Being “overemployed” is a new, on-the-down-low trend of being employed by multiple companies without each company knowing. You can accept a salary for the exchange of only being employed for that employer. But is this ethical?

One says: “It just felt like I had no control,” he told me. “I didn’t like that I was under the whims of a company that gets to decide whether I’m employed or not.”

Helping them evade detection is a guy who goes by the pseudonym Isaac, who started the blog Overemployed in 2021 to share his secrets as the OG overemployed worker. Today there are some 300,000 members of the community on Discord and Reddit who celebrate one another’s successes, commiserate on their failures, and swap secrets for fooling their bosses.

The OE hustlers have some tried-and-true hacks. Taking on a second or third full-time job? Given how time-consuming the onboarding process can be, you should take a week or two of vacation from your other jobs. It helps if you can stagger your jobs by time zone — perhaps one that operates during New York hours, say, and another on California time. Keep separate work calendars for each job — but to avoid double-bookings, be sure to block off all your calendars as soon as a new meeting gets scheduled. And don’t skimp on the tech that will make your life a bit easier. Mouse jigglers create the appearance that you’re online when you’re busy tending to your other jobs. A KVM switch helps you control multiple laptops from the same keyboard.

Seems to be incredibly stressful. Trying to get all your stories straight can be draining.

There’s no way around the fact that they’re breaking the rules: In exchange for a salary, they promised not to work for anyone else. Did these people feel bad about breaking that promise?

Are you overemployed? Would you like to be? How would be you able to manage your time better?

#overemployed #risk #secretnetwork #overemploymentnetwork