HACKER Q&A
📣 two_jobs

Would you work two full-time remote programming jobs?


I’m currently working one full-time remote programming job at a large company. I’ve been here a few years and while I have good relationships with my co-workers, I don’t with management. I feel they are ineffective, weak, and willing to throw you under the bus to save their own hides. The work is uninteresting and I am learning little.

I accepted an offer at a smaller company for 25% less money that I believe will have more enjoyable work and a better work environment.

Over beers, a couple friends said I should just stay at my current large company, do the bare minimum to get by (roughly 2 hours/day), and keep raking in that check as long as I can.

The upsides to doing this:

- I would be making very good money, similar to a senior engineer at FAANG. (I also live outside the Bay Area, so that money would go pretty far).

- The excitement of doing something mischievous, leading a double life, sticking it to the man etc.

The potential downsides:

- Getting burnt out when the large company does require more work, or just from the stress of managing two jobs.

- Getting “found out” and potentially fired from one or both jobs. (I don’t really care if I get fired from large co, but I do care about the new job.)

- The reputation fall-out and disappointment to people I care about (current co-workers, new co-workers).

- Lost opportunity cost to work on my own things or just relax and stay fresh.

Has anybody ever done something like this before or are currently doing this? How did it go/what would you have done differently?

  👤 Mountain_Skies Accepted Answer ✓
Be aware that there are databases such as The Work Number that can end up letting both companies know about your employment with the other. The odds are likely very low of that happening as there's little reason for an HR department to check on your listing after you're employed but it's not a zero chance. Also if at some point go to work at an unrelated company and they check your employment background, they're going to see you were working two jobs concurrently, at which point you may be tempted to lie and say they were part-time or knew about each other which could be denied by either or both.