“Monogamy at work is more of a stereotype than a rule.” An IT company accidentally discovered that a developer was working two jobs at the same time. The incident sparked a lively discussion on LinkedIn

“I had a dev who worked two jobs at the same time. We found out about it by accident when we hired a consultant to develop a specific feature, and it turned out that a few months ago they had already collaborated, but at a different company,” said Tera Craft Technologies COO Kateryna Arkhipova on LinkedIn.

According to her, the team reacted differently. The COO personally didn’t see a problem with it. “But at first there was a bit of a shock at how well he was doing everything,” she added.

The developer worked as an individual entrepreneur, but the contract did not prohibit him from having other projects. He had no problems with the quality of his work. “He performed the tasks no worse, and sometimes even better than others, so there were no questions for him,” Arkhipova noted, which is why he was not fired.

The COO noted that there are two truths in this situation: "For business, it's a risk, because deadlines, productivity, trust, and even security may suffer, but for dev, it's independence, interesting experience, and, of course, a financial cushion."

In conclusion, she wrote: "Monogamy at work is more of a stereotype than a rule."

What do the IT people think about this?

"It is worth noting that there are pros and cons for the business, and cons for the developer. However, I want to point out in defense of the employees that developers are sometimes 2-10 times more efficient than others, but they will not be paid a proportional salary, so they often just work 2-4 hours a day and do more than planned ," wrote Technical Lead Yuriy Tor.

"I understand that it is better for business when an employee is employed at only one job, but a lot still depends on the offer. It seems to me that if there is a condition "you work only with us and with no one else, under any circumstances", then there should be certain conditions, for example, in the event of project closure or unexpected dismissal, the company provides some compensation that will allow you to calmly find another job, without much stress. Most of my familiar developers and designers have several projects at the same time and have seen more than once a situation when one of the projects was unexpectedly closed, or the team was reduced for certain reasons. And if it were not for the second project, it would be very painful for a person, so such a cushion makes life easier. This can be especially painful when only one person in the family earns money (man or woman, it doesn't matter)," says Product Designer Yaroslava Bozhko.

"If all tasks are completed on time, and productivity is the same as other devs, then I think there is no risk. Maybe even such a person has better time management and concentration ," — FullStack Engineer Danylo Chernov.

“Slave owners usually want the slave to be theirs personally! Normal companies understand that if they can’t load their staff normally, they can go a little “to the left” somewhere, if the project doesn’t suffer, then what are the problems? This is the same as driving “cattle” into the office, as if this will increase productivity,” wrote Frontend Developer Oleksiy D.

Employers' opinions

" For me, it doesn't matter at all what the developer does and where he works, as long as everything is fine with deadlines and stakeholders. My position is as follows - if you can complete the work in 2-3 hours instead of 8 - great, 5 hours are yours and you have the right to do whatever you want, there is only one condition - to be in touch during working hours and have the opportunity to join in if necessary," - Oleksandr Perkhun, Head of Data Management Center at Metinvest Digital.

“I have had several cases of such multi-station workers. And each time we fired them because the quality of work suffered. They forget what they are talking about, lose documents, delay development, and are unreliable. Conclusion: working on multiple machines is not for everyone. If you don’t know how, don’t do it, ” — CEO of Yellow Toad Olena Kiyanovska.

“I also had such a dev, and he told me about it during one of our 1-2-1. For me, it was OK, because it had no negative impact on his performance and quality at all. It is important that there was contact, trust. We talked about priorities and my expectations from him ,” — IT & Infrastructure Delivery Leader Andriy Gerasimenko.

"If a person has a desire to earn more and spend more time on work, that's great! The more projects a specialist has, the higher his level of competence and demand. If a company refuses to cooperate with such a person, it loses twice. And if the company cannot provide decent payment for his time, this only indicates its incapacity and mediocrity. In this case, the specialist simply turned out to be overqualified for you. This is not a reason to be offended," Ana Nazarova noted.

" Employers want to get the most out of every hour they pay a specialist (which is logical). Therefore, this scenario is possible if the person who sets the task is not aware of how much time it will take," says HR Anna K.

"I once had several people on my team who had more than one job, and what's interesting is that they usually did their work much better than their colleagues. They simply didn't have the opportunity to do poorly, because there was no extra time to redo it later. But it seems to me that this is more often true for young people, when they don't have a family and children yet," — Executive Assistant Natalia Yefremova.

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