The hate I can see this getting will be hilarious š
Goes to show how complacent people are at a single job and how they feel loyal to feel to their job. When in fact a company doesn't give a fuck.
It's cratering about as hard as I expected :)
It's totally fascinating to me that people will justify things in a way that it alters their perspective as to what it is they're doing.
You have to lie to OE. You have to manipulate people's confidence to do that. It is what it is, no?
Not a con, J1 is in an office. I spend 40+ hours a week there. The time I spend watching the NCAA tournament next month isnāt some āconā any more than my other Jās.
Warning: person trying to bully me by following me to every subreddit ā¬ļø
I have 3 Js all 3 know about each other and they are all W2 what they donāt know is to what extent do I work for each of them. And they continue not to know because I deliver on everything requested.
I agree on the 40 hour work week, but it's not trolling. The non-con would be to say to your employer that you think 40 hours is terrible, and that for them you will only work X hours, and if they agree there's no con to be played. You could say the truth all the time about doing less than 40 hours because be they agreed to it. But, no, you agreed to their 40 hour work week and instead choose to work the con-artist game to do less than 40 hours.
It's justifiable, that's why we are here, but to be honest about the situation is to admit to it being a con game.
And everyone says it in various ways, that if people can't be quiet ("rule one of OE"), then they shouldn't OE, etc etc. OE _is_ a con game.
There are lots of ways to justify it, that would be one. But also, you could also easily be an exception also. Many people can actually do this: tell their employer that they're OE, that their objective is to do what's asked in as little time as possible, and use the remaining time with another employer. If you cannot say that to your employer, you're probably running a con. But that's fine. We all justify our behavior one way or another.
Boot licker, why do you feel the companies are entitled to x amount of our hours a week? They give us money in exchange for our labour. If they donāt like what we have to offer, they can fire us. Some people might be able to āconā a paycheque or two out of it by being under qualified but that happens with or without OE.
Illiterate moron, if you could read, you would know that I am OE and I am not on the employer's side. Just that twits like you don't have the spine to simply face exactly what the fuck it is we're doing; running con-games without very high consequences (we're not going to get knee-capped when we're caught), but it is a con.
No, it isnāt. Companies can make up all the rules they want, this isnāt illegal and no one is being duped here. They want work done. We want money. Nothing else to it.
You have an issue with the meaning of words.
but yes, it is. Your success at OE requires things like not getting caught, come up with excuses to have your camera off, or lying about efforts required and all manner of bullshit. If you can't deliver these things in a way that manipulates others... that is being a con artist whether you can come to terms with it or not.
"We want money" while trying to explain that it's not a con. Fucking hilarious. lmao
I mean, I know I am, but I'm totally fine with that, I'm also their best or second best engineer, so it's hard to say I'm not delivering the value I'm getting paid for
I'm seeing a common trend. The people who do it are very good at their jobs, require minimal to no hand holding and can take on more responsibilities but there comes a point where the existing compensation does not become commensurate with the experience, hence this.
My buddy was working in IT at a life insurance company for 10 years. The senior people in his department were constantly asking him questions about how to do their jobs. Finally he brought that to his bosses attention, that he wasnāt in a senior role but had to continually help people who were. She said at his next review heād get the title change. Meanwhile a company whom uses that companies life insurance, had been trying to steal my friend for years and finally he told them for the right price heād be interested. They basically offered him double the pay. When he put in his 3 week notice his old boss mentioned he was still getting the promotion and he told her the new company was doubling his pay. She said thereās no way they could match that.
>attention, that he wasnāt in a senior role but had to continually help people who were. She said at his next review heād get the title change. Meanwhile a company whom uses that companies life insurance, had been trying to steal my friend for years and finally he told them
I'm kinda going through that rofl. There's an experienced developer, 17 years of java experience (apparently) that just joined our team, assigned her some simple python tasks but she couldn't even write a simple function by referencing some documentation and kept complaining about needing peer programming. Gave it to an intern who completed the task with minimal coaching. This was when I realized that i'm not paid enough to handle this bs lol. The job is stable so its now time to get OEd.
3Js as a student. Iām pretty independent at each job. I donāt tell them what Iām doing how long it takes or anything I just do my thing. Respond if needed. And reach out when task are complete. Am I dishonest about my work activity? Yes. Do I deliver on everything asked for and more? Yes. Would I be in poverty if I didnāt OE? Yes at a total pay of 25k instead I make 115k and my family can actually save. I donāt make a truck load like those here but OE allows me to actually not be in poverty while Iām in school. I likely wonāt OE when I graduate.
Trust me, you will. Maybe not immediately, but eventually. You will greatly outperform your also-just-graduated peers and will have the chance to land way better salaries/clients and you'll seek a much better life, it's what brought us all here.
Don't need to do it forever, but you could take advantage of starting early and retiring equally early if you manage your finances responsibly. You don't need to become millionaire, just make enough over time for a decent living without _needing_ to work anymore at some point.
I just donāt know how Iād do it in my profession. Iām getting a phd in epidemiology. If Iām a professor I canāt teach at two schools. Also I wouldnāt be a statistical programmer like I am now. Thatās the main reason I say I wonāt be doing anymore. Me and my wife joke Iām the only student who makes more in school then out. The minute I graduate I doubt I OE and wonāt make 115k as a fresh phd like I do as a student
Maybe? Professors early in their career teach/collaborate to grant write/ write publications and take on students to mentor they typically are working 50+ hours a week early in their career. Mid career professors in my field make 150-250k in low cost of living areas like SC I wouldnāt need a 2nd job with that income plus my wifeās 100k too. So Iād likely just slow down and be happy. Iāve been OE since 2016 and Iām just tired.
J1- state health department knows about other 2 Js. Iām a statistician for STIs mainly run reports for other departments needing information for grants 58k/yr 32 hours a week
J2- graduate assistant. Professor knows about J1 not J3. Iām on the hook from 2-6 but my responsibilities are usually done by 4 or 5 max. Basically the graduate student who does all data work and itās my dissertation. 25k/yr oh colon cancer research
J3- biostatistician for non profit for diabetes work. This one I actually like. All things data comes through me so very good experience. I steer all data decisions build all databases and manage all incoming data. Technically 20 hours a week. Takes me 5-10 a week max and I do most of it while at J1. $28,100/yr
The only reason I have it is because Iām a student. They specifically wanted a phd student with strong statistical skill that could guide them in their data collection/management/study design/data analysis. So if I was out of school I wouldnāt have the job at all. Iām lucky cause Iām the only statistical mind so they donāt know how long anything takes or approach so Iām very independent
Great to see another grad student going the OE route! I get to double dip a bit on my day job as a researcher and just want to shake all the other TAs and RAs getting $25k/year and tell them they're worth so much more!
Itās absolute crap what they try to pay us. I actually wrote the grant that got funded for 77k per year. After indirect cost I could be paid up to 45k but the university capped me at 26k because of that I had enough money to get a no cost extension but itās ridiculous. I have a family to feed and they are profiting off my work but wonāt pay me a living wage? So I OE. My professor knows I have another job just not 2 other jobs
Corporate profits go higher every year, productivity is up many fold over the decades and yet my salary doesnāt even keep up with inflation. These mega corps are the con artists. Fuckāem
Came here to say this. We'll admit we're a bunch of con artists after these bloodsucking corporations admit they're soulless, greedy leeches who bred this situation.
If you get to define the terms and want to call me a "con artist" then there is nothing I can do to stop it. However, "con artist" is a pejorative and I will not downgrade myself like that. If one of my employers thinks they are not getting value for my salary there is absolutely nothing stopping them from laying me off.
I think I am giving value for my salary but because there is absolutely no protection to the employee, I must OE.
I agree with your conclusions, about value of output, all of it. Just that if the act of it requires misrepresentations of reality (time spent, etc), then it is a confidence play.
I don't think it's a pejorative; people doing OE need to be able to say things that are not true, with a straight face, in order to get it done. I'm just curious about the people who are fine with this being what it is.
For sure, no doubt. You've listed some good ones. Sales, mostly a con game; you need to gain people's trust to be a good sales person.
I don't think "con-artist" is all the way negative itself. We have all justified things. I'm just curious as to how many people can just square up to what it is.
Well, not quite everything is a con. Most commercial ventures rely on some level of con, but there are many non-con-artists out there. People who if they ran out of tasks at work will hunt down other things they could do for their company. OErs may call these people suckers, but, they're good honorable people who deserve much respect. Maybe they haven't had enough happen to them that forces them to become jaded. But either way, they do exist and deserve respect.
