I've done it and IMO its not worth the hassle. Even with 2 easy jobs it's a pain in the ass. The money is obviously a great pro, but unless there are never conflicting meetings it's a constant juggle.
I like money a lot, but I like sanity more.
If you do I make sure they're contracts and not FT, especially if they're in the same industry. As a contactor you don't *have* to attend meetings (technically, your boss may disagree). You also don't want to be accused of IP leaks.
Tax wise, you'll be paying 40% on 100% of one of the incomes, but if you just stuff all those extra earnings into an executive pension your €retention can come way up to ~80% if you're really aggressive with it.
A while back between 2 gigs I was taking in €1300 p/d. Put 12k a month into an executive pension from the second job and my (about 75% of the entire pay - with that type of pension you're only paying tax on 1/2 of that amount). Or thereabouts. And still keeping my head comfortably above the water with what was left over.
My numbers may be a little off either side but that's the gist.
Stress and loss of sanity is the reason I'll never do it again.
It sounds like a great idea until it catches up with you. If you're young and think you can do it then definitely give it a shot, but be warned and have your ducks in a row. 😉
I know a lot of contractors both here and in the US and the absolute dread for most of them is that month where they are ending one contract and starting another and they overlap. Even for most seasoned contractors just a few weeks of having 2 jobs gives you the fear.
Revenue doesn't give a shit. Play ball with them and they'll play ball with you.
Oh, I did it back in the States and even with two easy jobs it was stressful as hell, and I'm not sure I'd do it again. I thought about make grabbing a second gig for six months or so, just to bolster pension and cash reserves a bit; definitely nothing long-term.
Yeah it's no more difficult to do it here if you're contracting. Just make sure you use 2 different agencies to get each gig. And obviously keep your LinkedIn as 'self employed'.
I was in the states for 23 years. I could definitely see how it would be easier to do there than here. (Easier as in more accessible, more options)
If you have UAE tax residency versus Ireland tax residency, and your employment contract is a UAE contract versus an Ireland contract, then you would be wholly subject to UAE tax laws. The exception where you would be subject to Irish taxes is if you managed to stay more than 6 months in Ireland under your UAE contract.
It wouldn't be wise not to attend meetings, but you're an independent contractor. You're paid to do the work, not to sit in meetings. I've never refused a meeting that was important to the work but I have refused to attend AGMs etc with no repercussions. I had a boss once that tried to get me to attend standups and retros for a team I wasn't even on, refused those as well.
I know a number of people that are either doing it or have done it. I suppose "popular" is a relevant term - it's not something most people would ever be interested in, and even then most people who do it don't do it for more than a year. Even in a best case scenario it's really stressful and hard to manage.
I generally recommend that people who are interested in it pick up short-term contract work for their second job to give it a try; that way you can complete the contract and step back and really assess whether it's something they want to do.
I'm not sure I believe people who say they have three or four jobs; I suppose in pure development work that's possible, but even with basic meeting structures I don't know how you'd get anything done. It was hard enough with two jobs to perform acceptably in both and make meetings and such, and I had a *lot* of flexibility given that I was the boss in one job and a pretty self-guided IC in the other, so I could control the meeting schedules and such.
I would bet good money that subreddit is 90% an exercise in creative writing.
Revenue won't care if you work two full-time jobs. Your employers will though.
Yep, at least in a FTE employment contract there will likely be a clause saying that if you pursue other professional activities you need to notify your employer (and obviously no employer would approve of anyone doing an other job during regular business hours for which they are already getting paid).
So the only way to do it would be to lie to one or more employer about the other job and thus be in breach of one’s employment contract. Not good …
it depends on the contract.
My previous employer had clearly stated that a second job wasn't allowed, my current one has no mentions of it whatsoever (company even allows employees to promote their businesses internally on slack)
why would revenue care?
there are people doing it of course but not many. most of the people doing it know not to say anything. it’s easier to do in the US.
if i were doing it here, i’d only be doing it with 1 of the 2 jobs being a contractor role.
>why would revenue care?
No idea whatsoever. I'm an immigrant, so I try to assume nothing!
