r/overemployed

I get that you guys have 2-3 remote jobs, but is it okay to make a startup with the free time after work instead? The good thing with the startup is it can scale, whereas an additional job doesn’t scale unless you take on more jobs (until you reach your limit).

I dunno if holding down more than 1 job is sustainable for me, but working on my own startup is, cause I can do it whenever.

Started a J2 just recently, both J1 and J2 are different industries, but kind of related. J2 is a regulated company. Here I am though a week into J2, HR is asking for a letter from J1 showing my "end-date". What should I do?

Just landed a role, been here for the past two weeks , full-time

Annual comp 160

Literally only one scrum meeting a day and that is it

The issue is that the work is pretty hard, very technical

My other j's are very laid back and I finish work very fast due to how easy it is.

It's not about volume of work either , it's just the assigned stories are very technical and takes me days to complete

Contrary to j1 , where I can finish work in a day and coast for the rest of the sprint

Anyone have experience dealing with this? Should I suck it up? Or replace?

I'm scared the team lead is gonna be a dick now. The stakeholders was an internal team, and I know that the hard deadline was doable, but it's tough.

I feel like usually with OE I just suck it up, but I am 2 months into this role and wanted to set standards and expectations. I'm scared he's going to call me out in meetings, be on my ass, etc.

My manager was really nice about it though, and said they want realistic deadlines not optimistic ones. Anyone have similar experiences?

Been doing OE for a while having J1 and J2 with minimal challenges. Decided to take J3 to fund my mortgage. Paid 20% down and planning to pay the remaining 80% with J1, J2, and J3 over the next 3 years. I believe the reward is worth the risk.

I currently have a remote J1 making about 90k a year, truthfully, I am only busy about 15-20hrs a week. Im considering a remote J2 but wanted to hear some feedback on what salary I should target for it, obviously, the higher the better, but I would be concerned finding something for less where I have to work harder. Any feedback would help, thank you!

Before I was OE, I attended a conference at J1. Met Person A talked for about 30 mins added each other on linkedin never spoke again (around mid 2025). Person A works for a company that my J1 partners with and I have syncs with their partnership team once every 3-6 months.

Person A only knows 1 person in that partnership team I work with that I very rarely interacted with. The company has over 85,000 employees, odds are they don't communicate often I hope.

Got J2 in Nov 2025, deactivated LinkedIn since everything has been smooth J1 is a ghost company pretty much and nobody suspects a thing at J1/J2 cause of performance. However, I was forced to cover another coworker at a conference for J1 (I demanded I no longer go to these things for obvious reasons), but J1 didn't give me a choice this time. Ran into Person A again for 3 mins barely talked just shook hands. (March 2026)

Recently Person A quit that other company and joined my J2. He is in my department but different market segment which I also never work with or interact with in a daily basis. Should I be worried? It's been making me anxious all week.

As the title says, got a last minute calendar invite for 9:30 this morning. Manager and HR shows up, knew immediately. My role, HR Business Partner and the entire business partnering team was being laid off today due to offshoring our roles to LATAM.

I've been OE for 2 months and I cannot be more grateful for the position im in. I have coworkers either just back or going on mat leave who have no job now over the next few months.

To anyone who is considering it, this. This is why you OE, companies have no regard for your life or job security. Protect yourselves and from someone in HR who should actively dissuade this.. fk the companies do what you need to do to survive and do it well so not to ruin OE for the rest of us 🤞🏻

Back to the J1 replacement hunt and potential good opportunity swung by from a previous round of interviewing. A piece of advice if you have a good recruitment experience always keep in contact with the HM for other opportunities that come in the future. You never know when you'll need it or when your next step up comes available.

For reference I'm in CAD and my US counterparts were impacted as well. Stay safe ya'll.

Hey all. I was OE in the past (like a year ago). I froze the work number and HireRight is requiring me to unfreeze this. They went as far as requesting it on my behalf.

They're stating they will not review any documents unless I unfreeze it. If I don't, they're stating they'll mark my background check as uncooperative.

Anyone deal with this? I have told them I'm not unfreezing it due to safety and identity theft issues. They're still not backing down, and have been holding my background check basically hostaged until I do so. Only worried about them finding the job that isn't on my resume or background check form due to being OE at that time.

Everything else would be fine though besides that one job.

Not a whole lot of people I can share this with but... across all tax advantaged accounts, regular brokerage accounts, and liquid savings, I have just surpassed $100k USD!! 🎉🎉🎉🎉

I know for most of you it's not that big of a deal but:

1. The overwhelming majority of those $100k USD were made exclusively in just the last 6 months (when I switched from 2Js to 4Js). Before that I had less than $15k USD invested.
2. I'm originally from Europe, from a country where the average salary in tech is $3-4k a month for my seniority. Low-middle-class folks back home literally go 20+ years in debt for this kind of money. And I've set it aside in half a year.

I am taking myself and my lady to a steakhouse to celebrate this weekend.

Next short term goal is $150k USD by New Year’s Eve

Stats: SWE, 9 YoE, 4Js, TC a tad under $600k CAD, LCOL area in Canada. (NOT looking forward to the tax season lol)

Godspeed

Went for an interview this morning and they said the salary was 25% of J1. As I am without a J2 would you take this? How low do you go? If I lost J1 I wouldn't be happy with this potential J2. On the other hand, I've lost my old J2 so I don't have any.

Please keep replies to % and not numbers. "I wouldn't take anything less than £200,000" doesn't help me because I'm no where near demanding those salaries.

