[model-t]

The organizations crying about Moonlighting are the same who bill the client Business Class while sending employees on Economy flights.

Same organizations who send employees on B1 visa to the US and ask them to work full time on projects , billing top dollars per hours. The employee gets Indian salary plus per diem for expenses.

Very rich coming from the services companies who formed a cartel to not giving more than 3.X LPA to freshers until the new age companies forced them to revisit.

Moonlighting is wrong. Plain and simple. But the holier than thou approach by these firms is simply funny. I don't even remember how many cases these companies have settled in the US due to unethical business practices.

[hrman]

In my view, moonlighting, gig or flexible workforce models are going to become the norm of the future.
In its current form, Indian employment letters usually link tenure and employment with many things, including social security (PF), Gratuity, coverage under labour laws like paid leave, working hours etc. In the olden days, perhaps due to lack of awareness and avenues, single employment was the most accepted way of life. Not anymore.

I feel its time employers start looking at flexibility in employment contracts. The outcome should be linked to clear goals and deliverables and the employee should be free to choose any other employment/ source of income in non working hours.

Nothing is stopping an expert in say Personal Finance from working a day job and being a Youtube influencer or advisor and earning extra money today. With 12 lakh engineers + lakhs of other professionals and graduates passing every year, competition, inflation and cost of living is on the rise. Its high time employees and employers realise one source of income for life is akin to putting all your eggs in one basket. If the situation demands, even Wipro and Infosys who are now strongly against moonlighting, will not think twice to fire employees if its not financially viable or there are no projects. When this uncertainty exists, employees should be free to generate multiple viable sources of income as well.

[landcruiser123]

I think there's a line to draw here which is, unfortunately getting blurred. Over-employed and moonlighting are slightly different.

In most cases of being "over-employed", it is not ethical to hold 2 jobs in similar industries which can lead to a conflict of interests due to the active transfer of information (skills, vital competitive information, client info etc) from one company to the other.

This is vastly different from:
1. People sitting on the boards of multiple startups
2. Quitting your job to join the competitor (sometimes there are clauses against this)


Moonlighting is defined as working on a side project which should be allowed. An employed software engineer can work in tutoring, part-time consulting, or even as a part-time lecturer. Many full-time professors in the US found startups and create software in some cases!

[Comrade]

I think the issue is much deeper than we think. I know some IT consultants in the US are signing up with 3-4 clients are the same time with commitment that they will work 40 hours at each client. They are drawing huge $$ with each client to build their wealth. How can single person work for 120-160 hours efficiently?? This is plain fraud where they are not able to do justice to any client. One of my contractors was fired because he was working for two clients (my employer + another unrelated company). My sister’s client scrutinised every contractor because some one at her client, who was not even in same team, was working with 4 clients and also had their spouse working with same client.

I know some contractors are hiring freelancers at $10-15 per hour to do their work! This cannot be compared to higher ups being on multiple boards. Those executives are not hiding their other commitments from potential employer. Everyone knows their other commitments, and these engagements are vetted throughly before they are hired as CEOs etc.

Wipro and Infosys may not worry about double employment on their own. But big corporates who hire them for services would definitely care. There are clients in every industry like defence, government etc etc or any client with R&D where NDAs and confidentiality is a big deal.

[Gansan]

Originally Posted by binand

Employment contracts cannot include blatantly exploitative clauses in them.

If an organization employs someone and says he should not hold any other employment anywhere else while he remains an employee, it is perfectly valid. It is not exploitative. The employee is free to walk away if he disagrees. He can take the company to court about the clause and see what the verdict is. The agreement will be read in it's entirety, not just this clause, and if the court decides there is no natural justice in the agreement, it will throw the agreement out.

I didn't work in the IT sector yet my appointment order had such a clause. The clause was "I will not hold any other employment or indulge in any business activities". The second part will generally be winked at, unless the employee crossed some laxman rekha. At that time there was no gig economy.

[Ragavsr]

Coming from the healthcare industry, this thread is amusing. Moonlighting, working in multiple hospitals and practising in several places is the norm and any hospital not wanting their doctor to practice elsewhere would either pay a seriously high salary or risk getting no one to fill their vacancies.

What I do beyond business hours is none of anyone's botheration. Oh and hiding behind contracts won't work either. Most, with good knowledge and options will happily walk away.

[Gansan]

^^ Doctors have the option of "private practice". IT employees don't. Can an army doctor say he will do whatever he wants and get away with it? He will be court martialled. Why do many doctors stick on in government posts, even when they know private practice or consulting in other hospitals is against rules? The government generally ignores it, yet we occasionally see the government kick them out or transfer them to Timbucktoo when they cross a line. Do they take the government to court? Why don't they simply renounce the job and go wherever they want? Why try to stick on?

[Ragavsr]

Originally Posted by Gansan

^^ Doctors have the option of "private practice". IT employees don't. Why don't they simply renounce the job and do wherever they want?

A lot of doctors do renounce their job these days if they have a good practice outside. No one wants to go to a new town hundreds of kilometres away and uproot everything. Moreover, there is only 24 hours in a day, if one has enough opportunies in private hospitals or a clinic that has enough footfalls, it's actually a no-brainer decision to give up the job.

Taking up small contractual jobs on the side is similar to private practice for IT folks. So, is running a business in their off duty hours like a kiosk or a shop.

It's just that not doing any productive, money earning opportunity outside employment has been the norm and has been taken for granted, and when status quo is challenged, the employers feel threatened.

[poloman]

I don't think companies can stop any employee from using his/her creative side in working for another company or do consulting with his own resources.