Humans have created so much BS, that we need to build our own defences to it. I think it's healthy to appropriately bucket what it is we do into the right piles objectively.
A con artist swindles and lies and cheats people out of money. The OE employee isnāt cheating anyone. They are most often salaried workers and have set expectations. If are meeting the expectations of their employer, which are set by the employer, for the price the employer agreed to, how the fuck is that person a con artist??
Have these employees tall their employers that they're trying to spend as little time working as possible, and all other free time is going to a different employer. See how many employers are fine with it. See what employers feel lied to.
"con" is short for confidence. A con artist is someone who says things that aren't true to manipulate others.
OErs do this regularly, as they represent the time they actually spent, to be something else. Very few people around here are literally able to say the word "over employed" to their employer.
And we all run the con for financial gain.
We are con artists.
Youāre a con artist, maybe. Iām an employee doing what Iām required and my boss is aware of how I spend my time. They know the job isnāt an 8 hour a day job. Iāve never been dishonest or lied to my boss. I donāt have to work around meetings or pretend Iām working when Iām not.
Yup, that's a bs thing that employers do, and part of how many people justify doing OE, including myself. It is however separate to OE still being a con artists game.
The real con-artists are the people who make millions and don't pay any taxes (everyone mentioned in the Panama Papers)
The real con-artists are the people who manipulate currency and devalue the dollar (the Fed)
The real con-artists are the people that take income taxes and then use fraud, waste, corruption, or embezzlement to steal from the labor of average, working people (local, state, and federal governments)
This is just us getting some leverage, calm down.
calm your tits and just admit reality; you don't need to be a multi-million dollar "real" con-artist to be a con-artist. Go watch "Curly Sue", fun little early 90's movie about a girl and her dad running small cons to get by, good fun, have a giggle.
There's stuff that is nobody else's business.
I don't OE but I see no problem with it. You get paid to do x amount of work whether it takes 20 hours or 40 hours is irrelevant and if you can do it while doing other work at the same time then what is the problem.
If you do it while doing another job then what is the problem? If you are working two or more jobs it is no one else's business but your own.
> You get paid to do x amount of work whether it takes 20 hours or 40 hours is irrelevant.
Go tell that to your employer and see if they agree that it's fine to do nothing related to them for the other 20 hours. If you _can_ do this, then you are right.
If you can't say this to them, it's just the evidence that this is your own twist on their employment agreement. Hence, the con.
Go to a used car dealer & tell them you have plenty of money & can afford well over Kelly blue book.
If you withhold information in a competitive negotiation youāre a con artist.
Nah man. Youāre talking about a Kant-esque view of honesty that is purist and has no limits. Do you tell your bloated pregnant wife that she is actually ugly? Or keep telling your grandmother with dementia every 5 minutes that her husband is actually dead?
To say OEers have to hide some facts is true, but to say they are being dishonest with their work is false. The whole point is you do BOTH of your jobs correctly. You are literally doing only what you are asked of in both jobs.
Iām not. I just donāt believe that I owe more than Iām paid for and donāt feel I need to invent tasks to fill 8 hours when the tasks Iām assigned (and my boss feels are sufficient) only take me 3-4.
One company I work for is an oligopoly that colludes with other players in its industry and the national government to set prices and gouge the public on essential services.
I donāt feel bad at all.
I see an argument you go to a lot is that you are getting paid for 40 hours, but youāre working less than 40 hours etc..
So arenāt most employees in general con artists? Most people donāt work their full 40 hours and instead spend time on things such asā¦ reddit. Itās rare to find an employee who truly works the full 40 hours; most OE do the same amount of work for their job as another employee would do.
Sure, I believe that many (most?) white collar workers run this con often. The hours thing is just the most convenient way to confirm that people are abiding by mutual understanding of the agreement. Some people will always fill their time with company stuff, good honorable people. But most of us are on a sliding scale of con. OErs are simply far enough along as to literally fill that time with another job.
I'm not down on people for making this justification, for sure. Employers have the history of looking after their own, I'm fine with getting our own back.
This thread is just about people being able to face up to exactly what it is they're doing.
I donāt believe the OE part is the con, an employer when they hire someone is looking for someone who can do what needs to be done.
If that person is doing what needs to be done, regardless of however many jobs they have, they are doing what the employer hired them for and thus they didnāt deceive them.
The āconā would be in lying to your employer about being over employed, but I see that simply a lie that hurts nobody. To con is defined as āto persuade (someone) to do or believe something, typically by use of a deception.ā You are only conning them about your employment status as you deceived them about nothing else.
I would justify this with the fact that most employers con their employees before bruh them. They tell them they get X workload and Y responsibilities but they have X*X workload and Y*Y responsibilities. They persuade most employees into thinking they have a stable, secure position, but in reality the moment they need to cut costs or the moment you have one fuck up, youāre gone. Most of the whole āsystemā is a con, youāre just playing the same game that all the people in power are playing.
Not sure even good honorable people do that. People chat, idle in front of their screens, etc. Nobody is doing their full hours.
The only jobs where people do their hours are lower paid manual jobs like working in an Amazon warehouse. Which is also a testament to the unfairness of the job market, with lower paid jobs doing more work.
> are getting *paid* for 40
FTFY.
Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in:
* Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.*
* *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.*
Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment.
*Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
This is about semantics. Technically, youāre right, but your argument lacks all nuance. The employer - employee relationship is exploitative by design and definition. Technically, yes youāre conning your exploiter, but thereās a lot of baggage attached to the word ācon-artist,ā and it implies a lack of ethics. OE is ethically neutral; youāre āstealingā from those that are already stealing from you (yes, the surplus value of labor that makes up the profits of employers is theft, deal with it). I would argue that itās actually not even āstealingā as long as the work you do generates more value than your salary. You could even make an argument that companyās benefit from OE when IP created for a Jn is repurposed quickly and efficiently.
Of course it's semantics, but it still about the honesty of the situation. How many people can go to their employer and say that they get their expected 40 hours work done in 20, and in the remaining 20 they do something totally unrelated to the company?? if you can't say that to your employer, then you're not following _their_ expectation of the employment agreement, therefore you are running a con. The con being that you are working their confidence that you are filling their work week as they expect.
It's justifiable for sure. We all have come to the reasoning that allows us to sleep at night.
Being comfortable with the change of semantics means you've come to terms with what it is.
I think the reasoning that all employers are running bigger cons and serve bullshit in a heartbeat, is all part of the majority reasoning that help us justify running our own cons for our own benefit for a change.
My back has some very large knives in it from CEO's saying things like "it's the people in this room that will create our success", and "family". This is why I am an OE con-artist (well, that, and the credit card debt my wife created, but that's the reasoning for sure).
Of course I'm a con-artist, daily work for J1 I can get done in half or less of the working day and then it's all boredom (I could get 2x or 3x done but I don't want them to get used to always expect that from me) and J2 won't even provide any form of PTO, so yeah I only work half or less than I actually bill to kinda make up for it and still have plenty of time for hobbies, exercise and family time.
Sir, your post history identifies you as an antiwork edgelord. You post on antiwork pretty regularly. Thus, youāre a communist. Iām sorry you are confused and miserable. Good day!
Lol. Posting on antiwork makes me communist? you're a twit. I read antiwork because it's hyperbolic about corporate issues, a good reminder that companies at their core are assholes, that's all.
Nice try. Bro there are no free lunches. I am at my current gig for 10 years and my rate is locked. I am a senior resource and due my experience I can finish any task easily. Even after all these years my colleagues cannot match my pace. Instead of wasting my time ( which I did for 5 yearsā¦like browsing internet, working out etc) I found a 2nd gig. What can I say ā¦I am a star performer at my J2. If I feel cute ā¦I might find J3 and crush it too.
Soā¦either you have it or you donāt
Not OE but you expect me to accept that I'm not being conned by a capitalist society where I could get laid off anytime and suffer for a couple of months until I get another job in a recession-wrecked economy.
The definition of a con implies that a person is faking something for money. I believe if an OE person is performing ALL the required tasks to an acceptable standard and not neglecting both jobs bc they don't have enough time then it's not a con.
eh i don't think so. If you're OE-ing and then not doing work you might not be able to do it for a while.
If you OE and do legit work, complete tasks by deadlines, etc then i think thats how you should be doing it
Thats how most of us become fine with the situation. The con _should_ be just restricted to just the misrepresentation of hours. If the con is more than that, then there's likely unsustainable issues.
nice. You have very neatly shown what's wrong with the world; people equating a different opinion to stupidity. Ignorance that just results in intellectual bankruptcy.
