Fake job seekers are flooding US companies that are hiring for remote positions

Another remote employment fraud that is much more prevalent is "Overemployment". You will get an applicant that is very skilled and hits the interview out of the park. But then when hired they are working many jobs and just trying to steal as many paychecks as they can until you fire them. They keep their first jobs resume clean and they all check out.

There is a Reddit community with over 400k members to show how prevalent this is [1]. There's lots of tactics like not allowing mentions on LinkedIn so they can't be publicly mentioned and seen by other unsuspecting employers, and just maintaining plausible deniability about why they can't make an on camera meeting. It is technically not illegal so it is very lucrative and hard to detect.

https://www.reddit.com/r/overemployed/top/

If it's not illegal then why are you using words like "fraud" and "steal"?

It can very easily be illegal because most employment contracts I've seen include language that heads off this type of action.

And I think there are plenty of people who aren't even consciously intending to scam. A while back I interviewed somebody for a 100%-time contracting position that will convert to employment. His LinkedIn listed him involved in a couple of other companies that he started. When I asked about this glaring incongruity he looked startled and said that, yes of course he was shutting those down. It felt to me like a lie made up on the spot.

He struck me as somebody who was just overextended and flailing around for immediate cash revenue. So I think he had convinced himself he could do his two companies and a full-time job. But I expect that in practice he'd stint us on hours and be so sleep-deprived during them that he'd be somewhere between marginally and negatively productive until we fired him.

But then it's hard to tell the difference between a desperate schmuck and a scammer, as I think it's a continuum. A lot of out-and-out scams get started like that.

The term I've heard is "moonlighting" but same concept. As someone that's seen really smart guys at my company get sacked over this, my takeaway is you can do it but you gotta be real good to not get caught and don't be surprised if you're fired. There was one guy we had to fire over this and he had no remorse and took is super well. I could tell for him he understood this was part of the gig and probably had higher paying jobs to fallback on.

That makes it a breach of contract, not illegal.

Because it is the technical definition of the words and that is exactly what it is. Something not being illegal does not mean that it isn't fraud or stealing. Misrepresenting your availability and willfully trying to cover that is is fraud. Taking someone's money while fraudulently not working for it is stealing. I know overemployment people will rationalize it some other way but it doesn't change that.

If you look at the history of fraud, people are always coming up with new ways to steal from people that are at the margins of legality. Consider the category "wire fraud", for example. It's not like some lawmakers looked at the nascent telephone and the telegraph and said, "Well boys, we'd better make sure these aren't used for crime." No, innovative scammers found ways to use the new technology for new crime for a few decades before the laws were updated. See Joesph "The Yellow Kid" Weil's autobiography for some examples.

Just because the fraud or theft isn't at the moment illegal doesn't meant it isn't fraud or theft.

I have approximately zero sympathy for companies in this situation. They've done everything possible to quash worker's rights, collude on wages, and commit billions in wage theft against the very poorest of workers.

As they say, "Turnabout is fair play".

Violating an employment contract is not a criminal issue, it is a civil issue at best.

The most they can realistically do to you for violating that section is just firing you. I don’t see them trying to collect the “damages” in the civil court.

i am wondering, how would that even work for any subsequent jobs, past the first set of multiple jobs done at once?

A pre-employment background check (which you typically do after accepting an offer and right before starting the job) would clearly show all your previous places of employment (for up to 7 years at the very least), along with the timelines. How would one explain that to the employer?

I'm always torn on this, on one hand there are companies that are so inept that they really only need people 4-10 hours per week, and they are happy with that.

On the other hand, I am the hiring manager at a healthcare company and I have to layoff 1-2 people per year who do this. I know all the tell tale signs, random blocks on calendar, missing meetings, sudden health issues when there are production incidents, getting stuck on simple problems for days at a time. Of course you can always back it up by looking at their stats (staring at Microsoft teams 4-5 hours a day).

If you agree to work for someone a number of hours per week, and you don't do it, while having no intention of doing it, and they are paying you while you are lying about it, that is fraud in most jurisdictions.

Technically full time positions don’t really mandate a set of hours.

> working many jobs

Somehow that's fine for higher ups to 'sit' on 10 boards. And they do not see that like 'steal as many paychecks'.

> and took it super well

I just close that company’s laptop and never think about them again.

There is no linkedin to update, no resume to update, no desperate dash or networking for another role.

Although there is less sympathy for being sacked for performance issues when thats the reason, the realities in my overemployment journey have been companies running out of runway for reasons not solvable by engineering direction, furloughs, government contracts where the top performers only lasted 5 more weeks longer than I did after being promised that the project was a 5 year contract, whole org adjustments, “we are going in a different direction” and more. Tech is not a stable sector. This is a far superior position to be in.

