So you want to be a pirate, eh matey?
thoughts on job-stacking
Several guys in their 20s and 30s have asked my opinion on job-stacking. For those not familiar, job-stacking is the practice of holding multiple full-time remote jobs simultaneously, typically in IT or other STEM fields. The issue came up recently after Substacker
started The Tortuga Society, a group where people support each other professionally, including job-stacking. The group embraces a campy pirate aesthetic and Bizmark describes himself as a corporate raider.
The job-stacking concept has generated controversy, but I’ve ignored it since the issue doesn’t affect me and I avoid petty e-drama. I am Gen X and above it all, remember?
However, for my young friends, I will share my perspective. As a 40-something guy who’s built multiple businesses, my initial reaction to job-stacking is what you would expect: to clutch my pearls in disapproval. It seems unethical to deceive employers by taking multiple full-time W2 jobs without their knowledge. Plus, there may be IP, privacy, and competitive considerations. I don’t like the “stick it to the man” ethos some job-stacker embrace, but then again I am not a pirate by nature.
More than anything, job-stacking seems unnecessary. If someone is talented enough to hold multiple full-time IT jobs, why not do it above board through a consultancy or as a 1099 contractor?
On the other hand, my view may be biased as I haven’t been a W2 employee since the 9/11 era. I’ve spent more time hiring and managing employees than being one. It’s also possible I am out of touch with the vagaries of remote work. Covid accelerated decades of employment trends in a matter of years.
Job-stacking advocates argue that if job duties are fulfilled and employers are happy, then having multiple jobs shouldn’t be an issue. I see their point, provided there are no IP or competitive issues. Successfully manning two jobs does not seem like the worst offense in the world, though I still don’t like the underlying deception.
Job-stacking can be seen as an awkward coping mechanism as the labor market shifts from 20th-century at-will employment to the kind of gig-workforce market Reid Hoffman says is emerging.
To them, the corporate social contract feels broken, and the career scripts their parents followed no longer seems reliable. Gallup reports that Big Business is the second-least trusted institution in the country, while small business is the most trusted. According to a recent study, Gen Zers are so disillusioned with the economy that some think it’s okay to commit fraud. I am not here to justify these attitudes, but understanding them is crucial before finger-wagging.
My hypothesis is that much of this is symptomatic of structural changes in the economy. Job-stacking can be seen as an awkward coping mechanism as the labor market shifts from 20th-century at-will employment to the kind of gig-workforce market LinkedIn Founder Reid Hoffman says is emerging.
In case you missed it, Hoffman recently predicted that the conventional 9-to-5 job will be obsolete by 2034 (full video here). He says AI will accelerate a paradigm shift in the workforce where workers juggle multiple contracts and jobs in a more flexible but less secure manner. His prediction sounds a lot like job-stacking writ large. Whether this is dystopian or a good thing is a topic for a separate discussion — as a teaser, imagine an era where a single person can create a unicorn company.
So while job-stacking isn’t for me, I am open-minded. I disapprove of it and also see it in a broader context. It seems obvious that we need new employment models, and maybe job-stacking will create pressure to create them. At the least, there is a lot to learn from their productivity practices. I am not joining the pirates, but I am not rushing to condemn them either.
That's my two cents. What do you think?
Hi Jeff--
Coming from the other end of Gen X -- having been a freelancer most of my adult life -- I've got no problem at all with job stackers, and I can tell you why in a single word:
Moonlighting.
Like you, I'm old enough to remember when this was the word that described holding down two full time (or near full-time) jobs to make ends meet. It was looked on with askance back in the 80s and 90s because of an implicit assumption on the part of employers that I regard as one of the most horrific norms in our culture:
That "my employee" is functionally equivalent to "my possession."
An employment contract (to say nothing of at-will employment) is an arrangement where the employer is renting the time, talent, attention, and efforts of an employee and putting them to work to generate capital for his business.
What the employee does on their own time (assuming it does not violate *explicitly delineated contractual terms*) is their own goddamn business, whether that be running their own small business, dancing at a strip club, raising money for charities the employer hates, or running a Wednesday night Bible study.
By the late 1990s, white collar 20th century norms had essentially shaken out to the point where W2 employees were considered (tacitly) as very well-treated slaves. The employee--not salaried employees, mind you, but hourly employees--were expected to have workplace spirit and buy-in, to be "loyal" to employers who weren't at all loyal to them, and to, in some important sense, derive their identity from their employment.
The term "wage slave" is not without merit in such a context.
One of the basic rules of contract law is that a contract is reciprocal, and a good contract should have duties of similar value exchanged between the parties to the contract.
If the employer is not obligated by contract to be loyal to his employees, he has no right (either legal or ethical) to expect that his employees will be loyal to him. With rare exceptions in small startups and team businesses, no employer builds his business plan around any given employee--it is unethical and inappropriate for an employer to, in turn, expect employees to build their business plans around him.
Given the above, it probably doesn't surprise you that I run my own shop ;-)
Anyhow, those are my 2c. Would love to hear your thoughts in response
-Dan
Thank you for the mention, Jeff! This article does a great job contextualizing the issue against broader trends in labor economics.
I think it's important to understand job stacking as arbitraging inefficiencies in the market. These days there are a ton of middle management roles that pay $200k / year but require four or five times the amount of work as a senior IC role one rung below that pays around $150k / year. Corporations aren't really creating an incentive structure that makes it worth it for a talented employee to take the management role over job stacking. They should pay the manager several times more.
Another factor is that valuable labor at any firm tends to be Pareto distributed while salaries will follow a more normal distribution. Most people demand a certain level of egalitarianism that is actually very anti-meritocratic in practice and creates perverse incentives that can be arbitraged by pirates (i.e. us). We've all worked with a lazy person who did almost nothing but got paid almost as much as us. Why is this allowed? Why shouldn't the fabled 10x engineer actually get paid 10x as much? If he's not getting paid 10x as much, why shouldn't he hold 10 jobs?
In terms of job stacking vs 1099 work or consulting--I'd say in tech there is an argument to be made for that, but lots of fields outside tech are very heavily credentialized by gatekeepers and rent seekers. Meanwhile the bosses will only want to hire McKinsey and Deloitte because they want access to their clout and wider resources. Because of factors like this industries like financial services for instance make it much much harder for a talented young guy to build a startup consultancy. But by job stacking you are effectively a one man consultant.
Also re: deception, I would argue that HR basically lies to the employee all the time and job stacking is just a defense against that to level the playing field. To my mind a world of at-will employment basically assumes amoral self-interest anyway, and all of these companies are pricing in employee dishonesty in their risk management framework (I actually worked on this in my consulting days lol).
Anyway, hopefully this gives people some useful info on our perspectives! If any of you would like to learn more about what we're building in Tortuga you can check out the link below:
https://www.tortugasociety.org/p/were-making-white-guys-rich
Smooth sailing! ;)