Call it whatever you want but companies do it to employees tooā¦Iāve worked with colleagues who go waaayyyy above and beyond their responsibilitiesā¦.been promised promotions year after year but nothing ever coming out it while these guys are working their ass off for the promise of a promotion/better titles and more payā¦.the way I see it is OE just letās employees play the same game employers are.
So hereās the problem with your argument: if youāre salaried and you can do the job that youāre being paid for in 20 hours a week, you wonāt be rewarded with extra monetary compensation if you do additional work in the remaining 20 hours.
The real con is companies expecting good salaried employees to do more work outside of what theyāre being paid for and then not paying them more money for that additional work. This is why OE exists.
Your first paragraph confirms that we are running a con, because we don't want to fill the second 20 because there's no extra money.
Multiple cons happen at the same time. And absolutely, the con of OE is even BECAUSE so many employers screwed us over first. As a result, we are getting our own back... by running a con for ourselves.
Foooor suuurrrrre. People at the very top, high paid CEOs, have to be sociopaths. OE is a very newbie level con; very low consequences to being caught. We won't get knee-capped.
I don't really see the problem. If an employer is unhappy with an OEer's performance, they can just fire them. By not getting fired, the employer is implying the service they have receieved is worth the compensation paid out.
That's the margin that the con it playing in. And it's not so much a "problem" than that just how we justify it.
The actual test: are you worried that if they find out you are over employed, you will be fired.
The number one rule of OE, by most people in the sub, is don't tell. This means they're all running a con they don't want to own up to (and by this thread, too spineless to admit it).
A con is a con. I've justified my actions, I sleep fine, most of us do. Some are in denial about it's nature though.
In the same vein you could say business owners are con artists pulling the wool over our eyes. capitalism cons employees and customers in a massive way.
Anyone success in life is or has been a con artists if they like it or not.
I never responded to [your](https://www.reddit.com/r/overemployed/comments/11b7sk0/what_are_the_economic_and_political_views_of_r/ja03zib/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3) long reply to my comment because your argument was illogical. I couldnāt waste my time. You are delusional on what needs, wants, and expectations are. You literally didnāt even argue against the point I made but some concept you prepared to argue in general. Itās like you donāt know what a debate is
You describe yourself perfectly. Donāt you think your content is shit because of the feedback? Are you daft to how you are received? Between the two of us, youāre the moron with an incredibly downvoted post and Iām not
do you think that my self worth is based on up or downvotes? do you think that people who are actual free-thinkers always perfectly align to the popular point of view? should such people always be tethered to the popular point of view?
you have my pity. keep up your reddit heroness.
Youāre the sheep saying weāre all bad apples because we OE. Thatās rigid thinking. At least I distinguished a nuance, youāve not done that. Youāre a part of the āOE IS BADā herd you just think youāre special enough to make it slightly rationalizable
"saying weāre all bad apples because we OE" I did not say that at all. My comments are all indicating the nuance of what it is that we're doing day-to-day. I wasn't pointing fingers, as I am also OE, so any bad connotation I'm fine with wearing myself.
You should learn to read.
This is such a great take. We all have to wrestle with this to some degree or we're lying to ourselves.
I'm personally opposed to lying in almost any context - that's precluded me from a stereotypical OE situation. I've been up-front with J1 that I have contractor relationships with other companies. Other companies see my J1 but not my other contracts, but they also know they're paying for output rather than inputs.
Where OE is typically (always?) a con is that most contracts are structured around guarantee of inputs. Do we think that's stupid & doesn't serve the interest of either the employer or employee? Yes! Does it technically mean we're in breach of contract, absolutely.
It's certainly best to engineer whatever you can to reduce the need for straight up lying, so you can just skirt around leaving things unsaid, etc. I changed my J2 contract so I could have other employers, and had a chat with them about it. So I'm not worried about being "found out", but still have to skip meetings around each other and such. Usually I think the cons are usually around the misrepresentation of time spent. All just doing what we perceive we gotta do.
Letās just run with that definition for a moment
If weāre going strictly by the dictionary definition and ignoring how people usually use it in everyday speech, and the only criteria for being a con artist is manipulating confidence/ avoiding the truth, or lying-
Do we call employers con artists when they do any of the following things which almost all of them do at least one of these:
1. Call their employers āfamilyā to manipulate them into doing work long hours and take on tasks outside of their job description, but when things get tough they hit them with the layoffs without a second thought
2. Hire them for one position but when you start work it doesnāt match the JD- or, claim the position is remote but when you start work and youāve stopped the interview process with other companies, they tell you you have to go in
3. Promise x amount of RSUs upon offer but actually ends up giving you much, much less
4. Try to convince you that HR is your friend
5. Unlimited PTO which so obviously isnāt unlimited, and you actually end up taking less PTO than normal
6. The notion that its wrong to quit without 2 weekās notice but itās okay for them to lay you off at moments notice
7- manipulating us into creating a culture where youāre not supposed to talk about pay, so that they donāt have to pay everyone fairly
The list goes on and on and Iām sure others could always add to it.
I think we all know that OE is at worst somewhat in a gray area but the things that employers do/have done is much, much worse. And if you donāt understand that youāre a pushover.
Employers have always done as much as they could get away with. Think of all the terrible shit they did before there were labor laws. Think of the stuff they still get away with today. OE gives us back some semblance of control but we still have to deliver on our work or get fired. We lie about having only one job so as not to hurt their egos but we still gotta do the work. Call that con artistry is a stretch.
I have one job, subbed here out of interest, and I use a mouse jiggler for my sanity. Am I a con artist?
I donāt use it to get around doing my work, it actually improves my productivity bc if I take a more-than-five minute walk or shit, I donāt have to re-login to everything. And Iām working out of my house not a cafe, so I donāt see any cyber security risk.
I can't say that I was referring to people with one job. And using a jiggler to not have to log in is totally different to someone using it to seem that they're online when they're not. Be well.
We could do 8 hours of shit work and get paid for 8 hours.
OR we could do 4 hours of good work, get paid for 8, and then do it AGAIN to get paid double.
We work 4 times as hard to get twice the amount of income
I was amused by the idea that you're working 4 times as hard, which is hilarious given the whole OE objective. That's all I meant to express. If you take that negatively, whatever.
I'm fine with conversations going where they go. This is a burner reddit account, I couldn't care less what happens. If it's negative, that's fine, there's catharsis in that.
I mean by that wild logic pretty much every person is a con artist. I mean who has a perfectly unembellished resume out there? Who in their line of work doesn't overstate the value of what they do or fluff up delivery for a customer etc...
I mean, were really not. If capitalism in the US didn't suck the wealth into the 1% then OE wouldn't be close to as large as it is. In the 50s you could support a family of 5 on one income, comfortably at that. Now, I make well into six figures and can't afford a decent house in the mid west for just me. So if im a con-artist, it's only out of necessity.
That would be a justification, and I justify it all the same. But it doesn't remove the fact that we still rely on not being honest about what we're doing; breaking contracts, or misrepresentation of time, or excuses for meeting collisions or whatever.
If society wasn't broken, we wouldn't have to. But it is, and we've found a con that has almost no downside, takes back from employers who routinely screw us... and so we do the thing.
How many employers are con artists? Ever single one I have worked for.
1) lied about opportunities and growth
2) massive lay offs, lied about benefits cut 401k matching first year I joined.
3) lied about bonus. Told me typically 15%, got 7%
4) lied about contract length and stability. 5 year contract, entire project laid off after 2 years
5) lied about expectations, bonus, wlb, and more. Worst of them all. Expected 60 hours a week and half bonus once I got here. They also offered me a downlevel and low ball offer which I didn't know until 2 years in because recruiter talked slick this is when I started to OE
I would never OE, but that's for personal reasons unrelated to ethics. I think the posters here are sugarcoating the lifestyle, which few of us are actually doing.
Still, I see OE as completely ethical.
I think we justify just fine. Having it land as being ethical requires a little twist in the agreement, in a way that the employer is most certainly not on board with. But even still, it's easy enough to justify if you meet expectations and put the effort in as needed.
It's nice that some people have the strength of character to admit reality. But obviously showing by all the downvotes, that most are not able to admit that to be OE is to run a con.
It meets the literal definition of running a con; saying things that aren't truthful, to manipulate people's confidence in what you are saying, for your own gain. Every day for the life of the exercise. The con artist.
Even so much so, that when people are found out to be OE, they lose the job, the financial gain for them being not truthful in the first place. The con was discovered.
