Revenge of the Worker... But This Time, It's a Bit Different

With labor shortages persisting across many industries, we've seen workers assert their power in all the ways you would expect... People are quitting jobs – and industries – they no longer enjoy (and often, never did). Workers are skipping job interviews where the pay doesn't strike them as high enough. Workforces are flirting with organizing […] Not rendering correctly? View this e-mail as a web page [here](. [Empire Financial Daily] Revenge of the Worker... But This Time, It's a Bit Different By Berna Barshay With labor shortages persisting across many industries, we've seen workers assert their power in all the ways you would expect... [People are quitting jobs]( – and industries – they no longer enjoy (and often, never did). Workers are skipping job interviews where the pay doesn't strike them as high enough. [Workforces are flirting with organizing unions](. These are all actions that workers take when they feel like their efforts aren't being recognized and rewarded appropriately. On Friday, the Wall Street Journal dove into a totally different corner of the labor market revolt... Recognizing that employers often treat their professional workforce as expendable, blindsiding them with layoffs and piling mountains of work on those who remain, a new group of workers has emerged disgruntled... but not so much that they quit. Instead, they stay in their jobs. But they are disillusioned enough to hop off the career ladder and reclaim their time. They're pushing back and saying "no" to unnecessary meeting requests... rejecting aggressive deadlines for deliverables... and generally avoiding work responsibilities that don't interest them. And once these folks have tempered their ambition and successfully reclaimed their time, they use those extra hours to secretly hold down a second, full-time professional job. The Journal describes this small and entrepreneurial cohort as people who ask themselves: 'Why be good at one job... when [you] can be mediocre at two?' Sensing that the employer-employee relationship has become transactional – and that lifelong employment is a thing of the past – these workers are the ultimate mercenaries and free agents. And having two jobs pays off handsomely. The Journal quantifies it... Most of them say they are on track to earn a total of $200,000 to nearly $600,000 a year, including bonuses and stock. They have paid off chunks of student-loan debt, plumped their kids' college-savings accounts, and bought everything from an engagement ring to a sports car with the extra cash. Of course it sounds great if you can squeeze in the work... Why not? It's not a crime to work for two employers at the same time without their knowledge, unless you are violating some kind of employment agreement like a non-compete clause or regulatory condition. But it certainly sounds stressful. Having two jobs may not rise to the level of grift and deception required to maintain two families or two completely separate identities, but it certainly sounds like a lot of work... The practice also sounds like something that probably wouldn't fly in an office environment – it requires remote working. But given how things have been over the past year and a half, it's not hard to imagine how someone working in remote fields like tech or finance might pull this off. From the Journal... Alone in their home offices, they toggle between two laptops. They play "Tetris" with their calendars, trying to dodge endless meetings. Sometimes they log on to two meetings at once. They use paid time off – in some cases, unlimited – to juggle the occasional big project or ramp up at a new gig. Many say they don't work more than 40 hours a week for both jobs combined. They don't apologize for taking advantage of a system they feel has taken advantage of them. To me, this sounds exhausting... and complicated... and continually fraught with danger. As one worker stealthily holding two jobs told the Journal: I'll wake up in the morning and I'm like, "Oh, this is the day I'm gonna get found out." Despite the challenges, it turns out there are enough people doing this kind of thing that a website exists that is fully dedicated to helping people pull off a double work life... The website Overemployed was started by two tech workers who have figured out how to make a dual-career life work... According to the Journal, Overemployed "aims to rally workers around the concept of stealthily holding multiple jobs, framing it as a way to wrest back control after decades of stalled wages for some and a pandemic that led to unpredictable layoffs." Overemployed offers power to workers through advice for getting out of all the sticky situations that could lead to a two-timing worker getting caught. The Journal elaborates... The site serves up tips on setting low expectations with bosses, staying visible at meetings, and keeping LinkedIn profiles free of