💑 Is cheating on your job okay? | Ep11 OoO

👔 Job Monogamy: The story of Marilyn & Woz

🌙 The Economic Times: Moonlighting gets 300 fired 

🙁 BBC Worklife: Companies not happy with side hustles

Hey! Welcome Back -

Do you consider yourself a loyal employee?

This week we take a closer look at the concept of job monogamy, and whether it’s still relevant or a completely outdated rule for remote workers.

Glad to have you with me for episode 11. 

Strap in, hold tight - it’s going to be an emotional ride -

Job Monogamy: It’s Making a Come Back

Ever heard of ‘job monogamy?’

Way back during the golden days of Hollywood circa 40’s and 50’s, icons like Marilyn Monroe were locked into film studio contracts that were 100% exclusive. 

These contracts were so ironclad you could liken them to marriage. 

When a star or starlet would flit off to work with a competing studio, it was often seen as cheating.

Sure 20th Century Fox made Marilyn a star, but she had a raw deal. Along with fame came a series of movies she was pressured to make - even though they were rubbish. 

At one point, she returned a cowboy script to the studio with TRASH scrawled in red ink across the cover. You couldn’t accuse her of being too subtle. 

As time galloped by, antitrust lawsuits changed the studio model and these days - famous actors can work with whoever they like. 

🤠 Imagine if a huge star like Will Smith was forced to make a bad cowboy movie?

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Anyway, 20 years later, a fresh-faced Steve Wozniak and a young Steve Jobs decided to start a fruit-themed company making personal computers. 

You might have heard of it. But what you may not have heard of, is that Wozniak worked at HP at the time.

HP was among the most powerful tech companies in the world, and his side hustle was a clear conflict of interest.

Woz did the right thing - he took the idea to HP first. They said no.

As a company that built calculators, HP couldn’t see a world where everyone would want a personal computer. He kept working at HP, and started Apple with Jobs in 1975 - in a garage. 

While most founders only dream of a billion dollar empire, their dreams came true.

Moonlighting: Normal in India

So what does this have to do with job monogamy?

Lately it’s been making massive headlines in India.

• 65% of tech workers know someone who is moonlighting (working 2 jobs)

Among the biggest stories is one about Rishad Premji, Chairman of Wipro, a tech and consulting firm.

He fired over 300 people for taking second jobs with rival companies.

Here’s what his tweet said -

“There is a lot of chatter about people moonlighting in the tech industry.  This is cheating - plain and simple.”

The tweet has sparked a war between two opposing views. 

• View 1: A job is a marriage, and a side hustle is a violation of integrity (an affair)
• View 2: Moonlighting meets a real need

India’s Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology, Rajeev Chandrasekhar,  agrees with the second view. 

Basudha Das reports on the minister’s quote, 

“Moonlighting represents two very significant phenomena. One, the entrepreneurial bug that has bitten every techie. Two, the talent deficit or demand for talent. For a company to forbid a young engineer from dabbling in a startup…they (companies) do not understand the change in the model.” 

Which side are you on? 

 A Dangerous Side Hustle: Big Companies Say No

Infosys, India’s second largest IT services company, has been sending employees warnings that dual employment is not allowed - and that if anyone is discovered they will face disciplinary action or will be fired. 

That’s an interesting one.

Mainly because we know that the founder of Infosys - Narayana Murthy - was working with rival company, Patni Computer Systems when he founded his company.

😏 ‘Do as I say, not as I do’ comes to mind.

Companies are dealing with the news in a variety of ways:

• They’re rushing people back to the office where they can be monitored
• They’re doubling down on productivity checks to catch slackers in the act

HR Expert Pradeep Gopi explained why so many companies are in a panicked state. 

Kalpana Sunder writes -

“Most companies have an objection with moonlighting when their resources are used by the employee to advance a competitor’s business, or when the employee loses focus on the main job at hand thanks to the distraction of the secondary job, says Gopi”

It feels like a generational divide to me. 

Younger workers stay in jobs for less time, and full time jobs are shrinking to short term gigs - like Uber and Airbnb hosting.

But we can’t dismiss that when a company’s IP is involved, things get messy.

What the Tinder generation finds perfectly reasonable, may horrify someone a bit older.

“I still love you. I just want to keep seeing other people, to keep my options open.”

Where do you think the dysfunction lies? The moonlighters, or the companies insisting that stepping out on a full time job is cheating?

Share your opinions with me and let’s get to the bottom of these love triangles. 

That’s all for this week - and remember the future of work is Out of Office. 

Andrew

This Week’s Shareable

• 65% of workers in India have a second job. The world is divided on whether having a side hustle is cheating or perfectly normal. Is ‘job monogamy’ a thing of the past? Read about it this week on OoO.