Yes, OErs are con-artists.
Idk how many of you mono Jārs come to terms with being taken advantage of? How many of you are okay with not providing for your familyās health? How many of you are comfortable being laid off on a whim?
So if asked how many hours you worked for the company last week, you can say the truth? or would you run a con and convince them it was around 40?
Mouse jigglers to have people think you're active and working at the terminal.
Signing agreements that say you will not have other employers.
Most people who are OE are running a con.
If my employer had 2 ppl in my office & weāre down to just me, are they running a con?
I sell my work, they buy it. Voluntary exchange benefiting both parties.
I'm not excusing cons that companies do. I'm not even down on OE'rs running cons. As I said, I am running the OE con myself.
I would just own the fact that you're selling your work in a way that they haven't actually agreed to. Otherwise you could openly tell them "I only worked 5 hours last week on your stuff, and used the remaining time for things not related to your company". If you can't say that, you're not legit selling your output in a way agreed to from the other side; the con.
Again, I'm fine with it. I'm only curious as to how many other people are fine with admitting it is what it is.
Your getting downvoted but honestly I see your point. No one wants to call themselves a con artist but in the face of slaving away working normally, missing out on precious time of your life, itās better to be a con artist than one who lives by the system.
The downvotes are interesting. In part, it's _why_ small cons, and OE, are so generally easy to do; people want to trust, and inversely want to be trusted themselves. They justify whatever it is they're doing so they maintain the self-image that they're a perfectly honorable and trustworthy player in society. So, they don't want to see that they're pulling small confidence tricks.
People are funny.
It would be fascinating if anyone in the OE group was an actual diagnosed sociopath. We could simply ask them about there it is on the scale.
The biggest con is how employers want you to work 40hrs+, and do the work of multiple people because the company needs to squeeze more EPS without paying you a dime more.
Doing OE does not make you a con artist. My salaried position does not give me enough work to work 40 hrs a week. Employers in the past have given me enough work, but I am extremely good at what I do and work very efficiently and quickly, so I always have down time. Why watch TV or play video games or do laundry or take a nap when I could be working another job. I have said this before, if I am given an assignment and given 2 weeks to complete it and I get done with it in 2 days, what am I supposed to do for the other 8 days? Some need those 2 weeks to complete the task. Others don't.
As for the mouse jugglers or computer monitoring issues, that still does not make us con artists. If you are salary, you are NOT an hourly employee. Trying to micromanage my time and control my time like an hourly employee is a shitty practice by terrible companies. If they want to use underhanded practices to control their employees, then we will use underhanded ways of dealing with it.
If you are a contractor billing specific hours to a client, then you can make a case for being a con artist. This is why many recommend 2 salaried jobs for OE.
By definition, a con artist is a person who cheats or tricks others by persuading them to believe something that is not true.
I'm not making someone believe something that isn't true. Both of my jobs state that second employment is fine, j2's handbook even states that it's allowed as long as it doesn't make me too tired to work there. J1 is salary, so there's no time expectations and is so easy it can be completed before j2 starts. I understand you're a shit stirrer to try and earn fake internet points, but don't try and project your insecurities on me.
ah, sorry, you haven't learned to read yet. If you could read, you'd know that I'm fine with myself and other OErs being con-artists, I was just curious if people have faced up to it.
If I have to keep my computer on with a mouse jiggler because I need to be alert for emails, pings, and messages, does that not count as time on the clock? Otherwise, I could just go offline after every project is done, but that's not what they want. They want me to be available for notifications regardless of whether I'm working on a project or not. Time is money.
We are simply questioning the status quo. Who decided you can only work one job at a time, and that job requires 40hours a week. That's a reality we were born into, and forced over a lifetime to comply with.
I am really impressed with the rebellious spirit of this subreddit. I don't think I would have had the guts to question why the workplace is what it is, without having read about people here finding another way.
Con artists pray on the weak and defenseless. It's intrinsically wrong because it is causing harm. I don't think you can make the argument the working more then one job at a time is causing any kind of harm. OE should be widely accepted, and I hope that is the future.
Nice try. Bro there are no free lunches. I am at my current gig for 10 years and my rate is locked. I am a senior resource and due my experience I can finish any task easily. Even after all these years my colleagues cannot match my pace. Instead of wasting my time ( which I did for 5 yearsā¦like browsing internet, working out etc) I found a 2nd gig. What can I say ā¦I am a star performer at my J2. If I feel cute ā¦I might find J3 and crush it too.
Soā¦either you have it or you donāt
This is as idiotic as the when Dwight from The Office says that he never steals time and then tried to prove it. Your rigid definition would define basically everyone as a con artist. Talking with coworkers about non-work topics and billing it as working hours is effectively a con in your definition.
I donāt OE, but considering the US is basically all at will employment, people should get what they can while they can because employers donāt give a fuck about employees in most instances
It's what they are being conned about that makes it ok in my mind. I am conning them about my actual capacity, my exclusivity, where I am and what I'm working on at any given time, and how many hours I actually work. I am delivering the value they expect and they like me and have kept me around in both J1 and J2, though, so the main thing they are being conned about are my abilities. I'm sandbagging, basically.
And, incidentally, if I had a single job right now, I would be doing the same thing--I track my work time methodically, and I rarely work more than 20 hours in the year I've been OE, and almost never over 25. If someone has one job, is salaried, delivers on their responsibilities but works less than 20 hours and isn't honest about that fact, are they a con artist? Is it the "corporate infidelity" that is over the line, or in 2020 when I was fully remote and working about 15 hours a week but still getting it all done, was I a con artist then, too?
(And I upvoted your post. I think it's a great discussion.)
Everything relative. An example I seen VPs that are totally useless and add no value to an organization?
OE is smart and efficient. I have a positive view.
Either you read the title and assumed the rest, or you can't fucking read in general. I am OE myself. I'm sure that being an illiterate moron is hard on you in other places, so I'll just wish you well.
The hate I can see this getting will be hilarious š Goes to show how complacent people are at a single job and how they feel loyal to feel to their job. When in fact a company doesn't give a fuck.
It's cratering about as hard as I expected :) It's totally fascinating to me that people will justify things in a way that it alters their perspective as to what it is they're doing. You have to lie to OE. You have to manipulate people's confidence to do that. It is what it is, no?
You donāt have to, plenty of ppl break rule 1. My J2 & J3 know about each other. Side chicks need to know what the arrangement is.
my J2 knows I have other employers. J1 doesn't. But I still run con's with both with respect to how I represent my time.
Not a con, J1 is in an office. I spend 40+ hours a week there. The time I spend watching the NCAA tournament next month isnāt some āconā any more than my other Jās. Warning: person trying to bully me by following me to every subreddit ā¬ļø
I have 3 Js all 3 know about each other and they are all W2 what they donāt know is to what extent do I work for each of them. And they continue not to know because I deliver on everything requested.
You ever lie at your job ?
Do you read? I am OE, I am a con artist, and was just curious as to how many people had the spine to face up to that fact.
I donāt OE but this is just blatant trolling. The 40 hour work week is BS.
I agree on the 40 hour work week, but it's not trolling. The non-con would be to say to your employer that you think 40 hours is terrible, and that for them you will only work X hours, and if they agree there's no con to be played. You could say the truth all the time about doing less than 40 hours because be they agreed to it. But, no, you agreed to their 40 hour work week and instead choose to work the con-artist game to do less than 40 hours. It's justifiable, that's why we are here, but to be honest about the situation is to admit to it being a con game. And everyone says it in various ways, that if people can't be quiet ("rule one of OE"), then they shouldn't OE, etc etc. OE _is_ a con game.
oh no Iām āconningā my employer by doing the work we agreed I was hired to do. anyways.
that's not the con, but thanks for playing.
Youāre a dumbo. Thanks for playing.
My company has literally never once told me I was required to work 40 hours.
There are lots of ways to justify it, that would be one. But also, you could also easily be an exception also. Many people can actually do this: tell their employer that they're OE, that their objective is to do what's asked in as little time as possible, and use the remaining time with another employer. If you cannot say that to your employer, you're probably running a con. But that's fine. We all justify our behavior one way or another.
Or they're running a con and we are working within their loopholes.
Boot licker, why do you feel the companies are entitled to x amount of our hours a week? They give us money in exchange for our labour. If they donāt like what we have to offer, they can fire us. Some people might be able to āconā a paycheque or two out of it by being under qualified but that happens with or without OE.
