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Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley can't stop hiring?

(techcrunch.com)
45 points nradov | 1 comments | 04 Jul 25 22:58 UTC | HN request time: 0.203s | source
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enraged_camel ◴[04 Jul 25 23:28 UTC] No.44468831[source]▶
I'm probably in the minority here: when I was a manager, I was always totally fine with my employees moonlighting. Even if they didn't tell me and I found out later (as I did in one case). The only thing I've really cared about is whether they did good work.

I believe the main reason employers have an issue with moonlighters is that they view it as lack of loyalty. There may be other reasons, such as concerns regarding whether the employee can perform at 100% at two or more jobs, but I really do think that loyalty is the primary concern by a large margin.

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dahart ◴[05 Jul 25 00:45 UTC] No.44469228[source]▶
In the US, many companies have exclusivity clauses in the employment contract, meaning it’s breach of contract to do paid work for another company at the same time. The typical agreement being made by an employer is salary in return for the employee’s full time attention, where full time means ~40 hours of work per week, or sometimes more. As a manager I do care if my employees work significantly less than full time and devote that time to other paying jobs, especially if they do good work. That’s opportunity cost; if they could be producing more in the ~40 hrs/week agreement we have, they’re cheating the company and violating the agreement they made. I don’t care if they do hobby work or open source projects in their spare time, if they’re fulfilling their agreed upon obligations.
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IncreasePosts ◴[05 Jul 25 01:28 UTC] No.44469414[source]▶
Ok, but if I have L7 vision and skills, but get hired as a L4, and can complete my work in 10h/week, what right does the company have to demand more than that? It sounds like a mismatch between level/salary and skills. If a person can fulfill their role profile, isn't that what the company hired them for? We aren't talking about officer-level positions here.
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1. dahart ◴[05 Jul 25 13:11 UTC] No.44472582[source]▶
> If a person can fulfill their role profile, isn’t that what the company hired them for?

Generally speaking, no. Full time jobs are supposed to be full time, and the expectation, and explicit agreement the employee signed up for, is that employees will apply their skills for 40h/week regardless of level, vision, or skills.

Have you read your employment contract and/or employee handbook? You probably have one or both of those even if you don’t know it, but if you don’t have one of those, have you asked your employer what they think about this, whether they agree to let you work 10h/week and keep your full salary if you can “complete” your work? It sounds funny to me to even say it that way. At no time in my life has there been a specific set of tasks and work per week after which I could say my work was complete, software engineering doesn’t work like that.

Again, the right the company has to demand your full time attention is that was the agreement you signed up for: salary in return for 40h/week of your best effort.