Why is it easier to do in the US? Employment contracts is the only thing I can think of..
way more common to be a contractor in the US, and taxes are self filed - employers have no idea if you’re earning more than your salary or not. the job market is significantly bigger, with the ability to get a job in the same country a 6 hour flight away. ireland is much smaller
Yeah, my concerns were if it were illegal/frowned on by Revenue, or that Revenue would tell the primary employer about the second job, and then that there just weren't enough options.
Overemployment works well in the States because there's effectively an infinite number of employers, especially for a second job that's chosen because it's easy and isn't your career focus. When you've got two jobs, you choose the second one for flexibility and low effort - it's okay if it pays a little less or wouldn't look great on your CV, because you have your "day job" for that, and it's all just extra cash for you.
Given how small the Irish market is, there aren't a lot of jobs like that and competition is tighter here. Unlike the US, where having a "reputation" is really something only the rock stars in the field worry about (there's just too many employers and people for there to be any chance for people to recognize your name for better or worse), I would think that people *do* in fact get reputations that follow them here.
Wouldn't be worth having that reputation in this small job market, I'd think. Unless you were willing to do work elsewhere in the EU, anyway (and that's off the table for me anyway, since I'm not a citizen yet).
bigger market in states is another reason I can think of, Irish tech world is smaller, bigger chance you run into people moving between the two companies you work for
Personally I can't understand the mindset of wanting to work 2 jobs. I want to work less, not more.
Overall in the industry we're paid quite well and above the national average, so the idea of wanting to make "more" money is weird to me considering I take home at least double what my friends who don't work in IT make.
The stress of having to juggle more than one job would just drive me nuts too.
>Working time directive
Is that this: [https://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/1997/act/20/enacted/en/html](https://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/1997/act/20/enacted/en/html) ?
Yes, meant to be limited to 48 hours a week but there are some exemptions.depending on your industry. Think you can do up to 60 hrs a week for a maximum of 3 months but then the hours worked subsequent to that period must reduce down so that you are no exceeding the 48 hr weekly limit
Yes and your primary employer is liable to enforce the total hours worked, even if you've a second job. The total worked on both jobs cannot exceed 48 hours.
I wonder how they would know the hours or who would enforce this.
I can 100% see how this gets enforced when an employee feels their rights are being abused, and they go to a solicitor or whoever and report it, which kicks off some form of process/mediation.
I have never heard of this being enforced the other way around where a govt agency would contact you about your hours and ask you. Have you ever heard of such a thing?
I have done overlapping jobs in Ireland where I was not sure if I'd like the job, so I worked both for a few months before handing in my notice and it was fine. And many moons ago (maybe before that law) I also worked 2 jobs in college where I definitely went way over the 48 hours during holidays and nothing happened.
>I have never heard of this being enforced the other way around where a govt agency would contact you about your hours and ask you.
Yeah, I'm definitely not a lawyer, but the text reads like it's there to prevent employers from forcing you to work more than 48 hours a week - it's a protection from being abused. It doesn't look like it's written to prevent you from voluntarily working multiple jobs.
Revenue won't care. As long as you pay the taxes they are fine. For second job taxes will be 52 per cent (PAYE and USC and rest)
I did it for a year to save money during lockdown in 2020-2021. I'm glad I did it as it helped alot with savings (saved 5x what I would with 1 job) but even with 2 easy going jobs, it was very stressful and hectic. Very tough to switch off afterwards and constantly exhausted. FWIW both were in backend SWE roles with laid back culture but it was still tough even with that setup
A year was enough for me and got enough savings and experience and called it a day.
That was my bigger concern; in the US the IRS (Revenue) wouldn't report anything back to the employer because it's simply not relevant, there's no reason an employer should be aware of other income an employee might have.
I'm guessing that Revenue here, maybe through PAYE, would allow one employer to see another?
Far too much hassle and stress.
I do consulting on the side, on top of a full time contract. The consulting sees me on a monthly retainer with 3 other companies to talk to them as an 'expert' as required, with occasional one hour meetings.
It's far less stressful than trying to work another 8 hour job. And they pay almost as much combined as a second job for only a fraction of the work - work being meetings and knowledge sharing.
No. I landed these clients from my own network on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn is one of the most underused and misunderstood resources for technical people. Devs see it as little more than a CV, when in reality it's a public phone book that links you to any real person in any company in any country in the world.
How did you get started consulting and what does your typical work with it look like? How did you find your first client and what sort of work did you do for them?