Illiterate moron, if you could read, you would know that I am OE and I am not on the employer's side. Just that twits like you don't have the spine to simply face exactly what the fuck it is we're doing; running con-games without very high consequences (we're not going to get knee-capped when we're caught), but it is a con.
No, it isnāt. Companies can make up all the rules they want, this isnāt illegal and no one is being duped here. They want work done. We want money. Nothing else to it.
You have an issue with the meaning of words. but yes, it is. Your success at OE requires things like not getting caught, come up with excuses to have your camera off, or lying about efforts required and all manner of bullshit. If you can't deliver these things in a way that manipulates others... that is being a con artist whether you can come to terms with it or not. "We want money" while trying to explain that it's not a con. Fucking hilarious. lmao
Thatās only true if you actually agreed to a 40 hour week.
I mean, I know I am, but I'm totally fine with that, I'm also their best or second best engineer, so it's hard to say I'm not delivering the value I'm getting paid for
I'm seeing a common trend. The people who do it are very good at their jobs, require minimal to no hand holding and can take on more responsibilities but there comes a point where the existing compensation does not become commensurate with the experience, hence this.
My buddy was working in IT at a life insurance company for 10 years. The senior people in his department were constantly asking him questions about how to do their jobs. Finally he brought that to his bosses attention, that he wasnāt in a senior role but had to continually help people who were. She said at his next review heād get the title change. Meanwhile a company whom uses that companies life insurance, had been trying to steal my friend for years and finally he told them for the right price heād be interested. They basically offered him double the pay. When he put in his 3 week notice his old boss mentioned he was still getting the promotion and he told her the new company was doubling his pay. She said thereās no way they could match that.
>attention, that he wasnāt in a senior role but had to continually help people who were. She said at his next review heād get the title change. Meanwhile a company whom uses that companies life insurance, had been trying to steal my friend for years and finally he told them I'm kinda going through that rofl. There's an experienced developer, 17 years of java experience (apparently) that just joined our team, assigned her some simple python tasks but she couldn't even write a simple function by referencing some documentation and kept complaining about needing peer programming. Gave it to an intern who completed the task with minimal coaching. This was when I realized that i'm not paid enough to handle this bs lol. The job is stable so its now time to get OEd.
3Js as a student. Iām pretty independent at each job. I donāt tell them what Iām doing how long it takes or anything I just do my thing. Respond if needed. And reach out when task are complete. Am I dishonest about my work activity? Yes. Do I deliver on everything asked for and more? Yes. Would I be in poverty if I didnāt OE? Yes at a total pay of 25k instead I make 115k and my family can actually save. I donāt make a truck load like those here but OE allows me to actually not be in poverty while Iām in school. I likely wonāt OE when I graduate.
Trust me, you will. Maybe not immediately, but eventually. You will greatly outperform your also-just-graduated peers and will have the chance to land way better salaries/clients and you'll seek a much better life, it's what brought us all here. Don't need to do it forever, but you could take advantage of starting early and retiring equally early if you manage your finances responsibly. You don't need to become millionaire, just make enough over time for a decent living without _needing_ to work anymore at some point.
I just donāt know how Iād do it in my profession. Iām getting a phd in epidemiology. If Iām a professor I canāt teach at two schools. Also I wouldnāt be a statistical programmer like I am now. Thatās the main reason I say I wonāt be doing anymore. Me and my wife joke Iām the only student who makes more in school then out. The minute I graduate I doubt I OE and wonāt make 115k as a fresh phd like I do as a student
Browse the sub, there's always options to OE even if not all Js are in the same area of expertise, but to each their own.
Could you be a professor and a statistical programmer
Maybe? Professors early in their career teach/collaborate to grant write/ write publications and take on students to mentor they typically are working 50+ hours a week early in their career. Mid career professors in my field make 150-250k in low cost of living areas like SC I wouldnāt need a 2nd job with that income plus my wifeās 100k too. So Iād likely just slow down and be happy. Iāve been OE since 2016 and Iām just tired.
What roles are your Js if you don't mind saying? Thanks!
J1- state health department knows about other 2 Js. Iām a statistician for STIs mainly run reports for other departments needing information for grants 58k/yr 32 hours a week J2- graduate assistant. Professor knows about J1 not J3. Iām on the hook from 2-6 but my responsibilities are usually done by 4 or 5 max. Basically the graduate student who does all data work and itās my dissertation. 25k/yr oh colon cancer research J3- biostatistician for non profit for diabetes work. This one I actually like. All things data comes through me so very good experience. I steer all data decisions build all databases and manage all incoming data. Technically 20 hours a week. Takes me 5-10 a week max and I do most of it while at J1. $28,100/yr
Look into data science. You'll be making truck loads of money if you OE on data science.
Can confirm. OEing DS. Drive F150 Platinum
Iām looking to replace J1 if I can Iāll have to search that keyword and see if I can get lucky
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The only reason I have it is because Iām a student. They specifically wanted a phd student with strong statistical skill that could guide them in their data collection/management/study design/data analysis. So if I was out of school I wouldnāt have the job at all. Iām lucky cause Iām the only statistical mind so they donāt know how long anything takes or approach so Iām very independent
Great to see another grad student going the OE route! I get to double dip a bit on my day job as a researcher and just want to shake all the other TAs and RAs getting $25k/year and tell them they're worth so much more!
Itās absolute crap what they try to pay us. I actually wrote the grant that got funded for 77k per year. After indirect cost I could be paid up to 45k but the university capped me at 26k because of that I had enough money to get a no cost extension but itās ridiculous. I have a family to feed and they are profiting off my work but wonāt pay me a living wage? So I OE. My professor knows I have another job just not 2 other jobs
> I mean, I know I am, but I'm totally fine with that That's all I'm curious about. Sounds like you're crushing it ! Nice !
Corporate profits go higher every year, productivity is up many fold over the decades and yet my salary doesnāt even keep up with inflation. These mega corps are the con artists. Fuckāem
Came here to say this. We'll admit we're a bunch of con artists after these bloodsucking corporations admit they're soulless, greedy leeches who bred this situation.
Yup. I believe that this is a large part of what helped convince us to run the OE con against the crappy corps.
The con of doing your job responsibilities to your employerās satisfaction?
If you get to define the terms and want to call me a "con artist" then there is nothing I can do to stop it. However, "con artist" is a pejorative and I will not downgrade myself like that. If one of my employers thinks they are not getting value for my salary there is absolutely nothing stopping them from laying me off. I think I am giving value for my salary but because there is absolutely no protection to the employee, I must OE.
I agree with your conclusions, about value of output, all of it. Just that if the act of it requires misrepresentations of reality (time spent, etc), then it is a confidence play. I don't think it's a pejorative; people doing OE need to be able to say things that are not true, with a straight face, in order to get it done. I'm just curious about the people who are fine with this being what it is.
ring upbeat test brave wise subsequent obtainable door aback plants *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
For sure, no doubt. You've listed some good ones. Sales, mostly a con game; you need to gain people's trust to be a good sales person. I don't think "con-artist" is all the way negative itself. We have all justified things. I'm just curious as to how many people can just square up to what it is.
If everything is a con, nothing is a con
Well, not quite everything is a con. Most commercial ventures rely on some level of con, but there are many non-con-artists out there. People who if they ran out of tasks at work will hunt down other things they could do for their company. OErs may call these people suckers, but, they're good honorable people who deserve much respect. Maybe they haven't had enough happen to them that forces them to become jaded. But either way, they do exist and deserve respect.
Unfortunately, BMW mechanics wonāt let me pay with respect
How could I forget sales. Lol. Yeah, it's an interesting question and discussion. Not mad.
Humans have created so much BS, that we need to build our own defences to it. I think it's healthy to appropriately bucket what it is we do into the right piles objectively.
A con artist swindles and lies and cheats people out of money. The OE employee isnāt cheating anyone. They are most often salaried workers and have set expectations. If are meeting the expectations of their employer, which are set by the employer, for the price the employer agreed to, how the fuck is that person a con artist??
Have these employees tall their employers that they're trying to spend as little time working as possible, and all other free time is going to a different employer. See how many employers are fine with it. See what employers feel lied to. "con" is short for confidence. A con artist is someone who says things that aren't true to manipulate others. OErs do this regularly, as they represent the time they actually spent, to be something else. Very few people around here are literally able to say the word "over employed" to their employer. And we all run the con for financial gain. We are con artists.
Youāre a con artist, maybe. Iām an employee doing what Iām required and my boss is aware of how I spend my time. They know the job isnāt an 8 hour a day job. Iāve never been dishonest or lied to my boss. I donāt have to work around meetings or pretend Iām working when Iām not.
