A Quality Assurance IT professional who goes by the pseudonym «Harrison» says he’s been making hundreds of thousands of dollars juggling remote jobs for five years. He plans to earn $800,000 from six full-time positions by 2025. Harrison’s secret ingredient to success is that he doesn’t work alone.
A Quality Assurance IT professional who goes by the pseudonym «Harrison» says he’s been making hundreds of thousands of dollars juggling remote jobs for five years. He plans to earn $800,000 from six full-time positions by 2025. Harrison’s secret ingredient to success is that he doesn’t work alone.
«My man knows the updates and speaks like me,» the IT guy said, explaining that his rallies usually don’t require cameras to be on. Harrison’s identity was verified by Business Insider, but he asked to use a pseudonym, citing fear of professional repercussions.
Harrison said he has built a team of seven employees who help him secretly work multiple full-time jobs at the same time. If his employment situation stays the same, he expects to make $800,000 this year and pay his team about $250,000 — his rate is $25 to $30 an hour.
This will be Harrison’s fifth year using this model to maximize his income. In 2023, he had six full-time remote jobs in the U.S. and earned about $470,000. He estimates that after paying his employees, he made about $320,000.
In 2024, he said, he was working nine jobs at once, and he estimates he earned over $500,000 after paying his employees' wages—he’ll find out more when his taxes are due.
«I used to get nervous about my boss, stock market losses, bills, kids' schooling. The big difference with having more work is that I get less nervous — because if something doesn’t go well, it won’t kill me,» he says.
Around 2018, Harrison began working two remote jobs. When the pandemic began and remote roles became plentiful, he began secretly juggling a third and fourth job.
The workload soon became unmanageable, so he turned to the freelance platform Upwork to find qualified people to handle his work. After interviewing many candidates, Harrison gradually built a team of employees and took on more tasks. His subordinates work in the US, Canada, India, and Pakistan.
Upwork commented that violating the employment agreement is against company policy, and that they will take action if the violation is explicitly stated in a job posting on the platform.
Harrison spends most of his workday attending meetings and reviewing his team’s work, which he says amounts to about 40 hours a week. Four of his employees do his job duties, and another, his son-in-law, helps run the operation and fills in for him at meetings.
«He’s unemployed, so I can help him. It’s probably the best thing I’ve ever done,» Harrison, who is in his 50s, said of hiring his son-in-law.
He says he sometimes gets laid off or his consulting contract isn’t renewed, so to keep his business going and growing, he has two separate employees apply for jobs on his behalf — and he interviews them. But in recent months, Harrison has found it harder to find new remote work.
Harrison is a U.S. citizen, but he lives abroad most of the year and uses a VPN with a U.S. location. His outsourcing is made possible by software tools like Zoom, TeamViewer, and UltraViewer, which give his team remote access to his work computers. He said he tried to pair employees to do the same job, but some of them were working on two tasks at once. As far as Harrison knows, none of his employers have suspected him of being overworked.
Sometimes he is asked a question about an employee’s work and he doesn’t have an answer, but he can wait until the employee provides him with information.
Looking ahead, Harrison plans to continue juggling jobs for the foreseeable future because he doesn’t think he has enough savings to retire. He says having about six jobs feels like a «golden mean» to him, as he can significantly increase his earnings and job security without working too many hours. And if things get too difficult, he can always quit.
Recall that last year, a 30-year-old IT specialist from Georgia (USA) said that since childhood he has strived for financial stability, and excessive employment provides him with job guarantees. He shared four tips for professionals who want to secretly work multiple jobs.
Earlier, Patrick Singe, co-founder and CEO of Metrickal, a business process outsourcing and remote recruiting company, discovered that one of his employees was working another job at the same time. He believes that this employee acted unethically.