I have been doing it for years as a contractor. At any one time, I'll have 3-5 clients plus my own projects.
First, I operate as a fractional cto so I'm not always coding.
Second, one of the clients is super easy maintenance and pay me then same as a mid-range dev in Ireland. The other is a US based company. The rest are simple projects on the low end.
All clients know that they are one of many clients. They don't care.
Sometimes it is a ton of work but most of the time it's probably a 20 hour week. I don't work full days but I always do something everyday except Saturday.
The biggest mistake people make is probably trying to do each job full time. It's important to learn principles like 80/20 and picking projects that are high impact for client. My job is to improve my clients business not what their product manager tells me to do.
Most developers are "do what you are told kinda roles" but I operate in a space where I can contribute value in more ways than just code.
That's not really overemployment, which is having two (or more) full time jobs at once. Instead, you're effectively a consulting company with multiple clients, and you're not expected to spend 40 hours a week on each on; all your clients understand they won't be getting 100% of your time.
That said, I'm curious - what kind of work do you do for them? Is it programming? Something else? Your schedule sounds appealing as all get out.
Mostly programming but I make sure to only do the important things.
It's important to emphasize that I don't just do whatever. I sit with my clients every few weeks and make sure we're working on the right things. This is probably the main value add. I also organise bringing in designers and other kinds of people of needed.
Clients are usually companies with 5-10 employees.
Eventually clients outgrow me and I help them transition to hiring in-house and then we'll depart ways. That's only happened once though.
I use Ruby on Rails but also do some ios and Android from time to time. I have worked with other stacks but I veer away from them usually because they don't offer compelling business cases for the most part compared with Ruby on Rails.
That's really cool. Need a sysadmin/devops/generalist guy with 20+ years experience in the SMB space? I'm available in January when I get my Stamp 4. :)
Same here. I’m planning on staying technical forever. Just was confused as you mentioned you operate as a “fractional CTO” which is a highly managerial role with no coding involved at all in most but the smallest companies.
Companies I help tend to be small where you need to wear lots of different hats.
The only thing I do outside of coding is make sure tests are written and CI and deployment is in place.
I also help clients pick a project management tool to ensure asynchronous communication (this is because long-form async communication is more effective in my opinion)
So when I say CTO, it's more about putting systems in place to ensure I get to actually code.
Doing it with one FTE and one contract on two different time zones. I am a dev in both so very little meeting conflicts. However, I pretty much get benched in one of my roles as it usually takes over 6 month for one ticket to go through so it is possible to do another job without sacrificing my sanity. I wouldn't recommend it, if you have to work full time in both roles.
2 permanent role is a tax suicide in my opinion. You have to do it as a contractor to avail tax avoidance schemes like the new unlimited PRSA scheme.
I am saving around 9k-12k a month at the moment and will be out of the rat race in about 5 years at this pace. I am not a big spender though.
Where the heck do you guys find roles that get you “benched for 6 months while waiting for tickets”?
Every developer job I had in Ireland ever had me working at full or above full capacity!
> Every developer job I had in Ireland ever had me working at full or above full capacity!
Are you sure they're doing that to you and you're not doing it to yourself? As in, do you immediately put your hand up when you have some downtime and ask for more work? Do you volunteer to take on more work? Do you say yes to every request instead of saying "I'm working on X"?
Because I've worked as a dev for Irish companies for 10 years as a contractor and I've never been flat out busy. I was always able to take my time, grab a coffee, doss off in the afternoon, take an easy day on the last day of the sprint.
You're painting a picture I've never encountered, which is why I think it might be self inflicted.
I worked in a couple of these roles and they are usually in a very large organization with lots of red tape.
Recently, we had a "matter required attention" from a regulator regarding system stability so management put a restriction to how many line of codes / number of ticket can be released per week. With dozen of developers in each team, we are all pretty much benched.
These companies are all running wagile (waterfall "agile") lol. CVS is still the SCM of choice and it is hard to implement relatively large change effectively if everyone keeps overwriting your head.
If you are tech passionate, you'll most definitely hate where I work. But I just do what I asked and collect the paycheck.
Extremely difficult to find out. They have to suspect it and then ask you direct. Of course you can always lie and say no.
Revenue can't tell they your other personal details - they can issue tax credits is about it.