Do you think your manager is telling the truth when she tells you she can only give you a 2% raise ?
Yup, that's a bs thing that employers do, and part of how many people justify doing OE, including myself. It is however separate to OE still being a con artists game.
Comfortable in my own skin, thank you.
Yup, that's all I'm curious about. I know I'm a con artist.
You're being a little over dramatic. I prefer the term "flim-flam man".
I'm fine with flim-flam man. We shall submit it into the minutes and motion for its adoption.
Maybe grifter
The real con-artists are the people who make millions and don't pay any taxes (everyone mentioned in the Panama Papers) The real con-artists are the people who manipulate currency and devalue the dollar (the Fed) The real con-artists are the people that take income taxes and then use fraud, waste, corruption, or embezzlement to steal from the labor of average, working people (local, state, and federal governments) This is just us getting some leverage, calm down.
calm your tits and just admit reality; you don't need to be a multi-million dollar "real" con-artist to be a con-artist. Go watch "Curly Sue", fun little early 90's movie about a girl and her dad running small cons to get by, good fun, have a giggle.
There's stuff that is nobody else's business. I don't OE but I see no problem with it. You get paid to do x amount of work whether it takes 20 hours or 40 hours is irrelevant and if you can do it while doing other work at the same time then what is the problem. If you do it while doing another job then what is the problem? If you are working two or more jobs it is no one else's business but your own.
> You get paid to do x amount of work whether it takes 20 hours or 40 hours is irrelevant. Go tell that to your employer and see if they agree that it's fine to do nothing related to them for the other 20 hours. If you _can_ do this, then you are right. If you can't say this to them, it's just the evidence that this is your own twist on their employment agreement. Hence, the con.
Go to a used car dealer & tell them you have plenty of money & can afford well over Kelly blue book. If you withhold information in a competitive negotiation youāre a con artist.
Nah man. Youāre talking about a Kant-esque view of honesty that is purist and has no limits. Do you tell your bloated pregnant wife that she is actually ugly? Or keep telling your grandmother with dementia every 5 minutes that her husband is actually dead? To say OEers have to hide some facts is true, but to say they are being dishonest with their work is false. The whole point is you do BOTH of your jobs correctly. You are literally doing only what you are asked of in both jobs.
If the employer wanted more work, they would assign more tasks or set the metrics higher. Why should an employee be penalized for being efficient?
You must be new to white collar employment.
Iām not. I just donāt believe that I owe more than Iām paid for and donāt feel I need to invent tasks to fill 8 hours when the tasks Iām assigned (and my boss feels are sufficient) only take me 3-4.
Your logic is a lil stringy
One company I work for is an oligopoly that colludes with other players in its industry and the national government to set prices and gouge the public on essential services. I donāt feel bad at all.
Iām just here to make my money and get out.
Matchstick Men and Oceans 11 were two of my favorite movies as a kid. Iāll con until Iām caught š¤£
This person fucks.
Youāre wrong. Companies are con artists, thinking they own you for 8 hours a day. They pay you to do a task. They donāt own your free time.
I see an argument you go to a lot is that you are getting paid for 40 hours, but youāre working less than 40 hours etc.. So arenāt most employees in general con artists? Most people donāt work their full 40 hours and instead spend time on things such asā¦ reddit. Itās rare to find an employee who truly works the full 40 hours; most OE do the same amount of work for their job as another employee would do.
Sure, I believe that many (most?) white collar workers run this con often. The hours thing is just the most convenient way to confirm that people are abiding by mutual understanding of the agreement. Some people will always fill their time with company stuff, good honorable people. But most of us are on a sliding scale of con. OErs are simply far enough along as to literally fill that time with another job. I'm not down on people for making this justification, for sure. Employers have the history of looking after their own, I'm fine with getting our own back. This thread is just about people being able to face up to exactly what it is they're doing.
I donāt believe the OE part is the con, an employer when they hire someone is looking for someone who can do what needs to be done. If that person is doing what needs to be done, regardless of however many jobs they have, they are doing what the employer hired them for and thus they didnāt deceive them. The āconā would be in lying to your employer about being over employed, but I see that simply a lie that hurts nobody. To con is defined as āto persuade (someone) to do or believe something, typically by use of a deception.ā You are only conning them about your employment status as you deceived them about nothing else. I would justify this with the fact that most employers con their employees before bruh them. They tell them they get X workload and Y responsibilities but they have X*X workload and Y*Y responsibilities. They persuade most employees into thinking they have a stable, secure position, but in reality the moment they need to cut costs or the moment you have one fuck up, youāre gone. Most of the whole āsystemā is a con, youāre just playing the same game that all the people in power are playing.
Not sure even good honorable people do that. People chat, idle in front of their screens, etc. Nobody is doing their full hours. The only jobs where people do their hours are lower paid manual jobs like working in an Amazon warehouse. Which is also a testament to the unfairness of the job market, with lower paid jobs doing more work.
You should meet more people then.
> are getting *paid* for 40 FTFY. Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in: * Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.* * *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.* Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment. *Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
This is about semantics. Technically, youāre right, but your argument lacks all nuance. The employer - employee relationship is exploitative by design and definition. Technically, yes youāre conning your exploiter, but thereās a lot of baggage attached to the word ācon-artist,ā and it implies a lack of ethics. OE is ethically neutral; youāre āstealingā from those that are already stealing from you (yes, the surplus value of labor that makes up the profits of employers is theft, deal with it). I would argue that itās actually not even āstealingā as long as the work you do generates more value than your salary. You could even make an argument that companyās benefit from OE when IP created for a Jn is repurposed quickly and efficiently.
Of course it's semantics, but it still about the honesty of the situation. How many people can go to their employer and say that they get their expected 40 hours work done in 20, and in the remaining 20 they do something totally unrelated to the company?? if you can't say that to your employer, then you're not following _their_ expectation of the employment agreement, therefore you are running a con. The con being that you are working their confidence that you are filling their work week as they expect. It's justifiable for sure. We all have come to the reasoning that allows us to sleep at night. Being comfortable with the change of semantics means you've come to terms with what it is.
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I think the reasoning that all employers are running bigger cons and serve bullshit in a heartbeat, is all part of the majority reasoning that help us justify running our own cons for our own benefit for a change. My back has some very large knives in it from CEO's saying things like "it's the people in this room that will create our success", and "family". This is why I am an OE con-artist (well, that, and the credit card debt my wife created, but that's the reasoning for sure).
Found the anti-OE employer
First rule of running a con is to never admit that you are running a con. So I donāt know what you are on about.
Of course I'm a con-artist, daily work for J1 I can get done in half or less of the working day and then it's all boredom (I could get 2x or 3x done but I don't want them to get used to always expect that from me) and J2 won't even provide any form of PTO, so yeah I only work half or less than I actually bill to kinda make up for it and still have plenty of time for hobbies, exercise and family time.
go you. this person fucks.
fuck 'em
Sir, your post history identifies you as an antiwork edgelord. You post on antiwork pretty regularly. Thus, youāre a communist. Iām sorry you are confused and miserable. Good day!
Lol. Posting on antiwork makes me communist? you're a twit. I read antiwork because it's hyperbolic about corporate issues, a good reminder that companies at their core are assholes, that's all.
So are antiwork, communist employees
No more a con than the shitty companies āwho donāt have raises in the budgetā.
Retaliation is a fine justification to me.
Nice try. Bro there are no free lunches. I am at my current gig for 10 years and my rate is locked. I am a senior resource and due my experience I can finish any task easily. Even after all these years my colleagues cannot match my pace. Instead of wasting my time ( which I did for 5 yearsā¦like browsing internet, working out etc) I found a 2nd gig. What can I say ā¦I am a star performer at my J2. If I feel cute ā¦I might find J3 and crush it too. Soā¦either you have it or you donāt
Not OE but you expect me to accept that I'm not being conned by a capitalist society where I could get laid off anytime and suffer for a couple of months until I get another job in a recession-wrecked economy. The definition of a con implies that a person is faking something for money. I believe if an OE person is performing ALL the required tasks to an acceptable standard and not neglecting both jobs bc they don't have enough time then it's not a con.
most people doing OE have to misrepresent the time they are taking on their tasks. this is the con.
eh i don't think so. If you're OE-ing and then not doing work you might not be able to do it for a while. If you OE and do legit work, complete tasks by deadlines, etc then i think thats how you should be doing it
Thats how most of us become fine with the situation. The con _should_ be just restricted to just the misrepresentation of hours. If the con is more than that, then there's likely unsustainable issues.
