If you\u2019ve grown suspicious of your coworker\u2019s away status on Teams or their refusal to turn their camera on during meetings, there\u2019s a chance they might be trying to earn two salaries at once\u2014and fit it all into a normal workweek.<\/p>\n
The practice went viral on social media last month when a single software engineer was found<\/a> to be working at multiple Silicon Valley startups at once, prompting other companies to check whether they had fallen victim to similar deceitfulness.\u00a0<\/p>\n However, holding down more than one gig at a time\u2014sometimes even up to five\u2014may be bigger than some companies expect. After all, the continued prevalence of remote work has made it more challenging for employers to know exactly what their workers are up to.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you\u2019ve worked in corporate America, it is a lot of fluff and not a lot of substance,\u201d said one worker who spoke anonymously with Fortune. They currently work three gigs, making about $725,000 altogether.<\/p>\n At one point, they were balancing five roles total, something they said has been made possible by AI productivity enhancement, with new tools making it easier than ever to send emails, compile meeting notes, and draft deliverables\u2014and get it all done under relatively normal work hours.<\/p>\n \u201cAt this point it kind of became a game to me, how many jobs can I do at once and stay sane?\u201d they recalled.<\/p>\n Maxing out on jobs certainly paid. off. While juggling five at once, they estimated bringing in more than $1 million a year.<\/p>\n \u201cI have zero loyalty to a corporation,\u201d they added.<\/p>\n No regrets about taking work from others<\/p>\n Fortune spoke to a second worker who currently holds two jobs in the healthcare technology industry. And despite being a full-time worker making a combined amount of nearly $250,000, they are able to get all the work completed within 40 hours. They don\u2019t have concerns over taking jobs away from those struggling in today\u2019s rocky job market.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re hiring me for my knowledge and my expertise, not for hours worked,\u201d they told Fortune.<\/p>\n And while holding more than one job may raise eyebrows next time you have to put your work history on a resume, they said they will just write the best full-time role they had at a current period to avoid having to answer for holding two jobs at once. However, the demand for talent in the healthcare tech industry has not made it much of an issue.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t go look for jobs, jobs come and look for me,\u201d they said. \u201cTo be honest, I don\u2019t remember the last time I went to apply for a job. And since 2017, I\u2019ve had four different positions.\u201d<\/p>\n In fact, they said they got so many recruitment offers from firms trying to snatch up talent, the companies practically enabled overemployment behavior.\u00a0<\/p>\n Holding more than one job might be legal, but some people like Lewis Maleh, CEO of executive recruitment agency Bentley Lewis, don\u2019t recommend people emulate the behavior.<\/p>\n \u201cIf someone is doing a full-time perm job and being paid accordingly, they should not be doing another full-time perm role unless the company is OK with it,\u201d Maleh previously told Fortune<\/a>. \u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s ethical and will cost you down the road if you get found out. If you are doing a few part-time gigs, that\u2019s of course a different story.\u201d<\/p>\n A trend that might continue, but maybe not for long<\/p>\n Though both of the sources Fortune spoke with are fully-remote employees, some users on the overemployment Reddit community<\/a> have deemed it possible to secretly work at a second job while on site elsewhere. But by and large, working multiple full-time jobs has been enabled by the ability to work from home.<\/p>\n Despite calls for workers to return to the office from large Fortune 500 companies like JPMorgan Chase<\/a>, remote work is still common.\u00a0 In fact, 33% of all workers worked from home in 2024, down just slightly from 35% in 2023, according to the U.S. Department of Labor\u2019s latest American Time Use Survey<\/a>.<\/p>\n