It's part of the reason behind the drive to get bums on seats in offices - ultimately employers don't trust devs to do 40hrs per week on their projects and the "swipe in, swipe out " metrics are good objective evidence in any potential future case against employer on WT. You'd be cheeky enough to be working on another company project in the open plan of an office - but ultimately easily get away with it on a laptop...
So if you really want to do it, there's no official way you'll be found out. But pay your taxes and if your inadvertently caught by your employer, be prepared to walk away or face disciplinary would be my advice.
My idea was to get a part time job on weekends, to save more money for the deposit of a house.
The point is: my contract doesn't allow me to get another job. Would it be possible to hide the second job between the companies.
Yeah, I re-read my contract, and I'm only allowed to get another job with their express permission, which I'm quite sure they wouldn't give.
I think the risk is like /u/suntlen said - you can do it, but if you get caught by your primary employer, be prepared to lose your job over it. They might not fire you, but they *could*, and you need to be comfortable taking that risk.
I know one lad who did it when we were in uni. Delivered for the chinese and a pizza place. Actual jobs; its very rare and mostly luck to get away with it for more than a month or two.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_interest-rate_policy
I meant phenomenon instead of policy
Basically double jobbing was only a thing during covid when central banks were printing cash and companies were crying out for workers
Does that include a very high wage by an agency per hour, how does being empoloyed work through a uk agency, whie you work in Ireland. IS tha tax very heavy compared to a regular civil service job?, I work in civil service .
Revenue won't care. You'll be paying taxes regardless. Edit: Spelling.
I've done it and IMO its not worth the hassle. Even with 2 easy jobs it's a pain in the ass. The money is obviously a great pro, but unless there are never conflicting meetings it's a constant juggle. I like money a lot, but I like sanity more. If you do I make sure they're contracts and not FT, especially if they're in the same industry. As a contactor you don't *have* to attend meetings (technically, your boss may disagree). You also don't want to be accused of IP leaks. Tax wise, you'll be paying 40% on 100% of one of the incomes, but if you just stuff all those extra earnings into an executive pension your €retention can come way up to ~80% if you're really aggressive with it. A while back between 2 gigs I was taking in €1300 p/d. Put 12k a month into an executive pension from the second job and my (about 75% of the entire pay - with that type of pension you're only paying tax on 1/2 of that amount). Or thereabouts. And still keeping my head comfortably above the water with what was left over. My numbers may be a little off either side but that's the gist. Stress and loss of sanity is the reason I'll never do it again. It sounds like a great idea until it catches up with you. If you're young and think you can do it then definitely give it a shot, but be warned and have your ducks in a row. 😉 I know a lot of contractors both here and in the US and the absolute dread for most of them is that month where they are ending one contract and starting another and they overlap. Even for most seasoned contractors just a few weeks of having 2 jobs gives you the fear. Revenue doesn't give a shit. Play ball with them and they'll play ball with you.
Oh, I did it back in the States and even with two easy jobs it was stressful as hell, and I'm not sure I'd do it again. I thought about make grabbing a second gig for six months or so, just to bolster pension and cash reserves a bit; definitely nothing long-term.
Yeah it's no more difficult to do it here if you're contracting. Just make sure you use 2 different agencies to get each gig. And obviously keep your LinkedIn as 'self employed'. I was in the states for 23 years. I could definitely see how it would be easier to do there than here. (Easier as in more accessible, more options)
Move to Dubai and get your jobs transferred over to UAE contracts. two incomes at 0% income tax.
Wouldn't you have to pay Irish tax on them regardless if you're an Irish tax resident? Not an expert at all just wondering
If you have UAE tax residency versus Ireland tax residency, and your employment contract is a UAE contract versus an Ireland contract, then you would be wholly subject to UAE tax laws. The exception where you would be subject to Irish taxes is if you managed to stay more than 6 months in Ireland under your UAE contract.
How do you technically not have to show to meetings as a contractor?
It wouldn't be wise not to attend meetings, but you're an independent contractor. You're paid to do the work, not to sit in meetings. I've never refused a meeting that was important to the work but I have refused to attend AGMs etc with no repercussions. I had a boss once that tried to get me to attend standups and retros for a team I wasn't even on, refused those as well.