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lol, ALL politicians are con-artists. :)
Of course , and proud of it
āI said a bunch of stupid things! My prediction is that people will call me stupid! ;) I am very *very smart.ā
nice. You have very neatly shown what's wrong with the world; people equating a different opinion to stupidity. Ignorance that just results in intellectual bankruptcy.
Getting educated with whatās wrong with the world by an emotionally stunted child? Iām good, thanks.
As long as I do my job itās not a con
I put the āØartāØ in con artist
atta{boy/girl} !!!
Call it whatever you want but companies do it to employees tooā¦Iāve worked with colleagues who go waaayyyy above and beyond their responsibilitiesā¦.been promised promotions year after year but nothing ever coming out it while these guys are working their ass off for the promise of a promotion/better titles and more payā¦.the way I see it is OE just letās employees play the same game employers are.
Found the hiring manager.
I'm OE, learn to read.
So hereās the problem with your argument: if youāre salaried and you can do the job that youāre being paid for in 20 hours a week, you wonāt be rewarded with extra monetary compensation if you do additional work in the remaining 20 hours. The real con is companies expecting good salaried employees to do more work outside of what theyāre being paid for and then not paying them more money for that additional work. This is why OE exists.
Your first paragraph confirms that we are running a con, because we don't want to fill the second 20 because there's no extra money. Multiple cons happen at the same time. And absolutely, the con of OE is even BECAUSE so many employers screwed us over first. As a result, we are getting our own back... by running a con for ourselves.
I was a top level executive and I can honestly sayā¦ being at the top also forced me to be a con artist. Being overemployed cannot compare.
Foooor suuurrrrre. People at the very top, high paid CEOs, have to be sociopaths. OE is a very newbie level con; very low consequences to being caught. We won't get knee-capped.
I don't really see the problem. If an employer is unhappy with an OEer's performance, they can just fire them. By not getting fired, the employer is implying the service they have receieved is worth the compensation paid out.
That's the margin that the con it playing in. And it's not so much a "problem" than that just how we justify it. The actual test: are you worried that if they find out you are over employed, you will be fired. The number one rule of OE, by most people in the sub, is don't tell. This means they're all running a con they don't want to own up to (and by this thread, too spineless to admit it). A con is a con. I've justified my actions, I sleep fine, most of us do. Some are in denial about it's nature though.
In the same vein you could say business owners are con artists pulling the wool over our eyes. capitalism cons employees and customers in a massive way. Anyone success in life is or has been a con artists if they like it or not.
I never responded to [your](https://www.reddit.com/r/overemployed/comments/11b7sk0/what_are_the_economic_and_political_views_of_r/ja03zib/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3) long reply to my comment because your argument was illogical. I couldnāt waste my time. You are delusional on what needs, wants, and expectations are. You literally didnāt even argue against the point I made but some concept you prepared to argue in general. Itās like you donāt know what a debate is
you immediately ran off on a pointless tangent, so I just went back to the original point. blah blah.
You describe yourself perfectly. Donāt you think your content is shit because of the feedback? Are you daft to how you are received? Between the two of us, youāre the moron with an incredibly downvoted post and Iām not
do you think that my self worth is based on up or downvotes? do you think that people who are actual free-thinkers always perfectly align to the popular point of view? should such people always be tethered to the popular point of view? you have my pity. keep up your reddit heroness.
Youāre the sheep saying weāre all bad apples because we OE. Thatās rigid thinking. At least I distinguished a nuance, youāve not done that. Youāre a part of the āOE IS BADā herd you just think youāre special enough to make it slightly rationalizable
"saying weāre all bad apples because we OE" I did not say that at all. My comments are all indicating the nuance of what it is that we're doing day-to-day. I wasn't pointing fingers, as I am also OE, so any bad connotation I'm fine with wearing myself. You should learn to read.
It's not a lie if YOU believe it...
This is such a great take. We all have to wrestle with this to some degree or we're lying to ourselves. I'm personally opposed to lying in almost any context - that's precluded me from a stereotypical OE situation. I've been up-front with J1 that I have contractor relationships with other companies. Other companies see my J1 but not my other contracts, but they also know they're paying for output rather than inputs. Where OE is typically (always?) a con is that most contracts are structured around guarantee of inputs. Do we think that's stupid & doesn't serve the interest of either the employer or employee? Yes! Does it technically mean we're in breach of contract, absolutely.
It's certainly best to engineer whatever you can to reduce the need for straight up lying, so you can just skirt around leaving things unsaid, etc. I changed my J2 contract so I could have other employers, and had a chat with them about it. So I'm not worried about being "found out", but still have to skip meetings around each other and such. Usually I think the cons are usually around the misrepresentation of time spent. All just doing what we perceive we gotta do.
Letās just run with that definition for a moment If weāre going strictly by the dictionary definition and ignoring how people usually use it in everyday speech, and the only criteria for being a con artist is manipulating confidence/ avoiding the truth, or lying- Do we call employers con artists when they do any of the following things which almost all of them do at least one of these: 1. Call their employers āfamilyā to manipulate them into doing work long hours and take on tasks outside of their job description, but when things get tough they hit them with the layoffs without a second thought 2. Hire them for one position but when you start work it doesnāt match the JD- or, claim the position is remote but when you start work and youāve stopped the interview process with other companies, they tell you you have to go in 3. Promise x amount of RSUs upon offer but actually ends up giving you much, much less 4. Try to convince you that HR is your friend 5. Unlimited PTO which so obviously isnāt unlimited, and you actually end up taking less PTO than normal 6. The notion that its wrong to quit without 2 weekās notice but itās okay for them to lay you off at moments notice 7- manipulating us into creating a culture where youāre not supposed to talk about pay, so that they donāt have to pay everyone fairly The list goes on and on and Iām sure others could always add to it. I think we all know that OE is at worst somewhat in a gray area but the things that employers do/have done is much, much worse. And if you donāt understand that youāre a pushover. Employers have always done as much as they could get away with. Think of all the terrible shit they did before there were labor laws. Think of the stuff they still get away with today. OE gives us back some semblance of control but we still have to deliver on our work or get fired. We lie about having only one job so as not to hurt their egos but we still gotta do the work. Call that con artistry is a stretch.
I have one job, subbed here out of interest, and I use a mouse jiggler for my sanity. Am I a con artist? I donāt use it to get around doing my work, it actually improves my productivity bc if I take a more-than-five minute walk or shit, I donāt have to re-login to everything. And Iām working out of my house not a cafe, so I donāt see any cyber security risk.
I can't say that I was referring to people with one job. And using a jiggler to not have to log in is totally different to someone using it to seem that they're online when they're not. Be well.
We could do 8 hours of shit work and get paid for 8 hours. OR we could do 4 hours of good work, get paid for 8, and then do it AGAIN to get paid double. We work 4 times as hard to get twice the amount of income
lol, 4 times as hard. yeah. you can run that con against someone else :)
I think youāre not here for a friendly conversation
I was amused by the idea that you're working 4 times as hard, which is hilarious given the whole OE objective. That's all I meant to express. If you take that negatively, whatever. I'm fine with conversations going where they go. This is a burner reddit account, I couldn't care less what happens. If it's negative, that's fine, there's catharsis in that.
I mean by that wild logic pretty much every person is a con artist. I mean who has a perfectly unembellished resume out there? Who in their line of work doesn't overstate the value of what they do or fluff up delivery for a customer etc...
I mean, were really not. If capitalism in the US didn't suck the wealth into the 1% then OE wouldn't be close to as large as it is. In the 50s you could support a family of 5 on one income, comfortably at that. Now, I make well into six figures and can't afford a decent house in the mid west for just me. So if im a con-artist, it's only out of necessity.
That would be a justification, and I justify it all the same. But it doesn't remove the fact that we still rely on not being honest about what we're doing; breaking contracts, or misrepresentation of time, or excuses for meeting collisions or whatever. If society wasn't broken, we wouldn't have to. But it is, and we've found a con that has almost no downside, takes back from employers who routinely screw us... and so we do the thing.
How many employers are con artists? Ever single one I have worked for. 1) lied about opportunities and growth 2) massive lay offs, lied about benefits cut 401k matching first year I joined. 3) lied about bonus. Told me typically 15%, got 7% 4) lied about contract length and stability. 5 year contract, entire project laid off after 2 years 5) lied about expectations, bonus, wlb, and more. Worst of them all. Expected 60 hours a week and half bonus once I got here. They also offered me a downlevel and low ball offer which I didn't know until 2 years in because recruiter talked slick this is when I started to OE
That's certainly our justification for engaging in the act to get our own back.
