One of my friend’s coworkers did this but I didn’t know the coworker well enough to see how it turned out. I have always been curious.
The logical conclusion is maximize your earning moonlighting an additional job. It's hard though; to land one, and work two jobs concurrently. IF they're both remote helps a lot.
In places like CA, you'd probably be fine to offer services to a company that's completely unrelated to your nominal employer, as long as you don't use privileged information from your "main" job.
That being said, have a friendly chat with your own lawyer before doing this.
People are willing to pay big money to set aside time to learn a new, marketable skill. You currently have the opportunity to be paid while doing the same.
I had a similar thing happen to me once.
I was hired to perform a certain mission-critical task that had to be performed at a particular time two days a week. It's was a significant task involving about a hundred people that had to be done every day of the year, including holidays.
When I was hired, I was supposed to do that task on weekends and then three days during the work week help out the people who had to do the task on those days.
Everything went fine for about three months. Then one of the full-time helpers complained to their union that I was doing a helper job three days a week. In the union's view, I was taking away a helper job, which wasn't really true. I was a bonus helper. If I wasn't there, there wouldn't be a new three-day-a-week helper position.
The union got all huffy and the result was that I had to come to work, suit and all, and I sat at a computer and got paid six figures to look at LOLcats three days a week.
This went on for five years until I left for another company.
Amazingly, that was the least problematic staffing situation at that company.
I did freelancing but eventually got very depressed. Quit my job, left my apartment and moved back with my parents.
One of my past employers was a consulting firm that would have people "on the bench" for weeks to months at a time between clients. When the time comes to get leaner, those who have been "on the bench" the longest are the ideal ones to get rid of, because they're the ones who will hurt the least to let go (specifically because there's leftover responsibilities that need to be assigned elsewhere or silo'd knowledge that may be lost).
I'd be on the lookout for something else.
Reality suggests the opposite. They're having OP hang around doing nothing for fear of being without them at some unknown point. If they're an expendable employee, what is management waiting for? They're literally throwing money down a hole.
Man, I don't miss finance.
After like a year of doing nothing, like around the 9th month mark, it starts to take a toll. Since my manager was constantly telling me there's not much I need to do other than explain lines of code and what they do in business terms. Often I would prepare something because I'm so fucking bored and then it would be brushed off as "cool but yeah no need".
The reason is that it feels too much like unemployment. Checking reddit, HN, github, eating company snack and getting fat, starts to develop impulsive gambling/day trading....
basically I was spending money to escape the fact how bored I was...it's really fucked up....I'm not sure what the dynamics are but honestly, it sure beats doing manual labor.
the lack of product market fit was painfully obvious by the volume of opportunities we were getting.
I honestly think that free time in office isn't free at all, it's fucking suffocating. You can't work, but you can't have fun either, i.e, have a beer and watch a movie, play videogames (the games on the company playstation are at least a decade old) , hang out with your girlfriend, go for an actual vacation. It's like you're stuck in limbo. You can't do anything productive or fun.
I can definitely attest to refreshing HN and Reddit too often to the point it was causing anxiety....
I don't know why I do it? I keep refreshing the page for some new comment and keep tabs on my karma points....
- I think it depends on how people are wired (if you have something personal you deeply want to do, you can avoid the useless negative factor into a "i have free funding for my project"). I used to be like that.
- I really wonder how much work = having the satisfaction to feel needed and help someone by your skills/knowledge/care.
For 4 months now.
Let that sink in.
What happened is that I transferred from a 'public' team to a 'private' team, which means that I might have access to privelaged insider information,which means I can't sit with the public teams. But there isn't any seat in the private rooms. So I'm sitting in the cafeteria, reading books, playing on the PlayStation, etc etc.
I ask my manager every single day when I'm going to get a new spot. It's usually 'next week for sure' or 'friday for sure'. Hasn't happened yet. During the first month, I stayed for 8 hours each day, doing nothing. I've gradually stopped giving a fuck anymore and am looking for other jobs now, even though this is a pretty sweet gig.