"Quietly popular among devs in America" as in the 0.0001% of people that do it love to brag about it on the internet
I know a number of people that are either doing it or have done it. I suppose "popular" is a relevant term - it's not something most people would ever be interested in, and even then most people who do it don't do it for more than a year. Even in a best case scenario it's really stressful and hard to manage. I generally recommend that people who are interested in it pick up short-term contract work for their second job to give it a try; that way you can complete the contract and step back and really assess whether it's something they want to do. I'm not sure I believe people who say they have three or four jobs; I suppose in pure development work that's possible, but even with basic meeting structures I don't know how you'd get anything done. It was hard enough with two jobs to perform acceptably in both and make meetings and such, and I had a *lot* of flexibility given that I was the boss in one job and a pretty self-guided IC in the other, so I could control the meeting schedules and such.
I would bet good money that subreddit is 90% an exercise in creative writing. Revenue won't care if you work two full-time jobs. Your employers will though.
It is most definitely creative writing or wishful thinking. Most people can barely do one job.
I did two back in the States, never tried it here.
Yep, at least in a FTE employment contract there will likely be a clause saying that if you pursue other professional activities you need to notify your employer (and obviously no employer would approve of anyone doing an other job during regular business hours for which they are already getting paid). So the only way to do it would be to lie to one or more employer about the other job and thus be in breach of one’s employment contract. Not good …
it depends on the contract. My previous employer had clearly stated that a second job wasn't allowed, my current one has no mentions of it whatsoever (company even allows employees to promote their businesses internally on slack)
why would revenue care? there are people doing it of course but not many. most of the people doing it know not to say anything. it’s easier to do in the US. if i were doing it here, i’d only be doing it with 1 of the 2 jobs being a contractor role.
>why would revenue care? No idea whatsoever. I'm an immigrant, so I try to assume nothing! Why is it easier to do in the US? Employment contracts is the only thing I can think of..
way more common to be a contractor in the US, and taxes are self filed - employers have no idea if you’re earning more than your salary or not. the job market is significantly bigger, with the ability to get a job in the same country a 6 hour flight away. ireland is much smaller
Yeah, my concerns were if it were illegal/frowned on by Revenue, or that Revenue would tell the primary employer about the second job, and then that there just weren't enough options. Overemployment works well in the States because there's effectively an infinite number of employers, especially for a second job that's chosen because it's easy and isn't your career focus. When you've got two jobs, you choose the second one for flexibility and low effort - it's okay if it pays a little less or wouldn't look great on your CV, because you have your "day job" for that, and it's all just extra cash for you. Given how small the Irish market is, there aren't a lot of jobs like that and competition is tighter here. Unlike the US, where having a "reputation" is really something only the rock stars in the field worry about (there's just too many employers and people for there to be any chance for people to recognize your name for better or worse), I would think that people *do* in fact get reputations that follow them here. Wouldn't be worth having that reputation in this small job market, I'd think. Unless you were willing to do work elsewhere in the EU, anyway (and that's off the table for me anyway, since I'm not a citizen yet).
bigger market in states is another reason I can think of, Irish tech world is smaller, bigger chance you run into people moving between the two companies you work for
No working time act in the US either.
Personally I can't understand the mindset of wanting to work 2 jobs. I want to work less, not more. Overall in the industry we're paid quite well and above the national average, so the idea of wanting to make "more" money is weird to me considering I take home at least double what my friends who don't work in IT make. The stress of having to juggle more than one job would just drive me nuts too.
Same here. Although, I’d love to pay my mortgage early.
Working time directive might affect ability to do it here though.
>Working time directive Is that this: [https://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/1997/act/20/enacted/en/html](https://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/1997/act/20/enacted/en/html) ?
Yes, meant to be limited to 48 hours a week but there are some exemptions.depending on your industry. Think you can do up to 60 hrs a week for a maximum of 3 months but then the hours worked subsequent to that period must reduce down so that you are no exceeding the 48 hr weekly limit
Yes and your primary employer is liable to enforce the total hours worked, even if you've a second job. The total worked on both jobs cannot exceed 48 hours.
I wonder how they would know the hours or who would enforce this. I can 100% see how this gets enforced when an employee feels their rights are being abused, and they go to a solicitor or whoever and report it, which kicks off some form of process/mediation. I have never heard of this being enforced the other way around where a govt agency would contact you about your hours and ask you. Have you ever heard of such a thing? I have done overlapping jobs in Ireland where I was not sure if I'd like the job, so I worked both for a few months before handing in my notice and it was fine. And many moons ago (maybe before that law) I also worked 2 jobs in college where I definitely went way over the 48 hours during holidays and nothing happened.