I’ve met expectations and gotten raises from simultaneous full time roles as well.

I am of the same opinion. Employers get to jerk employees around. Look at union busting, look at how they fight tooth and nail against any pro labor regulation. Arguably unjustified mass layoffs. The tech salary suppression case and there are so many other examples that simply aren't jumping to my head right now.

But god forbid the laborers do anything that takes advantage of a situation to better their lot in life.

For the record, I ain't one of those folks either. I'm not looking to hold more than one job at a time, and I suspect the actual majority of workers are like this too, so even if the argument held water for someone, 400K people is less than 0.1% of the workforce. That is hardly worth worrying about beyond simple precautions if it something you think is an issue

I don't see the problem. How many CEO are also on the board of multiple companies? If people at the top can be employed by multiple companies, anyone with a job involving less responsibility doing the same should be ok.

What kind of background check would reveal all previous employers? Where I’m from a background check usually consists of checking one or two (candidate provided) references and possibly googling their name for red flags.

Moonlighting is working a second job at night (“by the light of the moon”). Overemployment is fraudulently charging two companies for the same hour of time.

Funny how you can be a CEO of 4 companies and nobody bats an eye. You can be a retail worker holding down 3 minimum wage jobs to make ends meet and they say you are a hard worker, busting your ass for your family. But if you’re a white collar knowledge worker juggling two jobs, and still meeting both jobs’ expected performance goals, they call you a fraud and a thief and if you are open about it, they will fire you.

It is a LOT different to be working multiple jobs at different times of the day. This is not what this is. This is trying to get away with working 2 or more jobs at the same time and making up excuses about why you can't make an on camera meeting. Also in the case of CEOs it is known they are doing that. If someone said yeah I have another job I will be working the same hours as your job that is totally fair. But they don't say that. They say their pipes froze, doctor's appointment, etc. It is also fair that the worker can do what they would like in their time including working another job. I have also had people who honestly said they were wrapping up their consulting gig and would need some time periodically to take off and that was fine too.

> If someone said yeah I have another job I will be working the same hours as your job that is totally fair.

Close to zero companies would accept this, even if your performance met standards and you did it in such a way you didn't miss a single meeting. That's why I said if you are open about it they will fire [or not hire] you. It's a double standard.

Founder-CEO of three companies, on the board of another, "advisor" for another startup. On a non-profit board, too.

You notice that they have two "executive assistants" on staff at the 30-person company you're applying to. Gee, I wonder if this "CEO" does any actual work? No, of course they fucking don't. Linkedin post about how they balance work with family despite all this, LOL, it's because all your "jobs" are fake and you have enough money to pay to make all your personal work go away, too. You're a goddamn part-time worker dilettante playing pretend that you're a "hard worker" with amazing time management skills.

Yeah, demands that employees operate under far greater constraints and give more than the near-zero shits about the company than the owner- and executive-classes for way less compensation are totally reasonable and should be respected. /s

The credit reporting agencies can provide a list of prior employers. And comp.

Salaried positions don’t pay by the hour but by meeting benchmarks, job accountabilities, etc. so I’m not sure “fraudulently” belongs in that sentence.

That’s just some rando googling away.

How does that have any relation to a real agency, staffed with competent experts that specialize in background checks?

You should have some sympathy for the person who got robbed out of a job because someone else just wanted to make even more money. Companies aren't the main victims of the overemployed.

I don’t agree - working remotely is (in most respects) beneficial to the employee, and requires a lot of trust from the employer. So I think employees should do their part and honor that trust by being at least as productive as they would be at an office.

(I work remotely for a big corp and this is how I feel and act as well.)

Interesting, never heard of this service being provided here (EU), not even sure it would be legal, but makes sense. Apparently they get the information from credit card/mortage applications.

The overemployed crowd is two steps ahead though: https://old.reddit.com/r/overemployed/comments/10el4ll/remov...

... if you don't want to reward any companies for being good actors, then yeah sure treat them all the same. Don't be a child.

This is the same as grouping all workers together as being lazy.

Overemployment is just a symptom of the real problem: the company's performance management procedure is not adequate. It's no worse than someone merely slacking off or being incompetent and unable to do the job... and I bet there are many more of the latter than "overemployed" folks.

Making a contract with intent to defraud someone is not legal (i.e. pretending that you are going to work full time while knowing you are not going to do it).

That's the original meaning of the word, but it has come to be a synonym for overemployment.

yeah, if you're salaried big corps expect to own you. you generally sign away all your creative rights to side projects when you take the offer, and you usually agree not to take other jobs, too.

I'm doing exactly this, while working at a FAANG. My second and third jobs actually know I have a main FAANG job, and they have no problem with it. And I have no qualms about "stealing" from FAANG this way, sorry. In fact, my perf review at my main job is a mixture of "meets expectations", and "exceeds expectations".

