I’m an ‘overworker’ and have 3 FT jobs - AMA

[SallyGs]

Ive had a few people now mention on the careers topic to do an AMA so am taking the plunge.

An overworker is someone who holds multiple full time roles at the same time. Started in the US and became big during COVID - for obvious reasons as it’s pretty much impossible to do with non remote work.

I currently have 3 full time jobs, at my peak I had 5 during 2020. And am working towards buying a rental property with my additional income.

So for anyone who has wondered about it or are interested in trying it themselves - AMA

What are these jobs?

When do you sleep?

They're remote - so wfh.
I'm guessing all three put together isn't really the equivalent of three full time jobs, really?

Is the basic premise that you can do a full time job in much less than 8 hours? How does it work in practical terms.

If you had 5 full time jobs at the same time, do you think you did any of them competently? As obviously you cannot have been devoting 40 hours a week to any of them…

What do you show on your CV?

Have you ever been tripped up?

With three full time jobs are you actually working 105-120 hours a week? Or finishing each of them in much less time that's expected? Do your employers know that you have two other full time roles alongside theirs?

The obvious question would be can you do all three jobs well, and how do you protect yourself against burnout? Oh, and does it make your tax situation complicated?

I don’t get how this works. Full time is 8 hours a day. If you’re doing the same work as a full time job in less hours surely it’s still a part time job? Unless you’re pretending to your employers that you’re working 8 hours when you’re actually doing less? Wouldn’t that be a breach of your employment contract?

How do you perform in performance reviews? And how do you deal with conflicting meetings?

How are 3-5 full time jobs possible? There are less hours in the week. 24 hours x 7 = 168

Did any of your employers have a clause in contracts about informing them of other employment?

If so how do you get around it- do they assume everything is part time

There are certainly people in the US who just don’t do any work, and are happy to take the money in the short term until somebody twigs and sacks them.

How do you actually do all those hours? And is it worth is assuming you have no free time?

3 full time jobs = 8 hours a day a day x 3 = 24 hours.

When do you sleep/eat/poo?

Is it like some of the people on the wfh threads who also look after their children, do the gardening and take the dog for a walk? There's jobs and there's jobs...

I met someone here who did it as well! So cheeky lol. He got rumbled but not for 4 months by which time he'd had 4 months wages.

When everyone else does. I work about 1-2 hours a day in each role, it’s easy to make yourself seem busy outside of this time!

I appreciate I might have this perspective because I work for a small charity and therefore wouldn’t dream of doing this - but aren’t you in effect stealing from the company you work for if they’re paying you for hours that you’re not actually working?

Can you talk us through a regular day for you then?

My main job is one I’ve held even before over working, it’s a snr marketing director role in a large consumer goods company.

My other roles are in marketing, one for a local agency and one for a large cosmetics company. Both my additional roles are less snr than my main role, one of which I don’t think would care about the overworking since they get snr resource at a lower cost!

The salaries are, working hours no

I work about 1-2 hours for each every day, but still get paid for my full working weeks

"1-2 hours a day" is not a full-time job. Are you being paid for 8 hours/day?

So you’re pretending to work when you’re actually not and then you want to use this money to buy a property that you’ll then charge other people to live in. (Apologies if I’ve misunderstood). It’s your choice and I get that salaries aren’t keeping up with cost of living etc but it’s not something that sits right with me to be perfectly honest.

I'm paid for my expertise. So my work is in fact 2hrs a day but the rest is spent waiting for someone to ask me a question. Still works out cheaper than hiring external consultant for that.