed the voices of 2 meetings very nicely. I found myself able to phase out another meeting’s “noise” when I was focusing the lips of one meeting.
I think, wait a minute, it is totally doable to WFH for 2 jobs, as last minute meeting is no longer a problem. As long as my 2 bosses not needing me at the same second, I will be able to work around this
I did that for about 4 years before I quit tech and became a full time RE investor. I was a senior developer and I would say that both companies did benefit from the situation. Some sort of symbiotic setup.
He’s a Sr. Engineering Manager with 20+ years of experience killing it with four jobs. His total base is around 670k with small sign-on bonuses from jobs #3 & #4 below.
I’ve been lurking around for past couple of months; great to be part of this community and good to see contribution. Here’s my scenario. Background – 20+ years in different software engineeing roles.
Job #1 – FTE Sr. Management for past 5 years, 99% in cruise mode, mostly delegation. Waiting for parachute payment.
Job #2 – Contracting at FAANG, lead role with a bit of hands on but not too much. Since Oct’2020.
Job #3 – FTE Manager role, fully remote team. This company competes with job #1 in literally every product. Since Nov’2020
Job #4 – FTE Sr Manager since Apr’2021. In fact, negotiated with boss for promotion in next 6 months. No competition with any of the above companies.
Funny thing is I am [a hiring manager and] recruiting in all the companies. Why am I doing this? Got bored and wanted to check how far can I go. Do I still have free time? Absolutely, I enjoy all evenings & weekends. Ocassionaly work on weekends for 1-2 hrs to catch up on job#4. Usually work between 7:30 – 5 PM, very hectic on Wednesday & Thursday. Have couple of 9 PM calls 1-2 days in a week.
