Multiple Remote Jobs - What has been your experience?

egrizzly

heh all,

for those of you who have tried working more than one remote job with different employers, what has your experience been?  What works, and what doesn't work?  I've been given the tip to do this but have this lingering feeling that the meeting times are gonna clash between the two jobs.

SteveLavoie

IMO, I dont think it could work for a long term specially if both of them ignore there are another one, except if the second job is very asynchronous in nature. 

volfkhat

I know someone who does it successfully as a Network Engineer.

At his #1 job,
no one else really knows how to do what he does....  so nobody can bother him. For the most part, he works on his own schedule.

At his #2 job,
he takes on (6-month) contract-to-hire assignments.



Simulatneous zoom-meetings are the biggest challenge.

Sometimes it gets too hectic....
and he has to diconnect his network connection, and claim his internet went out lol

Not sure if there's any "on call".


The funniest part,
is that his #1 job usually gives everybody a 2% annual raise (no matter what your Performance review says).
All his coworkers complain about it..... but not him :]


I think he's crazy... but he made over 200k last year. so i guess its worth it.
Carpe Diem!


EDIT:
Obviously, don't share too much on your linkedin profile lol

volfkhat

Also, working as a contractor in Job#2 is pretty clever.

The contract company is just the "middle man" who is happily taking a CUT out of your labor.
They have no incentive to proactively dig/check if you are double-dipping.

And, the company who you are working "at".... they dont actually have your personal information.
So they can't run your SS# and see if you are double-dipping either.

Also, if you want to Quit working for them (after the initial 6 months)....  there's really Not much that they can say.

You were never really their employee

powerfool

I did it for years before COVID.

The first time I did it was for 9 months and it was a fluke.  I originally just needed to overlap jobs for a week or so because my last day at the first job would have been the last business day of the month and towards the end of the year; I would have had a gap in insurance for a month just because of how month-end lined up on the calendar.  The first week worked, so I thought... keep it going through the end of the year as things would get slower.  It also meant some of my tuition remibursement repayment would be reduced.  The start of the new year came and things were still slow... so why not?  If I could keep it going, I would eliminate my tuition reimbursement repayment and get the next vesting and annual match for my 401k, which was about $10k worth of benefit to my 401k.  Eventually it was no longer feasible.

About nine months later, I found a contractor opportunity that seemed easy.  It was only about cash and I was just planning to complete the duties as assigned which would have been extremely easy for me given my skillset and years of experience.  I couldn't keep my head down and ended up getting assigned high-profile projects and they wanted to hire me on.  The 401k match was amazing and there was basically immediately vested.  So, I thought I would just keep it up.  It lasted for 5 years.  This allowed me to do 401k at two companies and ESPPs, as well, in addition to just having a ton of income.  They were a big pain for not workload reasons, so I had to let them go because my ability to focus became extremely diminished.

I took three months off and restarted with only part-time work.  That has been going for over three years now and is extremely manageable.

UnixGuy

@powerfool good to see you back mate, impressive story too!

Do you work part-time now at one job? how many days per week?

powerfool

I work full-time at one job and part-time at some others.

UnixGuy

nice work! there is a whole subreddit dedicated to this called overemployed, fascinating stuff

JDMurray

Always check with your HR department before engaging in simultaneous employment opportunities. I'm looking at getting back into teaching at private IT colleges, and (hopefully) will have to be doing this myself very soon with my "day job" employer.

volfkhat

powerfool said:

...I found a contractor opportunity that seemed easy.  It was only about cash and I was just planning to complete the duties as assigned which would have been extremely easy for me given my skillset and years of experience.
 I couldn't keep my head down and ended up getting assigned high-profile projects...

Blunder! 

Great Story, nonetheless

DatabaseHead

Been thinking about it myself.  I am in a role now where I could easily do it.  

I have a friend who is a CPA and does 3 jobs.  We just had this conversation and it was fascinating.  

He was burned by his last job so he turned into a different person.  He was offered both jobs and he couldn't decide so he took them both LOL.  This was after he was let go.  Then he picked up another one about 3 weeks later.  
One of the jobs is in California and other two are on the east coast giving him some breathing room.  He takes meetings at the same time all the time.  You get used to it.  

Job 1 150 k remote 15% bonus
Job 2 135 k remote 10% bonus 
Job 3 170 k remote 15% bonus

He has been able to hold them off for a while now, for ~2 months.  He works weekends, ~6 hours each day.  What's hiliarous is he gets paid on the 15th and the end of the month all 3 jobs.  According to him this buys him a lot of equity with his bosses.  It's really all about optics.  

His take home is crazy.  I think he has saved something like 40 K already in cash.  Tax season will hit sometime in Jan and he'll most likely get tossed after the tax season due to his performance but he doesn't care.  If they fire him oh well.  I ran the numbers for him and if he can make it till the end of December he'll net ~170k.  I believe he ended up clearing 58,875 in just 2 months.  Like I said 40 K saved already.  

powerfool

DatabaseHead said:

I have a friend who is a CPA…

I ran the numbers for him…

Yeah, if your friend is a CPA and you have to run the numbers for him, surely he’s going to get canned.  

DatabaseHead

powerfool said:

DatabaseHead said:

I have a friend who is a CPA…

I ran the numbers for him…

Yeah, if your friend is a CPA and you have to run the numbers for him, surely he’s going to get canned.  

He makes over a 100 each job, he isn't a staff accountant anymore, LOL.  Not sure if you are familiar with how the hierarchy works in the accounting world.  He basically is client relationship management sales), besides I ended up doing the math based off of his numbers for my own interest.  With his wife and his salary they will gross over 535 k this year.  Mind blowing numbers.

powerfool

DatabaseHead said:

powerfool said:

DatabaseHead said:

I have a friend who is a CPA…

I ran the numbers for him…

Yeah, if your friend is a CPA and you have to run the numbers for him, surely he’s going to get canned.  

He can afford to get canned, he has 3 jobs.  LOL.  His wife makes over 125 as well.  Cash is not a problem for them, haha.  

Just joke was more that a CPA's job is to run the numbers...