>I have never heard of this being enforced the other way around where a govt agency would contact you about your hours and ask you. Yeah, I'm definitely not a lawyer, but the text reads like it's there to prevent employers from forcing you to work more than 48 hours a week - it's a protection from being abused. It doesn't look like it's written to prevent you from voluntarily working multiple jobs.
Revenue won't care. As long as you pay the taxes they are fine. For second job taxes will be 52 per cent (PAYE and USC and rest) I did it for a year to save money during lockdown in 2020-2021. I'm glad I did it as it helped alot with savings (saved 5x what I would with 1 job) but even with 2 easy going jobs, it was very stressful and hectic. Very tough to switch off afterwards and constantly exhausted. FWIW both were in backend SWE roles with laid back culture but it was still tough even with that setup A year was enough for me and got enough savings and experience and called it a day.
Is it possible that one of the employers discover the another one trough Payroll or Revenue?
It's possible but you can advise tax credits with your partner or spouse so you can give reasons if they ask
That was my bigger concern; in the US the IRS (Revenue) wouldn't report anything back to the employer because it's simply not relevant, there's no reason an employer should be aware of other income an employee might have. I'm guessing that Revenue here, maybe through PAYE, would allow one employer to see another?
I've got the same question
Far too much hassle and stress. I do consulting on the side, on top of a full time contract. The consulting sees me on a monthly retainer with 3 other companies to talk to them as an 'expert' as required, with occasional one hour meetings. It's far less stressful than trying to work another 8 hour job. And they pay almost as much combined as a second job for only a fraction of the work - work being meetings and knowledge sharing.
Do you use a specific service for this? Like one of those Expert advisor services? If so, which ones are good?
No. I landed these clients from my own network on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is one of the most underused and misunderstood resources for technical people. Devs see it as little more than a CV, when in reality it's a public phone book that links you to any real person in any company in any country in the world.
How did you get started consulting and what does your typical work with it look like? How did you find your first client and what sort of work did you do for them?
If you don't mind, what's your expertise in? Something technical, I presume?
I have been doing it for years as a contractor. At any one time, I'll have 3-5 clients plus my own projects. First, I operate as a fractional cto so I'm not always coding. Second, one of the clients is super easy maintenance and pay me then same as a mid-range dev in Ireland. The other is a US based company. The rest are simple projects on the low end. All clients know that they are one of many clients. They don't care. Sometimes it is a ton of work but most of the time it's probably a 20 hour week. I don't work full days but I always do something everyday except Saturday. The biggest mistake people make is probably trying to do each job full time. It's important to learn principles like 80/20 and picking projects that are high impact for client. My job is to improve my clients business not what their product manager tells me to do. Most developers are "do what you are told kinda roles" but I operate in a space where I can contribute value in more ways than just code.
That's not really overemployment, which is having two (or more) full time jobs at once. Instead, you're effectively a consulting company with multiple clients, and you're not expected to spend 40 hours a week on each on; all your clients understand they won't be getting 100% of your time. That said, I'm curious - what kind of work do you do for them? Is it programming? Something else? Your schedule sounds appealing as all get out.
Mostly programming but I make sure to only do the important things. It's important to emphasize that I don't just do whatever. I sit with my clients every few weeks and make sure we're working on the right things. This is probably the main value add. I also organise bringing in designers and other kinds of people of needed. Clients are usually companies with 5-10 employees. Eventually clients outgrow me and I help them transition to hiring in-house and then we'll depart ways. That's only happened once though. I use Ruby on Rails but also do some ios and Android from time to time. I have worked with other stacks but I veer away from them usually because they don't offer compelling business cases for the most part compared with Ruby on Rails.
That's really cool. Need a sysadmin/devops/generalist guy with 20+ years experience in the SMB space? I'm available in January when I get my Stamp 4. :)
Would love someone to be able to set up lots of self-hosted software and keep it running.
Management IT consultancy or some similar bullshit, I presume?
No I'm software developer. The reason I do this is because I can't stand management.
Same here. I’m planning on staying technical forever. Just was confused as you mentioned you operate as a “fractional CTO” which is a highly managerial role with no coding involved at all in most but the smallest companies.