red flags. (A "social-media cleanse" is a solid excuse for an outdated LinkedIn profile, it says.) In a chat on the messaging platform Discord, people from around the world swap advice about employment checks and downtime at various brand-name companies. And employees are pulling it off. One tech worker explained to the Journal... "The beauty of working remotely is you actually have a choice," he says. The boss at his first company, he says, was distracted by managing up. The worker started handing off responsibilities to an eager new colleague. He took advantage of the company's unlimited PTO policy with a month off, citing COVID-19 burnout. By now he has perfected the art of diplomatically declining colleague requests. (Sorry, not enough bandwidth, he tells them.) If a complex project gets bogged down by co-workers, he doesn't try to get things back on track; delays can make it easier for him to juggle his multiple professional identities. When the worker gets called on simultaneously in both meetings – it happens – he drops one call, answers the other's query, and then pops back onto the "dropped" call. Sorry, he had a network issue. What was the question again? Among the deflection techniques suggested by Overemployed is the suggestion to make your presence known on the rare occasion you attend a meeting by speaking up a lot, even if only to ask unnecessary, repeated questions. Hold the "unexpected phone call from school" card handy if you must bolt out of a meeting with one boss to answer the other. To increase your odds of not getting caught... avoid startups. They will want you to work too hard. Also, don't start two jobs at once... getting the lay of the land concurrently at two places is just too much work. This much deception seems exhausting to me... But I'm sure plenty of folks get a thrill out of living close to the edge all the time... I freely admit that I have never been one for motorcycles, skydiving, or bungee jumping. I would put a long con of this magnitude in the same category of "too psychologically taxing." But the lawyers the Journal consulted about this said that in the absence of violating a non-compete or other agreement, the worst that is likely to happen to these two-timers if caught is that they get fired. Technically, they aren't breaking any laws, and it would be embarrassing for an employer to pursue legal action after letting an employee get away with this kind of thing. I had literally never heard of this phenomenon before the Journal article... and it's the single best argument against allowing remote work that I have ever heard. While the productivity of most workers soared when they were sent to work at home, it's clear that the people two-timing their boss are taking advantage of being remote to ratchet down their output... all while collecting twice as much with two jobs. It's true that most employees rarely get paid more for working harder and producing more... so it's not shocking that people are trying to pull this off. Of course, if this gets too common, the next great piece of enterprise software will probably be the one that catches these two-timers. --------------------------------------------------------------- Recommended Links: [The Five Tech Giants of the 2020s]( When the pandemic is finally over, most of the stay-at-home fad stocks will crash... But not all of them. A few of these companies will become the tech giants of the 2020s. Because there’s ONE pandemic habit that will not change... even after we go back to the office. [Click here to learn more](. --------------------------------------------------------------- [The largest FREE crypto giveaway in history is coming]( Jeff Brown was one of the first venture capitalists to back Coinbase, America's largest crypto exchange. On Wednesday, August 25, at 8 p.m. Eastern time, he's holding his first-ever crypto livestream... where he'll pull back the curtain on the largest FREE crypto giveaway in history. [Save your seat here](. --------------------------------------------------------------- Meanwhile, plenty of employees continue to practice a more traditional way of taking back control of their lives from their employers... quitting. As a sequel to some of the most epic job quitting episodes of the past year, I present the story of Milly and Brian... Over the weekend, a user of social media site Reddit locked himself out of his hotel room. When he went to get a new key, he found an unstaffed front desk, and the resignation letter below, from disgruntled employee Milly, addressed to her manager, Brian... Source: Reddit/vinboslice420 There are already almost 10,000 comments on the post... overwhelmingly taking Milly's side in the dispute. Internet sleuths didn't take long to figure out the hotel in question is InterContinental Hotels' (IHG) Staybridge Suites in West Des Moines, Iowa. And the Internet came swiftly, seeking justice for Milly... Source: Yelp The above is from