But he/she needs to be a 'Wozniak' to do such things. This is not medical industry where you can set up a clinic at home and practice.

You need tools, frameworks, access controls etc to do IT consulting in a meaningful way. For example in chip industry a design tool can cost millions to the company. So a HW designer who works in the company decides to do gig role using the tool is simply cheating the company.

But if the same employee happens to be a Java expert and want to make some money doing gig job with another company/entity in his post office hours should be perfectly fine.


So openness and being truthful with what you do is the key.

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by poloman

But he/she needs to be a 'Wozniak' to do such things.

You don't have to be Steve Wozniak or Linus Torvalds to do moonlighting, even lesser people can do it. Lots of small IT product companies rely on moonlighting part-timers because they can't afford to hire experts full-time.

Plenty of big companies hire expert engineers for big salary and put them on a mundane job, enough to make them die of boredom. Such people routinely look for side-gig to keep their skill-sets strong and relevant. They do it either by contributing to open source for free, or work part-time (say 2 hours/day) for a small company without any time commitment. The small company is fine with the arrangement since they can get an expert for smaller investment, even if the time committed is less. Quality matters over quantity. My former company routinely used part-timers like this, most of them in US, where the practice is very common.

[poloman]

Originally Posted by Samurai

You don't have to be Steve Wozniak or Linus Torvalds to do moonlighting, even lesser people can do it. Lots of small IT product companies rely on moonlighting part-timers because they can't afford to hire experts full-time.

Plenty of big companies hire expert engineers for big salary and put them on a mundane job, enough to make them die of boredom. Such people routinely look for side-gig to keep their skill-sets strong and relevant. They do it either by contributing to open source for free, or work part-time (say 2 hours/day) for a small company without any time commitment. The small company is fine with the arrangement since they can get an expert for smaller investment, even if the time committed is less. Quality matters over quantity. My former company routinely used part-timers like this, most of them in US, where the practice is very common.

I don't have any disagreement with this. I have clearly highlighted if there is no conflict of interest or misuse of company resources, nothing can stop bright employees from taking parallel assignments. These can be called subject matter experts. But an average joe taking up simultaneous jobs just by juggling time due to WFH at Infosys and Wipro or Intel and AMD or Microsoft and Apple is the scenario I am dead against.

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by poloman

But an average joe taking up simultaneous jobs just by juggling time due to WFH at Infosys and Wipro or Intel and AMD or Microsoft and Apple is the scenario I am dead against.

That is not moonlighting, it is overemployment. Even I am against that. That is plain cheating.

[vedirah]

Why do people moonlight?

The answer is simple. To make more money. You have extra time, why not use it to make more money?

Some statistics:

The base salary of freshers in IT giants in 2007: ~2.2 LPA
The base salary of freshers in IT giants in 2022: ~3.4 LPA

This is half of what inflation adjusted value would have been in 2022: ~6 LPA

Of course, when your salary can't beat inflation, you look for other ways to increase your income. You'd be a fool to let companies take you for a ride. After all, you have to look after yourself irrespective of the company you work for.

What you do outside of your contractual hours is no business of your employer. What needs to change is how companies view this problem - they need to provide fair salary to their employees before accusing them of moonlighting.

My personal experience: I was employed with Rolls-Royce a while ago. We used to get average yearly hike anywhere between 10-15%. Recently, Infosys bought out our division and we became Infosys employees. The average hike we get now - 5% if you are lucky. Do note this is the same company that is vocal about it's stance against moonlighting.

You either provide your employee with better wages, or you stop complaining about them moonlighting. You can't have your cake and eat it too!

That being said, I respect employers that pay fair wages to their employees. That, and only that, shows how much they care about employee wellbeing.

[androdev]

There are two extreme ends of the spectrum that can’t be defended:

1. Employers wanting to own people on a near 24x7 basis

2. Employees blatantly offering less productivity in order to make side income.

In my opinion, society at large will benefit from employees exploring opportunities outside of their 9-5 job to unlock their full potential without giving up the security of an income from regular job. However, they need to be ethical and either ensure fair productivity/contribution or quit.

[Vishal.R]

My viewpoint as someone who has spent 15+ years in industry, is that it is not the biggest issue as is apears to many, mostly either outside the industry or not very hands-on with day to day delivery.

Wipro Chairman is not an industry veteran, he has inherited the well established company and it shows about his clarity on priorities. This is not biggest issue, also in reality higher management of every service company is primarily concerned about billing not output, output is generally a worry for customer. Biggest issue is availability of people who can work, I know few small companies, and some not so small companies which have new business opportunities but can't convert due to lack of manpower.

As Samurai said, what happened in Wipro is not moonlighting, but plain cheating. In today's world where we have single identity based on aadhar and PAN and everything online (tax, PF) it is not difficult to track. Any big company extensively do background verification and mostly third party agencies are involved. So there should be no debate on additional full time employment. Its is plain cheating in any context.

About part time work, there are different possibilities

A.) Main work is not affected at all, consistency of output is also maintained.

Shouldn't be any issues as extra work doesn't conflict with main work. (Consistency is key here)

B ) Main work is affected.
Not difficult to be identified by immediate leads and should be immediately attended by management. Should never wait for formal appraisal meetings to discuss such things. There can be other reasons as well, Even when everyone is WFO it is possible that employee is "busy" in either trading through his app or social media or anything else.

If given choice I would choose better skilled / smarter person with better attitude compared to less qualified even if I know that former is engaged in some additional activity but aware about priorities.