Second Jobs & the New Paradigm of Work

A few months ago, I wrote a short piece on rethinking the working week, in which I noted that the existing approach to our working week remains firmly rooted in 19th-century attitudes about labour, productivity, wages, and, a kind of moral value of work (think Weber and his famous thesis on the link between Capitalism and the Calvinism). We have certainly tinkered with the structure (shorter working hours, extended vacations, family leave, etc...)., but the underlying equation upon which that structure rests remains more or less undisturbed: wages = time.

I referenced an experiment taking place in the UK, in which businesses of varying sizes and sectors signed up to test the effects of a four-day work week. Well, some preliminary results have come in and show – to me, unsurprisingly – that the "4-Day Workweek Brings No Loss of Productivity" (to quote the headline from the NY Times). This could be, and in some cases no doubt is, a result of people simply working harder (or better) to compensate for the reduced hours of their working week. But it could also be something else...

You may have seen over the last months various stories about the "second job" phenomenon, especially for tech and tech-adjacent folks who left the office during Covid, took off their pants, logged into Zoom, and are not coming back. At home, and with time on their hands, many have opted to take on additional positions. Firms are not pleased. As an example, the credit report company Equifax turned its Big Brotherly love onto itself and using its extensive record base found that 2,5% of its sampled workforce had been working a second job. A recent Linkedin Post from the CEO of a startup named Canopy blew up when he reported that the company had "caught and fired two recent hire engineers who never quit their last job at at a big tech co when they came to 'work' for us." He then complained about the "new trend of picking up a second, full-time job while lying about it to both employers," and added a healthy dose of outraged Calvinist moralising about the "core moral issues at play" and how it represented stealing and theft from both companies.

Hmmm. Not so fast. In that particular case, the two employees were caught because they were doing a crap job, suggesting that they made a poor choice in opting to take on additional responsibilities, at least at that firm. But the problem was not the moral turpitude of two tech bros who thought they could pull down some extra dosh by taking on a second position. The problem was that the company needed more performance than they could manage. If, in fact, they had been able to juggle the two positions to the satisfaction of both enterprises, then what's the problem? The issue here was they miscalculated and took on work they couldn't handle.

But the very fact they thought they had the time to take on another position – and indeed, the whole wider "second job" trend – reveals something which I think intersects with the findings from the British study: many jobs are no longer a 9-5, Monday to Friday affair. And surely this scales as the inverse of the knowledge-input function required for the position.

For many firms operating inside the knowledge economy (by which I mean to distinguish from OG manufacturing operations that churn out widgets or low-skilled service sector labour), the skillsets needed to be competitive do not operate on an uninterrupted, 40-hour, five-day-a-week basis. Many technical, project, or customer management skills, for instance, require deployment of knowledge and expertise. That is not the same thing as time. As firms invest in their productivity base and as skillsets become more refined, is it surprising that the amount of time needed to execute a specific labour function should decline? The Calvinist-moralising, you're-stealing-from-me people will no doubt suggest that they should find other productive things to do. But if you were hired at a specific salary to provide a specific function and you can do it in a relatively small amount of time – and so that's what you do – what's the issue?

The paradigm is changing. Knowledge-economy firms seeking talent will find it hard to recruit inside of a time-sheet, clock-in-clock-out proceduralism. The old model that you're paid for your time is being replaced by a new model that you're paid for your knowledge, talent, competence and ability. And if that leaves lots of time left over, and instead of playing World of Warcraft you decide to pick up more work, that's not a societal moral failing. In fact, it's almost Calvinist.

I suspect for many Millenials and after them the Gen Z-ers and whatever the hell comes after Gen Z, new expectations are being and will continue to be shaped by a changing attitude about what productive employment should look like. At issue will be how long, for how much, and where we work. There's a whole new world of best practices that are in the process of being defined, and, if we do it right, we can finally move beyond the nineteenth century attitudes – and attitudinizing – that still permeate too many workplace cultures.

And on that topic, as a final note, let me plug a short but punchy book entitled "Work Remotely" written by Anastasia Tohmé (one of my former students) and Martin Worner, on the whole mechanics of making remote operations manageable. Remote work, like the "second job," is going to be part of the new paradigm. Figuring out how to manage these things effectively seems like a good idea, since I suspect turning the firm into a kind of surveillance state (turn on your camera!), and then wrapping it up in moral platitudes from a disappearing era isn't going to cut it if firms want to attract the talent they need.