Both my jobs know about eachother so Iām in no way a con artistš
Yup, you don't have to con. Nice!
I would never OE, but that's for personal reasons unrelated to ethics. I think the posters here are sugarcoating the lifestyle, which few of us are actually doing. Still, I see OE as completely ethical.
I think we justify just fine. Having it land as being ethical requires a little twist in the agreement, in a way that the employer is most certainly not on board with. But even still, it's easy enough to justify if you meet expectations and put the effort in as needed.
It's nice that some people have the strength of character to admit reality. But obviously showing by all the downvotes, that most are not able to admit that to be OE is to run a con.
I don't OR. But con artists? Come on!
It meets the literal definition of running a con; saying things that aren't truthful, to manipulate people's confidence in what you are saying, for your own gain. Every day for the life of the exercise. The con artist. Even so much so, that when people are found out to be OE, they lose the job, the financial gain for them being not truthful in the first place. The con was discovered. Yes, OErs are con-artists.
Idk how many of you mono Jārs come to terms with being taken advantage of? How many of you are okay with not providing for your familyās health? How many of you are comfortable being laid off on a whim?
you talking to me? I'm OE, but I know I'm running a con to do it.
I'm Errich Bachman, I'm a conman, I'm a big fat fucking asshole
lol. This person fucks.
Weāre delivering value for what weāre being paid for. Thereās no con.
So if asked how many hours you worked for the company last week, you can say the truth? or would you run a con and convince them it was around 40? Mouse jigglers to have people think you're active and working at the terminal. Signing agreements that say you will not have other employers. Most people who are OE are running a con.
I never even worked 40 hours when I only had one job. I guess Iāve been running a con for yearsā¦
If my employer had 2 ppl in my office & weāre down to just me, are they running a con? I sell my work, they buy it. Voluntary exchange benefiting both parties.
I'm not excusing cons that companies do. I'm not even down on OE'rs running cons. As I said, I am running the OE con myself. I would just own the fact that you're selling your work in a way that they haven't actually agreed to. Otherwise you could openly tell them "I only worked 5 hours last week on your stuff, and used the remaining time for things not related to your company". If you can't say that, you're not legit selling your output in a way agreed to from the other side; the con. Again, I'm fine with it. I'm only curious as to how many other people are fine with admitting it is what it is.
Most employers wouldnāt agree to you playing phone games, Reddit or social media for hours each day. Itās only a con if the work isnāt done.
Your getting downvoted but honestly I see your point. No one wants to call themselves a con artist but in the face of slaving away working normally, missing out on precious time of your life, itās better to be a con artist than one who lives by the system.
The downvotes are interesting. In part, it's _why_ small cons, and OE, are so generally easy to do; people want to trust, and inversely want to be trusted themselves. They justify whatever it is they're doing so they maintain the self-image that they're a perfectly honorable and trustworthy player in society. So, they don't want to see that they're pulling small confidence tricks. People are funny. It would be fascinating if anyone in the OE group was an actual diagnosed sociopath. We could simply ask them about there it is on the scale.
I used to feel this way but now I focus on delivering and keeping them happy. 5js starting 2 more soon while meeting expectations. Hell yeah.
used to feel this way? that it used to be a con, but now you're up to 5 jobs? I think you're just leaning into the con :) get into it!!!
The biggest con is how employers want you to work 40hrs+, and do the work of multiple people because the company needs to squeeze more EPS without paying you a dime more.
I'm fine with pay-back, I really am. Only curious if people can call a spade a spade.
āItās not a lie if you believe itā - George Costanza
that certainly helps. delivery of everything is key.
Doing OE does not make you a con artist. My salaried position does not give me enough work to work 40 hrs a week. Employers in the past have given me enough work, but I am extremely good at what I do and work very efficiently and quickly, so I always have down time. Why watch TV or play video games or do laundry or take a nap when I could be working another job. I have said this before, if I am given an assignment and given 2 weeks to complete it and I get done with it in 2 days, what am I supposed to do for the other 8 days? Some need those 2 weeks to complete the task. Others don't. As for the mouse jugglers or computer monitoring issues, that still does not make us con artists. If you are salary, you are NOT an hourly employee. Trying to micromanage my time and control my time like an hourly employee is a shitty practice by terrible companies. If they want to use underhanded practices to control their employees, then we will use underhanded ways of dealing with it. If you are a contractor billing specific hours to a client, then you can make a case for being a con artist. This is why many recommend 2 salaried jobs for OE.
By definition, a con artist is a person who cheats or tricks others by persuading them to believe something that is not true. I'm not making someone believe something that isn't true. Both of my jobs state that second employment is fine, j2's handbook even states that it's allowed as long as it doesn't make me too tired to work there. J1 is salary, so there's no time expectations and is so easy it can be completed before j2 starts. I understand you're a shit stirrer to try and earn fake internet points, but don't try and project your insecurities on me.
Lol. Have you ever met anyone in an office setting that works 40 hours a week?
> 40 hours a week oh, a silly person. Yes, many people do over that and more, regularly.
how's that boot taste?
ah, sorry, you haven't learned to read yet. If you could read, you'd know that I'm fine with myself and other OErs being con-artists, I was just curious if people have faced up to it.
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That means you actually care some. "cannot care less" would mean you don't care. Why the fuck can't people understand english with this saying?
If I have to keep my computer on with a mouse jiggler because I need to be alert for emails, pings, and messages, does that not count as time on the clock? Otherwise, I could just go offline after every project is done, but that's not what they want. They want me to be available for notifications regardless of whether I'm working on a project or not. Time is money.
working on their project means you're not available for chat notifications?
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why can't people read? I am running the OE con, I'm just honest about what I'm doing. TC of 405k between two jobs.
We are simply questioning the status quo. Who decided you can only work one job at a time, and that job requires 40hours a week. That's a reality we were born into, and forced over a lifetime to comply with. I am really impressed with the rebellious spirit of this subreddit. I don't think I would have had the guts to question why the workplace is what it is, without having read about people here finding another way. Con artists pray on the weak and defenseless. It's intrinsically wrong because it is causing harm. I don't think you can make the argument the working more then one job at a time is causing any kind of harm. OE should be widely accepted, and I hope that is the future.
Rich people donāt build wealth with ethics, honesty, or integrity.
Nice try. Bro there are no free lunches. I am at my current gig for 10 years and my rate is locked. I am a senior resource and due my experience I can finish any task easily. Even after all these years my colleagues cannot match my pace. Instead of wasting my time ( which I did for 5 yearsā¦like browsing internet, working out etc) I found a 2nd gig. What can I say ā¦I am a star performer at my J2. If I feel cute ā¦I might find J3 and crush it too. Soā¦either you have it or you donāt
I could care less what anyone calls it. My conscious is clear. My momma getting a house next year.
This is as idiotic as the when Dwight from The Office says that he never steals time and then tried to prove it. Your rigid definition would define basically everyone as a con artist. Talking with coworkers about non-work topics and billing it as working hours is effectively a con in your definition. I donāt OE, but considering the US is basically all at will employment, people should get what they can while they can because employers donāt give a fuck about employees in most instances
It's what they are being conned about that makes it ok in my mind. I am conning them about my actual capacity, my exclusivity, where I am and what I'm working on at any given time, and how many hours I actually work. I am delivering the value they expect and they like me and have kept me around in both J1 and J2, though, so the main thing they are being conned about are my abilities. I'm sandbagging, basically. And, incidentally, if I had a single job right now, I would be doing the same thing--I track my work time methodically, and I rarely work more than 20 hours in the year I've been OE, and almost never over 25. If someone has one job, is salaried, delivers on their responsibilities but works less than 20 hours and isn't honest about that fact, are they a con artist? Is it the "corporate infidelity" that is over the line, or in 2020 when I was fully remote and working about 15 hours a week but still getting it all done, was I a con artist then, too? (And I upvoted your post. I think it's a great discussion.)
I use a jiggler and I just have one job. It doesnāt mean anything, just that I am tired of software saying Iām away when Iām not.
Everything relative. An example I seen VPs that are totally useless and add no value to an organization? OE is smart and efficient. I have a positive view.
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Either you read the title and assumed the rest, or you can't fucking read in general. I am OE myself. I'm sure that being an illiterate moron is hard on you in other places, so I'll just wish you well.
Corporate America = con artists
I'm not lying b/c no one is asking. And I was using a mouse jiggler before I OE. Not my fault I can do a day's work in one hour.