People Can No Longer Afford to Be Monogamous With Their Full-Time Jobs

The promise of a good job keeps most of us going on the worst of days. After all, as our capitalistic warlords would have us believe, a good life will be within reach if we just work hard enough, wake up early enough, and hustle enough. 

For Sunaina, a 25-year-old content creator, who preferred not to reveal her real name fearing legal repercussions from her former employer, the bubble of an ideal job burst soon after the company fired more than half its staff under a restructuring policy. “I was working for an extremely low salary for the first two months; it was barely Rs 20,000 ($240) which is nothing to pay rent in a city like Mumbai,” she said about living in a city notorious for its exorbitant rents. “Also, I had no specific role, I was a journalist one day, a video creator the next, and a social media manager the day after.”

Sunaina soon realised that a full-time job wouldn’t cut it. Even though she was creatively satisfied, she had bills to pay. So, she took up content writing on weekends, writing articles for other publications under pseudonyms. Her finances stabilised soon after but her work-life balance went out the window, as she had no social life and was glued to her laptop most of the time. 

Sunaina’s is a classic case of moonlighting: taking on a second job without informing your full-time employer. The dictionary definition of “moonlighting” is the act of secretly working a second job after hours or at night. In the pandemic, work-from-home led to anxieties flaring up – combined with the economic slowdown, indefinite shutdowns, indiscriminate pay cuts, massive layoffs and the fear of being altogether irrelevant in the new world order. So, liberated from the physical office space, many people across various fields started to hold multiple jobs. 

Recently, Wipro, a leading technology services and consulting company in India fired 300 employees for taking on work assignments outside of their full-time jobs. The CEO, Rishad Premji, claimed that those fired were working directly for the company’s competitors, which was a “complete violation of integrity in its deepest form.” He was, however, at the receiving end of hate mails for doing so. 

“Initially, I moonlighted because I wanted to pay my bills,” Sunaina explained. “Later, as the pay slightly increased, I realised that I had to keep moonlighting because my former employer could randomly fire me like they had fired my colleagues not too long ago. To prepare myself for that very real possibility, I had to have that corpus of savings.” 

Sunaina never got caught. She feared she might, but it was a risk she was willing to take. The erratic hiring and firing policy of her former employer had left her with no alternative but to plunge into the deep end. Eventually, she quit the job for a well-paying one. 

But how do people get caught moonlighting in the first place? “There was a case where an employer was caught moonlighting because they had dual provident fund accounts,” said Krunal Shah, who works as an HR, explaining that a provident fund​ is an investment fund in India that is voluntarily established by an employer and employees to serve as long-term savings to support an employee's retirement. “In India, there are various laws to tackle moonlighting such as section 60 of The Factories Act, 1948 (limited to factories) which prohibits dual employment. Regardless, many firms explicitly state in their contract that dual employment will be prohibited.”

However, he clarified that many firms allow employers to take up side gigs with various conditions such as not taking up outside work during office hours, not getting paid when during charitable work or for non-profits, and not working for a direct competitor. 

In cases where an employer is caught moonlighting, he added, firing them is an option or finding a middle ground and settling without going to court. 

Apart from the Factories Act, the sub-section “Exclusive Services” under Schedule I of The Industrial Employment (Standing Orders) Rules, 1946, says that “a workman shall not at any time work against the interest of the industrial establishment in which he is employed and shall not take any employment in addition that may adversely affect the interest of their employer.” In the United States, federal employees cannot receive income from more than one federal government source. European countries are more lenient in this regard as the European Directive on Transparent And Predictable Working Conditions adopted in 2019 requires the European Union Member States to ensure that an employer can no longer prohibit an employee from working for another employer or self-employment outside of the agreed working hours. 

For many, taking up an additional job might not be purely out of financial necessity. In the case of Aastha, a 29-year-old law professor and advocate based in the city of Bengaluru who prefers to give only her first name for this story, the “mundaneness of teaching a class full of privileged brats” for two years pushed her to provide legal aid at a heavily discounted rate for an organisation that helped senior citizens get a legal reprieve from their children who might’ve fraudulently usurped their assets and land.

“The teaching job paid well but that was it,” she said. “I dreaded going to work every day, which is not how you’re supposed to feel about a subject that you are so passionate about. Teaching should be enriching for everyone involved and that was not at all the case with these students. After a point, I didn’t even care if the college administration found out.”

For the most part, it’s the paying of bills that leaves people with no option but to moonlight. Ashish Chopra, who works as an HR executive for a U.S.-based multinational tech company, said that he was moonlighting during his first job because his full-time job simply didn’t pay enough. However, his boss didn’t like that he was not physically present in the office for nine hours. 

“I started food delivery on the side,” said Chopra. “When my boss would complain that I was not physically present in the office, I’d point out that it didn’t matter because all my work was completed on time and all the stakeholders were happy. Why did I have to sit in the office?” 

Chopra shared that his current company has a policy of “20 percent project” where they could dedicate 20 percent of their working hours to any project, outside or inside the company. In Chopra’s case, his 20 percent project is managing his own clothing brand. He clarified that his previous employer, an e-commerce giant, did not have this policy. But how does his present company ensure that an employee dedicates only 20 percent of their work to that special project? 

“Now, that’s a grey area. In my case, my manager is so far happy with my performance, so far. If my work starts getting affected, he will ask if my 20 percent project is interfering with the workflow,” he admitted. “I’ve seen people take up two full-time jobs where they barely sleep or eat, and that’s simply toxic.”

So, if you are considering moonlighting, you need to know exactly what you are signing up for. Beyond the legal repercussions, you must go for gigs that guarantee secrecy, respect your work and talent with commiserate pay, and don’t completely eat into your weekends as was the case with Sunaina. 

While we eagerly await the day that job contracts allow us the freedom and time to work for non-competitors after working hours, it’s only fair that you follow this rule regardless – of not moonlighting with competitors. Now, if you are actively working for a competitor with ulterior motives and sharing trade secrets, you will certainly be prosecuted because those rules, regardless of where you stay, are pretty damning. 

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