The OE community (a rabbit hole I just went down) actually advocates that the folks doing this don't lies. And it's all predicated on the assumption that J1, J2, J3 don't actually require, from a competent person, a full 40 hours of work each week to accomplish the normal expected goals of the position.
I know that in my own work, having experienced periods of burnout where I just didn't have the energy for more, that 15 hours a week is perfectly sufficient to get the job done in a way that keeps everyone happy. This, of course, may vary from time to time. Occasionally urgent tasks come down the pipeline that have me working a 60 hour work week. Currently I'm in an extended period of time where I don't have much time to do anything outside of critical and urgent tasks. But historically, I've devoted a lot of my time to pet projects, areas of personal interest that might bear little or no fruit on my primary responsibilities (though sometimes they do, to great effect) and I'd occupy my time going down rabbit holes of either professional development or curiosity or whatever.
I think organizations kind of understand this on some level too, for certain types of workers. We're paid to do the 15 hours of work that absolutely has to get done every week, but otherwise we're paid to be available as latent capacity ready to be spun into action when a situation calls for it.
I definitely think there are some ethical consideration here that shouldn't be ignored. If working multiple jobs I don't think it's ethical to short change either of them on what they expect from the position as a result of working multiple jobs. But I look at top level execs where I'm at and lots of other places and see them collecting honorariums or other types of payment for sitting on boards of other businesses or even renting out their time as consultants, and it seems ridiculous that I shouldn't be allowed to do the same (To be clear, I don't actually do that right now) provided I'm fulfilling the tasks of J1.
I think that this is a net negative for literally everybody except the ones that are taking advantage (and will be for them in the long term too). I personally can tell when someone isn’t shipping as much as they are capable of but I give folks slack because I don’t expect people to be really firing on all cylinders 40 hours a week. This is basically going to cause skeptical managers/leads in the short term, complete erosion of trust in the long term. I don’t know what the solution is, I just know this ethically hurts and the outcome won’t be good.
I can’t lie that I thought about this with the last job I took in 2020. It’s hard to deny that you can sometimes put in less time logged in and still meet the minimum bar, or even the same bar. End of the day the ethical burden and logistics just didn’t make it seem worth the extra money for me. Maybe I’m just well paid and my life is already full time wise.
Even quitting remote jobs can be taken advantage of though. Why quit when you get a new job? Why don’t you just occasionally show up to meetings and stop working? It would probably take a good 6 months for corporate America to fire you. My HR friend tells me they can’t even say negative things about when when they verify your employment… I wonder if these same OE people would have similar thoughts about that as well.
And I know it’s not you saying this but, hiding information is also lying. I talk to the people on my team about everything in my life, I spend more hours with them than my family most days. I would consider it a lie if I never mentioned I was working another full time job. If you were honest with them, I’m sure at the very least they would think a little differently about the next time you missed a deadline. And I think the honesty is an important part about being accountable. You are taking advantage of your teams/manager’s trust by working more jobs without telling them
yes, the concept of OE is very new to me and I'm very ambivalent on some of it's implications the the necessary logistical hurdles to make it work that walk the edge, and sometime over it, of what I consider ethical obligations.
But in considering the concept of OE, it seems undeniable to me that a person capable of adequately completing the tasks of a full time job in 20 hours a week shouldn't be obliged to to seek out additional work, unpaid, to fill their time. In practice this happens! And people do things like walk around and talk to co workers for long stretches of time, take a long lunch, checkout reddit or go down the rabbit hole of an HN thread for a while! Countless people already work jobs 20 hours a week churning out quality work. OE simply says "Use that free time to do a different 20 hour job like that".
In the abstract, I can't see a problem with that. In particular cases, I think a person should look carefully at their contract and what they have agreed to do to determine if their circumstances would allow them to enter the realm of OE without crossing ethical lines by violating an explicit agreement. The unspoken socially constructed expectations about a 40-hour work week though? I don't see an issue in ignoring them if your employment contract isn't specific on the issue.
I know that in my own work, having experienced periods of burnout where I just didn't have the energy for more, that 15 hours a week is perfectly sufficient to get the job done in a way that keeps everyone happy. This, of course, may vary from time to time. Occasionally urgent tasks come down the pipeline that have me working a 60 hour work week. Currently I'm in an extended period of time where I don't have much time to do anything outside of critical and urgent tasks. But historically, I've devoted a lot of my time to pet projects, areas of personal interest that might bear little or no fruit on my primary responsibilities (though sometimes they do, to great effect) and I'd occupy my time going down rabbit holes of either professional development or curiosity or whatever.
I think organizations kind of understand this on some level too, for certain types of workers. We're paid to do the 15 hours of work that absolutely has to get done every week, but otherwise we're paid to be available as latent capacity ready to be spun into action when a situation calls for it.
I definitely think there are some ethical consideration here that shouldn't be ignored. If working multiple jobs I don't think it's ethical to short change either of them on what they expect from the position as a result of working multiple jobs. But I look at top level execs where I'm at and lots of other places and see them collecting honorariums or other types of payment for sitting on boards of other businesses or even renting out their time as consultants, and it seems ridiculous that I shouldn't be allowed to do the same (To be clear, I don't actually do that right now) provided I'm fulfilling the tasks of J1.