There is a growing trend among experienced remote workers in the tech industry to work two full-time jobs at once. Their justification for doing so is that they’re being paid for their services, and as long as they accomplish their tasks before their deadlines, it’s fair play. To me this seems wrong on multiple levels. They’re effectively being paid twice for the same hours of availability, regardless of when they complete their tasks. Surely they have reduced availability for meetings and invent excuses for that, slowing down the pace of work at both companies. And for those companies attempting to set fair and reasonable deadlines, this would cause them to unfairly operate more slowly than competitors whose employees weren’t double-dipping.
But my sympathies to employers only extend so far; I believe they would do (and sometimes already do) some equivalent of this in asking people to fulfill multiple roles to maximize their own profits. My real concern is that by occupying these additional jobs, the double-dippers use their experience to hoard these positions, taking them away from others who could really use them. Of course, as more peers mention doing this, it increases the temptation for others to do the same. Do you have advice for how I might encourage peers to refrain from going down this path without coming across as judgmental or seeming to accuse them of being unethical? — Name Withheld
From the Ethicist:
At a time when people worry that the tech industry is crafting systems that will eliminate jobs, how should we feel when its employees have found a way to eliminate jobs more directly? There are the efficiency issues that you raise — by pulling a fast one, these workers may also be pulling a slow one — and, of course, there’s the ongoing dishonesty that comes of juggling two employers who are also providing benefits like subsidized health care and life insurance. Your point about job hoarding is a sound one. There can be other ethical problems, too. Employees are privy to information that a company wouldn’t want known to competitors. Tech two-timers could use information provided by one to make them look good to the other, potentially to the former’s disadvantage. Because they are already being disloyal, the temptation may be particularly hard to resist.
You point out that employers can sometimes ask workers to do too many jobs — failing to hire the right number of people. Yet labor markets can, in theory, put a limit on such work hoarding. Many professionals, for example, expect their salaries to be adjusted upward when they do especially demanding work. They also expect to be paid roughly the same as people doing comparable work in the same industry, albeit with some adjustment for years of service. And of course, people who think their remuneration is unfair because they aren’t making as much as their peers are likely to go looking for jobs elsewhere, if they’re available. It’s true that for employees, the costs, including psychological ones, of moving to a new job can be high, but the costs to employers of finding and training new people can also be significant.
Employers, meanwhile, also make the opposite mistake: double-dipping is possible because many people are being paid a full salary for doing work that doesn’t take anything like the assumed number of hours. And though, as I say, the need for employee retention can deter companies from asking too much from a worker, there’s no immediate market discipline when it comes to how little they may ask. If successful double-dippers were spending 40 or more hours a week in an office, they’d be doing other things, whether surfing the internet, writing the Great American Novel or curating their Instagram accounts (another important genre of contemporary fiction). Some companies install software on work computers that allows them to monitor employees’ activities. Were double-dipping to become even more common, a growing number of employers may turn to this somewhat unsavory option.
Talking to tempted peers, you might note how the practice can affect the atmosphere of the workplace — it can make everything more transactional by fraying trust. (Yes, work is a transaction, but in a healthy place of employment, it isn’t only that.) You might also ask about the costs that would be imposed on them. The need to keep their lies straight can be corrosive, too, not to mention stressful, and they’ll know that they’re not really giving either employer their very best. And obviously, there are the practical consequences — termination, potential legal trouble, damage to their professional reputation, difficulty in finding future work — if the ruse is discovered.
If people like the idea of working for more than one company, they can see if they can become a consultant or another kind of service provider. Then they can identify tasks that they’re to perform, set a fee for them and manage their commitments to as many clients as they see fit. In the meantime, companies will need to determine how to promote a healthy culture among remote employees who don’t have the sort of human interactions that take place in a well-functioning workplace. The loyalties such interactions generate can be an important asset, and a company that wants its employees to function remotely, in part because that’s what workers want, probably needs to figure out other ways of engaging people with one another in order to build the sense of a team working together. It’s easier to commit to a place that seems to have committed to you.
We’re planning a special Ethicist column on sex. Do you have a question you’d like to have answered? Letters about the ethics of desire, intimacy, partnership and related concerns are all welcome. To submit a query, send an email to ethicist@ by Jan. 13, 2025.
Readers Respond
The previous question was from a reader who was trying to figure out whether to have children. She wrote: “I have a question about planning for the future in light of the recent presidential election and the prospect of potentially having a dictatorship in America. I’m a 33-year-old woman. For a long time I’ve wanted to start a family. I’m about to start investing substantial money into family planning. In view of climate change, overpopulation and now the result of the election, I’ve started to wonder if maybe it’s just not meant to be. There are so many wars going on, and with America turning isolationist, I fear for the world. It feels like everything is falling apart; there’s so much uncertainty, and it doesn’t feel safe anymore. Knowing everything we know about the strain that will be placed on our democracy, a gutting of climate protections and climate-change policy and threats to women’s rights, is it right to be wanting/planning to start a family? Or should I plan to adopt instead? Am I being overly cautious, or is it valid to reconsider?”
In his response, the Ethicist noted: “You cannot, of course, guarantee that any children of yours will have a brilliantly successful life. For all the challenges we face, however, I’m not convinced that raising a happy and flourishing child in this country is bound to be so hard that it would be unfair to bring a new person into the world here. Many people will disagree with you about what the next four or 40 or, indeed, 400 years are likely to hold. … As the saying goes, the future hasn’t yet been written. The question is how you feel about your progeny playing any role in writing it. If having a child is always a form of hope, not having one because you’re sure what lies ahead can, I fear, be a form of hubris.” (Reread the full question and answer here.)
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This response brought tears to my eyes with its sincerity, perspective and focus on the possibility of hope for our future. Thank you. — Julie
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I think the Ethicist’s response missed the mark. The one action that individuals can take that will have the most effect on global warming is to refrain from adding more humans to the planet. No one wants to talk about this, thinking that cloth shopping bags and electric cars will do the trick. But until the population goes down, especially in advanced countries like ours with all of our consumption habits, there is little chance humans will survive. The letter writer should be commended for her willingness to consider adoption, which would allow her to provide a better life for humans who are already here. — George
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The Ethicist overlooks one absolutely crucial point in his response: One hundred years ago there were no reliable methods of contraception readily available. People then faced the choice of abstaining entirely from heterosexual intercourse or of accepting that children might come along. Our situation today is very different, at least for most of us. For us now, deciding to have a child is just that: a deliberate affirmative decision. We would therefore be ethically remiss if we did not consider very carefully what kind of world that child is likely to be brought into. Of course “the future hasn’t yet been written,” but the inevitability of catastrophic climate change becomes more obvious with every passing day. The question of whether it is justifiable to create a new person who will face the worst of climate change must be asked, however one answers it. And to ponder that question is, in fact, the opposite of hubristic. — Elizabeth
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I agree with the Ethicist’s response. I would add that watching the movie “Idiocracy” may give the letter writer a different perspective. What was thought of in 2006 as an irreverent look at the future is becoming a scary historical document. — Bob
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I’m in the same boat as the letter writer. My fiancé and I are 29 and 30, and are getting married this coming May. We planned to start trying to have kids sometime next summer, but the idea of a federal abortion ban is giving us significant pause. I have endometriosis and various other health issues, so any pregnancy will be high risk for me. We’re not sure we can commit to risking my life to bring a child into such a tumultuous world, but being a mother is one of my lifelong aspirations. It’s heartbreaking and so incredibly frustrating to find ourselves in this situation. — Adrienne
