Article #59 : Moonlighting

The practice of working for one organization while also taking up extra responsibilities and jobs, typically without the employer’s knowledge is referred to as Moonlighting. Do you think it is ethical to do? What do the laws in India have to say about this? How about the pros and cons? Well, let’s find out the answers in this article with a fictitious story. 

Once upon a time in one of the popular cities of India, there was this young girl called Maanvi. Hailing from a middle-class family, Maanvi was a hardworking girl. She always kept her focus on her studies so that one day she could become a successful engineer and support her family. Her efforts and determination helped her in getting on campus placement in a prestigious tech company.  

Maanvi was on cloud nine, as soon as she started working, she took the complete responsibility of her family. Everything was beyond perfection, she was paid well, she was passionate about her work, she had a supportive supervisor. What else is required? In short, she was completely satisfied with her job. 

5 years passed by without any issues. Maanvi became an experienced professional and started knowing more and more about the IT world. She was nowhere an exception to the Comparisions that people make, usually her friends and relatives.  

All of sudden, many things started running in her mind, starting from her role, hike, promotion, appreciation, rewards, onsite, work culture, work life balance and what not. At some point she felt that she was offered less hike, she wasn’t given the promotion yet although her performance was up to the mark, she was never appreciated at the workplace although she kept doing so many things beyond her capacity, above all she felt her earnings and salary hikes were not in line with the rising inflation in the country. In short, she understood that she wasn’t getting the deserving credit. 

That’s it, Maanvi decided to look for a change. But in the meantime, Covid happened, the concept of work from home started, there were layoffs in the IT world. Luckily, since Maanvi was working in a giant company, this didn’t affect her much although her yearly hike got delayed. Maanvi’s feelings remained the same and she was waiting for the right moment to put her thoughts into action. 

To everyone’s surprise, after a year the remote work culture turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Huge openings for various positions started everywhere. Maanvi went into action and got placed in a startup company.  

But then there were some other questions in her mind. To what extent it is good to resign the job in this giant company and work for a startup? Would I get the required job security? What would happen if a recession comes? Lastly, why shouldn’t I work for both the companies? 

In the former job, Maanvi was in a comfort zone, she had a supportive supervisor, she even had a passionate work and in the latter one, she had handsome pay, there would be some amazing starting bonus, rewards and of course some exciting work. She simply combined both and felt the benefits to be extreme. Maanvi inquired about working at two places at the same time and got to know that there were so many people doing that way during the work from home scenario. This added fuel to the fire. She created a fake experience letter and fake supporting documents through her known contacts and got into the new startup company. 

Then the problem started. Maanvi was never a multi-tasker; at a time, she could concentrate on only one thing and do it perfectly. But now, the situation demanded her to switch between her two jobs. Although there was little difference in the work timings between the two companies that she worked for, it became quite hectic for her as soon as her second job used to start. Sometimes, she had to switch between her online meetings, sometimes she had to reschedule the meetings, sometimes she had to pretend to be sick and take a leave. All and all, she got overloaded with 2 jobs and that impacted her productivity. She couldn’t give her 100% in either of the jobs. It even took a toll on her health. 

Adding insult to the injury was the announcement of work from office from both the companies. She was in a daze on how to deal with this, she contacted her friends and understood that she had to resign one of the organizations if she would have to work from office. Based on her priorities, she decided to stay in the startup company and resign the former one.  

To her surprise, although she resigned, she was asked to attend the giant company office even during the notice period. Her supervisor noticed a lot of change in her behavior in office. He found that she was always in a hurry, confused, irritated mode all the time never like before.  

One fine day under tremendous pressure from the startup company, she had to start doing their work from the asset of this giant company. The automatic alerts triggered as soon as she tried opening the URLs related to the work of the startup company. Her supervisor got to know about everything when he confronted her and he was able to correlate everything that he observed. 

Maanvi got fired from the giant company even before her last day of the notice period since she was not in compliant with the employment contract and moonlighting policies. 

Unfortunately, the startup company also fired her citing her poor performance. Maanvi went into depression and it took a lot of time for her to recover and restart her life as a lecturer. 

Now, tell me, what do you think about Moonlighting? Although it’s been considered as an open secret in U.S., the Indian IT sector has divided opinions.  

Wipro Chairman Rishad Premji says, “There is a lot of chatter about people moonlighting in the tech industry. This is cheating – plain and simple” 

Infosys former director Mohandas Pai however disagrees saying, “Employment is a contract between an employer who pays me for working for them for ‘n’ number of hours a day. Now what I do after the that time is my freedom, I can do what I want” 

Tech Mahindra MD CP Gurnani says, “If you want to do it, sure. But be open about it and share with us” 

TCS COO N Ganapathy Subramaniam also describes it as an ethical issue saying, “you lose out in the long run when decisions like this are made for short term gains” 

Talking about the legal status of Moonlighting in India, A person may work more than one job in India without breaking the law. However, a person with a similar set of jobs could give rise to concerns about a violation of confidentiality because many employers include such restrictions in their employment agreements in addition to prohibitions against holding down multiple jobs. 

Moonlighting could be considered cheating if an employer’s contract calls for non-compete and single employment, which is the situation with the majority of conventional employment contracts. However, it is not cheating if the employment contracts do not have such a clause or provide relaxations. 

Under the Factories Act, dual employment is prohibited. However, in some states, IT companies are exempt from that rule.  

Talking about the Pros of Moonlighting, you have Money, Security, Freedom and New Skills 

The cons include time, conflict of interest, performance slippage and employer irritation 

Well, so the bottom line here is before looking for side jobs or starting a business, it is crucial for employees to carefully check their employment contract with their principal job to ensure compliance with any moonlighting policies. 

What’s your say on this? Let me know in the comments section. 

So, that’s the end of this article, I will be back with another amazing one soon.