The overemployed game is all about exaggerating how much you're working and how difficult your tasks are. Targets, deadlines, and work scoping aren't chosen in a vacuum. We rely on the team to give us feedback about what they can accomplish in the expected full-time work week.
This goes both ways. If I'm handing out 80 hours of work every week, I need my team to tell me it's too much and I'll scale it down. The problem with overemployed people is that they must lie about their workloads and estimates to avoid being assigned more work than they can handle.
We had an overemployed remote person once. Like the parent comment, we noticed when they weren't performing at the same level as their peers (or even a reasonable level of expectation). They were also frequently unavailable for discussions, half-involved in meetings, and generally unreliable.
> For low paid service workers, it's acceptable and sometimes expected to juggle multiple jobs. Why is it unacceptable for office workers?
Low paid workers with multiple jobs aren't doing them simultaneously, but someone with two remote tech jobs is almost certainly trying to do both at the same time. Honestly if someone had infinite energy and could dedicate 8 hours per day to my job and then another 8 hours per day to another job and not overlap the two or run out of steam, I wouldn't care at all. But in practice, it becomes a constant game of lies and sandbagging that is just incompatible with running a fair and balanced engineering team. (Hint: It's often the coworkers who catch on before the manager because they can see very clearly that their peer is sandbagging)
You hire a doctor for a few hours, plumbers/lawyers for hours or weeks depending on the task, everything goes fine
but somehow software engineers have to come on board, sit at a company desk, wear a company shirt drinking company coffee every day
It'd be great if coders were organized as individuals and small groups that just took on tasks for fixed bids, like the fantasy world from the book "Developer Hegemony."
I could really go for six months off right now, but I'd have to fight tooth and nail to get it from my job, and it would severely hinder my career. So instead I'm just stuck chugging along until I've got enough saved up to quit and start my own company (or take some time off, then jump through a bunch of hoops to take on another prolonged period of full time servitude)
(Bringing it back to the topic at hand: That doesn't make it morally right to lie to your employer(s) and do a half-assed job. The overemployed people on Reddit/TeamBlind sound like a bunch of lying dirtbags who just say everything is harder than it is to cover for themselves slacking off, and aim to just get fired after a couple of years.)
At least for me I don't even have enough emotional energy for my current job, I can't imagine doing more than one. The trouble is this is impossible to measure and certainly isn't formally part of employment.
Maybe engineering staffing practices should be more reflective of the possibilities, but that’s best for a single Org to define for itself.
For low paid service workers, it's acceptable and sometimes expected to juggle multiple jobs. Why is it unacceptable for office workers?