What if it required keeping a secret from your bosses and coworkers? What if you landed a second job over someone who was looking for their first?
Over the past year, Business Insider has spoken with more than 10 job jugglers who used their six-figure earnings to pay off debt, plan for an early retirement, and afford expensive vacations and weight-loss drugs. But not everyone is a fan of the overemployed.
Some critics have questioned the ethics of job juggling, arguing that employees shouldn’t be doing work for one company when they’re being paid by another. While some employers may be OK with their workers taking on another role, doing so without approval could be a fireable offense if a worker is caught.
There’s also the question of what it means for someone to be taking a second remote job when the market for these roles is so competitive.
The share of US remote job postings on LinkedIn fell from over 20% in April 2022 to about 10% in December 2023. LinkedIn said that despite the decline, remote roles accounted for 46% of all applications in December.
Remote jobs have grown particularly competitive in the tech industry, a common field for overemployed workers. In 2023, tech companies including Amazon, Meta, and Google laid off close to 263,000 employees, according to Layoffs.fyi. Roughly 50,000 tech workers have been laid off since the start of this year.
Business Insider asked six current and former overemployed workers whether they felt guilty about their job juggling. They shared their experiences via email on the condition that pseudonyms would be used, for fear of professional repercussions. BI has verified their identities and earnings.
If companies can lay off workers on a whim, workers should be able to seek out extra job security
Joseph, a Gen X network engineer, told Business Insider he earned $344,000 in 2022 secretly working three remote jobs. He said the extra income allowed him to pay off the remaining $129,000 on his mortgage.
At first, Joseph said, his wife was not a fan of his job juggling because she thought he was taking a job away from someone who needed one. But last year, he said, they both learned the value of having multiple gigs.
Joseph was laid off from two of his jobs — he said that it wasn’t for performance reasons and that his job juggling was never exposed. If he hadn’t had three jobs, he could have been left with no job at all.
This made it hard for him to feel very guilty about being overemployed. “It’s huge that I still have this third job,” he said.
Joseph isn’t the only overemployed worker who values job security.
Robert, a Gen Xer living in Florida, told Business Insider he earned roughly $335,000 last year juggling multiple jobs — he said the extra income helped him pay for a roughly $20,000 cruise.
Given that layoffs across the tech industry have left some workers scrambling to find new roles, Robert said no one should be blamed for trying to protect themselves.
“If companies can so easily cut you off like many have these days, then shouldn’t you have the ability to be resilient and resistant to layoffs and cuts in protecting the best interests of your family?” he said.
If CEOs can work for multiple businesses, employees should be able to as well
John, a millennial IT professional in California, told Business Insider he was on track to earn over $300,000 last year across two remote jobs.
He said that he’d saved roughly $150,000 since he started job juggling in 2021 and that he spent roughly $9,000 on a three-week honeymoon across Asia last year.
John said he didn’t feel guilty about having multiple jobs because he wasn’t violating any labor laws or employment contracts, adding that his company was happy with the work he was doing.
He also thinks there’s a double standard in the corporate world.
He said it’s not uncommon for CEOs like Elon Musk, for instance, to juggle roles with multiple companies, whether as an executive or part of a board.
“No one ever thinks that’s wrong,” John said. “I’m the same. I am the CEO of my own labor, and I choose to spend my labor on multiple projects.”
William, a Texas-based tech worker in his 30s who told Business Insider he earned over $500,000 in 2022 secretly working multiple remote roles, agreed with this line of thinking.
“I knew plenty of high-level executives that also had consulting business or other ventures as well,” he said.
While there has been some pushback against CEO job juggling, the practice is still generally accepted in the corporate world. People with the money and resources of Musk, for example, may find it easier to multitask than the typical white-collar worker.
If you do your job well and efficiently, you should be able to have other jobs on the side
Steven, a UK-based project manager in his mid-20s, told Business Insider he was earning roughly $90,000 a year secretly working two full-time hybrid project-manager jobs.
He said overemployment was the only way he could start paying down his debt. As of late last year, he had roughly $30,000 worth of credit-card debt and $50,000 in various loans.
Steven said he didn’t feel guilty about job juggling because he was still able to complete all the duties and tasks assigned to him. He argued that if an employee can get their work done with plenty of time to spare, they should be able to pursue other job opportunities.
“What if an employee supposedly working a 40-hour week, for example, only has actually 20 hours of work to do?” he said. “What would they do then? Sit in front of the computer waiting for something or wasting time on their phone or emails? Is that better in any way than my choosing to fit a second job in and get some benefit out of all this otherwise dead free time?”
Other job jugglers described similar sentiments.
“In a salaried position, you are paid based on objectives, not by time,” William said. “Based on that, there is not a situation of double billing, and overemployment is not too different than picking up the extra slack from another coworker.”
Perhaps counterintuitively, workers having extra jobs could actually benefit some companies, said Justin, a Gen Xer who told Business Insider he earned over $300,000 in 2022 secretly working three full-time remote IT-engineer jobs.
Justin said he didn’t feel guilty about job juggling because he was a top performer in all his roles — and having multiple jobs gave him experience that added value to all his employers.
“Having the ‘same job times three’ helps me increase knowledge to be a better worker everywhere,” he said.
Are you working multiple remote jobs at the same time and willing to provide details about your pay and schedule? If so, reach out to this reporter at jzinkula@businessinsider.com.