@meindnoch,

What do you do in your second and third job? How did you find it?

Why do you call it fraud? It's not fraudulent.

You can't be robbed of something you don't possess.

People with this belief have never tried hiring, training, and retaining 6 EAs.

If those so "overemployed" (that is to say, working multiple jobs, a normal and common thing to do in society) were not working for their employer, they would be dismissed quickly.

Nobody's stealing anything in these situations.

Every single work backround check I ever had in the US included that. I do not think it lists all former employers ever tho, only those from the past 7 years iirc.

In fact, I got a copy of it back too, where it listed even some of the jobs I didn’t list myself because I didn’t think they were relevant (e.g., the grocery store job I had the summer before college, 5 years before the SWE position I was getting background checked for).

One time, it even had an interesting tidbit that got flagged. A former employer of mine didn’t exist anymore at the time of the background check (the company got absorbed into another international corp and then closed down all offices in the state I worked in, thus ceasing to exist both legally and physically). So the background check report mentioned there was an indication of me having worked there, but they couldn’t reach out to the company to verify my exact employment dates.

My second job is consulting for my previous job which I've left to make more money at FAANG. My third job is consulting for a company where a friend of mine works. I gave him useful advice on some problems he was working on, and he connected me with the higher ups.

All three jobs are software engineering. C++ mostly.

You're not entitled to a job. If someone else is working two, nobody's 'robbing' you.

If you think you are, I'll counterpoint it by insisting that I'm entitled to a house. Why should someone else have two, or more, or two hundred, when I don't even have one? Some landlord hoarding of them is, after all, robbing me.

Board membership is more like volunteer work, they meet for a few hours once a month to rubberstamp the CEO's strategy. It's oversight rather than 'work'.

People are actually entitled to fair access to food, water and shelter. And yes, landlords (both individual and corporate) are robbing people of the opportunity to own property and establish long term communities

Take as much as you can as fast as you can. You know the lovely, benevolent companies that are generously offering you a position will find any and every opportunity to cut as many people as fast as they can. It's been made pretty apparent at this point in the giant dumb game that the average worker is not worth much to a corporation.

And as others have pointed out, apparently it's only ok when a genius-level CEO takes four different CEO spots and a few board seats and continues to play video games all day. Yep, totally ok and not for anyone else.

That's all fine and good until enough people are jobless and homeless and they come to take all our heads. And I wouldn't even blame 'em for it. If one side of the agreement won't uphold the social contract, it breaks down, and "survival of the fittest" is an ugly world most of us have never had to experience.

I think you are conflating "working multiple jobs" with working multiple jobs during the same time period and lying to the other jobs about what you are doing when you cannot be reached. There is a big difference. If I work 9-5 on one job, and 5-1am on the other job that is not taking time from one to spend on the other. If I work 2+ jobs during that 9-5 period and not tell anyone and make excuses for not getting things done long enough until one of them fires me that is being dishonest.

£10k/year for maybe 2days/month of meetings and prep sounds pretty well paid for volunteer work.

> But I expect that in practice he'd stint us on hours and be so sleep-deprived during them that he'd be somewhere between marginally and negatively productive until we fired him.

To be fair, I could probably replace children with running a company on the side and still end up less sleep deprived.

I'm entitled to a house. Why should someone else have two, or more, or two hundred, when I don't even have one? Some landlord hoarding of them is, after all, robbing me.

You are entitled to a place to live, and the option of choosing it to specifically be a somewhat normal house in your general area, and landlords actually are robbing a huge portion of the population from their right to own a home. The average age of a first time home owner is rising and it's not rising consensually. The US has been tilting away from the rational middle ground between "no landlords" and "landlords own everything" over the last few decades.

Combating fraud with more fraud does not lead to a good place.

Is the CEO working at 4 companies in a transparent manner, approved by the boards of their companies? Then I don't see any problem.

If you want to work at 4 companies and your 4 managers don't have a problem with it, then go for it. Real problem arises when one lie about it and does it stealthily. Lying shouldn't be allowed, neither for CEOs nor for worker bees.

Yeah, this feels like fraud in the case of lying to literally get extra paychecks knowing you don't care if you get fired. I wonder what these people will do when their original employer lays them off, and now their job search becomes harder since they've burned so many bridges.

How many hours per week do jobs 2 and 3 consume?

1. If you're upfront with it, and everyone involved has signed off on it, it isn't ethically wrong. Its not the overemployment that's the problem; its the deceit. I've seen this happen multiple times, including once myself. Communicate, set boundaries, be a professional. It isn't common to be fired for asking if working a second job is within the bounds of your first job's employment. On the other hand, if you're already working the second job, and you inform them about it; that's deceit.

