This article was written by Ken Leaver who comes from a product & commercial background. He has founded multiple companies and held senior product positions at SEA tech companies like Lazada and Pomelo Fashion.
Ken runs his own agency that helps early stage companies execute faster and cheaper. Check out his linkedin at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kenleaver/
Guest Author: Ken Leaver
So i’m loving this discussion on the topic of ‘Overemployment’ on the recent MyFirstMillion podcast and I felt like giving my two cents.
What is ‘Overemployment’?
It is when someone who works remote takes 2-3 full-time jobs at the same time without letting the employers know.
And Sam Parr and Shaan Puri take the stance that employees who do this are betraying the trust of their employers, etc.
I also know of several friends/ex-colleagues the past few years who have employed this strategy and so i also have a bit of the inside scoop from them on why they do it, etc.
Plus for the past 3-4 years I would consider myself a sort of ‘transparent overemployment’ guy who contracts part-time and has worked for 2 or more clients a number of times.
Which I am allowed to do as i’m a contractor and the agreement is part-time.
Now here’s for my take:
1 – I think any employer that is worrying about whether their employees are working another job are probably not focusing on the right thing.
Employees should be judged by how much value they bring. And if they can bring in sufficient value to be competitive with their colleagues while doing another job, then I view that as being fair game.
If they are not bringing enough value, you pressure them to do more. And either they figure out how to do it or you let them go.
2- The employees I know of who were doing this were all a bit disillusioned with their main employer and were in part ‘hedging’.
Which again points to the root cause of the problem laying more with the company.
3- I actually think the future is going to look a lot more like this.
I juggle several things at the same time for a number of years now and I’ve concluded that I absolutely love it.
You end up focusing more on your strengths in each thing you do and so you bring those strengths to more opportunities. But it also requires being great at systems and organization.
4 – It balances the equation more
Companies these days layoff employees at the drop of a dime. And these employees scramble to find something else.
By ‘overemploying’ now employees get some of that leverage back.