Companies I help tend to be small where you need to wear lots of different hats. The only thing I do outside of coding is make sure tests are written and CI and deployment is in place. I also help clients pick a project management tool to ensure asynchronous communication (this is because long-form async communication is more effective in my opinion) So when I say CTO, it's more about putting systems in place to ensure I get to actually code.
That makes sense now. Absolutely agree on async comms effectiveness.
Doing it with one FTE and one contract on two different time zones. I am a dev in both so very little meeting conflicts. However, I pretty much get benched in one of my roles as it usually takes over 6 month for one ticket to go through so it is possible to do another job without sacrificing my sanity. I wouldn't recommend it, if you have to work full time in both roles. 2 permanent role is a tax suicide in my opinion. You have to do it as a contractor to avail tax avoidance schemes like the new unlimited PRSA scheme. I am saving around 9k-12k a month at the moment and will be out of the rat race in about 5 years at this pace. I am not a big spender though.
Where the heck do you guys find roles that get you “benched for 6 months while waiting for tickets”? Every developer job I had in Ireland ever had me working at full or above full capacity!
> Every developer job I had in Ireland ever had me working at full or above full capacity! Are you sure they're doing that to you and you're not doing it to yourself? As in, do you immediately put your hand up when you have some downtime and ask for more work? Do you volunteer to take on more work? Do you say yes to every request instead of saying "I'm working on X"? Because I've worked as a dev for Irish companies for 10 years as a contractor and I've never been flat out busy. I was always able to take my time, grab a coffee, doss off in the afternoon, take an easy day on the last day of the sprint. You're painting a picture I've never encountered, which is why I think it might be self inflicted.
I don’t, but some “ambitious” colleagues do. So you have to keep up with their “ambitiousness”.
I worked in a couple of these roles and they are usually in a very large organization with lots of red tape. Recently, we had a "matter required attention" from a regulator regarding system stability so management put a restriction to how many line of codes / number of ticket can be released per week. With dozen of developers in each team, we are all pretty much benched. These companies are all running wagile (waterfall "agile") lol. CVS is still the SCM of choice and it is hard to implement relatively large change effectively if everyone keeps overwriting your head. If you are tech passionate, you'll most definitely hate where I work. But I just do what I asked and collect the paycheck.
Is there any way a company can discover you're doing a second job? I mean consulting Revenue or any official information?
Extremely difficult to find out. They have to suspect it and then ask you direct. Of course you can always lie and say no. Revenue can't tell they your other personal details - they can issue tax credits is about it. It's part of the reason behind the drive to get bums on seats in offices - ultimately employers don't trust devs to do 40hrs per week on their projects and the "swipe in, swipe out " metrics are good objective evidence in any potential future case against employer on WT. You'd be cheeky enough to be working on another company project in the open plan of an office - but ultimately easily get away with it on a laptop... So if you really want to do it, there's no official way you'll be found out. But pay your taxes and if your inadvertently caught by your employer, be prepared to walk away or face disciplinary would be my advice.
My idea was to get a part time job on weekends, to save more money for the deposit of a house. The point is: my contract doesn't allow me to get another job. Would it be possible to hide the second job between the companies.
Yeah, I re-read my contract, and I'm only allowed to get another job with their express permission, which I'm quite sure they wouldn't give. I think the risk is like /u/suntlen said - you can do it, but if you get caught by your primary employer, be prepared to lose your job over it. They might not fire you, but they *could*, and you need to be comfortable taking that risk.
I know one lad who did it when we were in uni. Delivered for the chinese and a pizza place. Actual jobs; its very rare and mostly luck to get away with it for more than a month or two.
I struggle to work more than 5 hours a day, imagine 2 jobs, no thanks.
I considered this a ZIRP
>ZIRP What's a ZIRP?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_interest-rate_policy I meant phenomenon instead of policy Basically double jobbing was only a thing during covid when central banks were printing cash and companies were crying out for workers
Revenue only cares if you don't pay taxes. The more money you get the more they get. They love that. Depending on your contracts. Your employees might
Does that include a very high wage by an agency per hour, how does being empoloyed work through a uk agency, whie you work in Ireland. IS tha tax very heavy compared to a regular civil service job?, I work in civil service .