Finally, I can’t personally handle 3 Js.

Had a brutal reality check today that I wanted to share with this group.

I did OE for a little over a year. It ended about one year ago when I got fired with severance. Was a gut punch for the first few days because I’ve always been a top performer. But honestly, I was happy it ended as the team was becoming toxic with a power hungry peer who really bullied me and others as he was trying to grow his influence.

A couple of months after I got let go a colleague from there reached out and we caught up. Apparently I was just the tip of the ice berg and the org ended up going on a reign of terror cleaning house of remote workers and others, including my colleague. Definitely made my ego feel better about being fired, but I was already over it. I was content focusing on my J1 and finding meaning in that work.

Well, reached out to that colleague again a year later to see where he landed and he has not been able to find work this entire time. I don’t know everything involved but sounds like he is in a really low place. For me, the way that job played out resulted in me having a bruised ego but not skipping a beat thanks to OE. For him though, brutal. This is why we OE. This is why I need to get back on the train.

Really trying to attempt my first real OE but have applied and applied with no callbacks or anything. Anyone else experiencing this as of late? I know it’s tough as if to get remote spots but trying for the level 1-2 range of my field. Thanks

With the exception of my phone authenticator and switching between Teams on my phone, I've kept the work 1,000% separate and devices have never crossed paths.

Today, I had to sign-into Microsoft to access an online sharepoint/file on J2 and one of the options is J1 email address. I've never signed into J1 on J2.

Anyone deal with this? Is it even an issue? I'm not really worried about it with J2, as it's consulting of sorts, and I have about 6 or 8 clients where Microsoft needs me to use those credentials. One more won't be really noticed by IT. And I've never actually logged into J1 on J2 computer.

Should I be clearing cookies and history to avoid this stuff? Any advice.

And thanks all

Disclaimer: I know this question does not fit the normal spirit of this sub, but I am looking for the insight that I know exists here.

Background: I am transitioning to J2 in about a month from J1. I am a senior member of my J1 team, and my J1 boss will need to hire someone to fill my role, they have know I was shopping around and I told them when I got my offer letter that I will be starting at J2. My J1 boss wants to keep me on payroll for a month or so after I start at J2 to keep the work flow moving while they find someone. This will require 1-3 hr of work/week. J2 has a “not allowed work for anyone without written consent from hr” clause. How would J2 find out that I am still employed by J1?

Started a new j1 this month after OG j1 had a round of layoffs (this is why we OE etc.).

The problem: It is not particularly OE friendly.

Lots of useless meetings, cameras on, and, while I was allegedly hired as an IC cog in the machine, I'm getting strategic type work passed off on me by my manager and executives are already expecting me to present decks with my vision for (my little contribution to) the company. Ok reading that back it sounds a little r/that happened and it's not all on me but I'm certainly not just executing work like I expected.

I knew when accepting the job that it was a late stage startup but, hey, I figured I would treat it as j3 and drop if needed.

The bigger problem: Equity.

Base salary is much lower than OG J1 but the TC is amazing....if I can last a year until my first RSU vest date.

Without getting into specifics that could out me it's ~200k that I was granted week 1 vesting over 5 years. First vest date is 1 year after my start date, which means if I hold out for a year I get ~40k, or more if the stock grows. Then it continues vesting quarterly, which means a 10k "bonus" every few months. They also target a 15% bonus in April, which wouldn't be much this year since I'm starting late in the year but still.

HOWWWWW am I going to last for a year?? My usual OE strategy is hit it and quit it but if I quit or get fired here less than a year in then it was just a pay cut and more work for nothing.

J2 was my original J I had put on the chopping block for too many meetings and way more work than OG J1, but glad I held out since OG J1 dropped me. Now I have 2 meeting-heavy jobs, but 1 is with a company with meaningful equity and the other is with a fairly stable big company with a cameras off culture.

What would you do?? I'll hold out as long as possible but my brain just short circuits in the cameras on meetings. I've had so many overlapping meetings already with j2 and I'm worried I'm at risk for slipping up and losing both. I haven't even had time to apply for other jobs because I'm in meetings 5 hours every day now.

Hi All,

I have been OE for almost 5 years, max Js at once was 6, lowest is 4. Currently 5. I have been in my field for over 15 years. OMG reading some of these stupid posts and questions. I don't mean to demean anyone but, my God, if you are asking the most basic questions only proves you should not even think about OE. I always said, if you do not have AT LEAST 7-8 years of experience, you most likely should not OE. Yes, some can do it with less but, OE is not ONLY about how good you are at your job, its also about developing your social and soft skills, learning to play the "game", balancing your workload, knowing when to accept a meeting and when to decline/reschedule, learning how to become a reliable employee that people leave you alone, knowing when to go "all in" and knowing when to slow down, learning when to have your camera on/off. All this takes time and experience beyond simply being good at your job. If you are here asking and posting the most basic dumb questions, that is your answer. NO, you should not OE.

Ok rant over.

The stress relief has been life changing. I feel like I can once again get up from my desk, clean, or take a nap during the day. I miss the money but you can’t put a price on years of your life!

How do you do it when we’re supposed to be so active on LI posting and sourcing etc? I have capacity for multiple jobs but I am not sure how the admin works.

How do you weight the benefits of OE vs hard core focus on career progression (aka. job hopping, finding the senior+ level roles that pay high, building relationships to get promos)?

OE def seems like short term more effective in terms of getting paychecks but wondering long term if trying to land more senior positions also makes sense. OE is always possible long term but can also take a lot of mental energy.