Yelp, but the Google reviews for the hotel look similar. Milly claims to have overperformed at her job – going beyond the job description – and has little to show for it. Her frustration clearly struck a chord with the unlikely witnesses to her resignation letter, reflecting that most workers at some point will feel like they have been done wrong by their supervisors after going beyond the call of duty. It's that same sentiment of being taken advantage of in the past that allows these white-collar workers with two jobs to collect two salaries while delivering a "B-minus" performance, instead of the "A" results they are capable of... all while living guilt-free. Whether it's the stealth job two-timers or Milly's highly detailed "I Quit" letter, it feels like there are signs of a worker revolt brewing... even in the absence of strikes or other traditional methods of pushing back. In the mailbag, a reader asks about an upcoming U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ('SEC') rule enhancement, and another offers a take on capital gains taxes... Do you think what these two-job holding workers are doing is unethical... or instead, that if they can meet the minimum requirements and stealthily hold two jobs, all the more power to them? Do you think you would have the time, energy, and guts to try something like this? Have you met someone who pulled this off? Do you think employer-labor tensions are escalating in general? Share your thoughts in an e-mail to feedback@empirefinancialresearch.com. "Dear Berna, I am a member of Empire Financial Partners and I am wondering if OTC stocks recommended via Empire publications will be effected by this* SEC rule? I appreciate if you can either reply to my email or cover this question in your wonderful Empire Financial Daily email. I am sure others received the same email as below and have the same question and wondering if they have to sell all their OTC stocks before Sep 28, 2021." – F.S.M. Excerpt of forwarded broker e-mail: *New rules will affect your ability to buy and sell "Pink No Information" securities, including at E*TRADE On September 28, 2021, new requirements take effect that will impact the market for – and value of – certain "over-the-counter (OTC) securities" you currently hold or have held in the past. The new rules apply to "Pink No Information" OTC securities of companies that fail to publicly report and keep current financial and other company information and will restrict the ability of U.S. brokers, like E*TRADE from making these products generally available. Berna comment: My understanding is that this warning pertains to amendments to a pre-existing SEC rule. The amendments take effect on September 26, 2021. SEC Rule 15c2-11 has been around for decades and sets out requirements for broker-dealers who provide quotes on over-the-counter ("OTC") securities, which trade broker-to-broker, and not on an exchange. The amendments are meant to modernize the old rule and "recognize advances in communications technologies." Thanks to the Internet, it has never been easier to disseminate information, so the amendment pertains to increased disclosure requirements. The amendments require that certain straightforward disclosures be made public. Some of the items on the list include predecessor names for the company, the address of its principal office, the state it is incorporated in, the number of shares outstanding, the company's transfer agent, the most recent financial statements, etc. You can see the full list of requirements on this law firm website [here](. If these disclosure requirements aren't met, then broker-dealers might have to stop transacting in a security. These are very basic requirements, and any company that we recommend at Empire Financial Research would almost certainly be in compliance with such requirements. If you have concerns about any individual security and how the amendments might affect its trading, I suggest you reach out to your broker. "Berna, Refinancing a property (either residential or commercial) is my favorite way to generate equity to fund deals. If that [taxing on unrealized gains] were done, I think you would see an implosion in commercial real estate. It would have disastrous effects on capital formation. Don't they steal enough already. Politicians have no conception of what produces wealth." – Tim P. Regards, Berna Barshay August 16, 2021 If someone forwarded you this e-mail and you would like to be added to my e-mail list to receive e-mails like this every weekday, simply [sign up here](. © 2021 Empire Financial Research. All rights reserved. Any reproduction, copying, or redistribution, in whole or in part, is prohibited without written permission from Empire Financial Research, 601 Lexington Ave., 20th Floor, New York, NY 10022 [www.empirefinancialresearch.com.]( You received this e-mail because you are subscribed to Empire Financial Daily. [Unsubscribe from all future e-mails](