2. I'm not aware of anyone who is the CEO of 4 companies; well, except Mr Musk, but don't you dare say for a second that no one is batting an eye at that. Most CEOs I know barely have enough time for one company; and obviously the performance of Musk's companies recently suggests he's in the same boat.

3. The original poster pretty clearly inferred that, in these situations, generally speaking these workers are not meeting performance expectations.

You're basically describing every fractional CTO I've ever met.

I could work two different retail jobs in a day if the schedules work out. I cannot work 40 hours a week as an engineer, much less take on a second job (fortunately I can always find a few mindless meetings to make up my job). So long as I'm expected to work 40 hour weeks my company is justified in asking me not work a second job in my field as I couldn't anyway.

Now I could go out and get a retail job for after my regular job.

Officially or actually?

I don't really see the hyperbolic language about it. I've definitely worked some process-heavy corporate jobs where I could be perfectly satisfactorily productive as far as my management was concerned while only doing actual work like 20-30% of the time. Maybe I'm super smart or maybe they're just terrible at generating and assigning tasks, I don't know. Not my problem either way.

Especially in the WFH era where it's much easier to get away with it clean, I don't see anything all that wrong with working 2 or 3 such jobs at the same time. If all of them are happy, or at least not too terribly upset, with your performance, what's the harm. There's definitely been times in my life where I could see myself doing that just for the sake of being bored.

I mean I am a member of the nba subreddit and I don't play in the nba. Heck I haven't watched a single game this year. A lot of it is just people fantasizing about it rather than doing it.

Is pretending you are going to do good work but you know you are incompetent also fraud? How about the company pretending it is a good place to work but they know it actually sucks to work there? Just throwing the word fraud around at things you don't like is meaningless.

This is because companies are stupid and lazy when it comes to measuring performance.

There is only one used method of performance measurement: time spent. Every company who CLAIMS to be "data-driven" or "gamifies the system" are lying through their teeth. They're like every other company, they measure performance by hours spent.

I've seen many engineers easily hitting double the number of tickets closed as others. They don't work 20 hours a week. If they did, they would be fired within days.

This is why over-employment is "cheating". Employers don't actually care about your performance, they care about how much you're paying. If you're paying less to them, even if their end of the deal is sweet, they feel cheated. They, like most Americans, value perceived fairness over actual outcomes. They have no issue shooting themselves, or you, in the foot if this looks to be more fair.

I concur. The only reason it doesn't feel this way is because companies have been abusing the spirit and intent of salary for a long time. They effectively make it about time, and then don't pay overtime because they're exempt. Salary is basically just hourly but with a sweeter deal for the employer.

So, from the employer's perspective, it feels like fraud. But they've effectively been defrauding you for the past 100 years, by making you work salary when your job isn't a salary job. So, it's even. Well... not really. Still absurdly skewed in the employer's favor of course, but a little more even.

The 7 years you're referring to isn't criminal background check, which is what we generally think of when we say background check, it's credit reporting. And it's extremely unethical, in my opinion. It's outlawed in a few states.

It doesn't just show your employment for the past 7 years, it also shows your comp, your debts, your defaults, everything.

My criminal checks were on the exact same report as this one, I only ever applied for one.

It didn’t have my reported salary or debts. I know because I requested a copy of the report my employer got (which afaik is a legal requirement to provide one upon request, so it was as simple as clicking a button).

In general, I have no issues with my employer knowing my previous compensation once i am employed there. At no point in my interviews in over a decade at different companies was I ever asked what I made in terms of comp before, only what I wanted to make. And the background check only comes after the offer is already agreed upon, signed, and I already started working there. So I don’t see a problem there.

> Just because the fraud or theft isn't at the moment illegal doesn't meant it isn't fraud or theft.

It's a breach of contract. It's not fraud or theft.

You can opt out of The Work Number (Equifax's 'employment verification' service), but you have to do it via snail mail.

I’d love to be as productive as in office. Because my productivity at home is ten times better. Nobody distracts me all the time.

I’d love to know both numbers, it’s an interesting story. I’m agree with you here, yet I think consulting is just different. You gain your expertise at job-1 (FAANG), and then you just use those skills at jobs 2 and 3. I think it’s not that simple, but I guess could be simplified that way.

No. Fraud and theft are concepts that are broader than whatever legal jurisdiction you happen to be in at the time. Imagine that somebody gets one of those libertarian paradises up and going. Or imagine a failed state or a post-apocalyptic scenario, where there is no longer any law. It's still possible to run a fraud, it's just that the fraud would be, de jure or de facto, legal.

Both of these things would technically be fraud I would think. Definitely hard to prosecute due to subjectivity though.