r/overemployed

my company hires constantly for my role. my younger brother has been out of work for over a year and about eight months ago i finally put two and two together and rebuilt his cv to look like a tighter version of mine and applied for the role on his behalf.

the zoom interview was the spicy part. he sat in his bedroom in a clean shirt looking the part and i sat just out of frame on his bed feeding him lines through an airpod, when they hit him with the technical questions he just looked thoughtful for a few seconds and read my answers back like he was thinking them up in real time. he got the job.

hes been on payroll there for eight months now. i do most of his actual work because im in the same role and i can knock his stuff out in an extra hour a day on top of mine, he handles the meetings he can handle and pings me through teams when something gets hairy. we split his salary down the middle.

the punchline is when i was interviewing as him i casually mentioned hed had another offer for a higher band, which got him onto a salary about 4k above mine for what is literally the same job. my boss told me last month theres no budget for my raise this year but theyre keeping an eye on the new lad because hes "really impressing the senior team."

the new lad is me. anyway. eight months in and counting.

Last year I was OE, making more money than I knew what to do with (at 24, anyway), but struggling to turn off my brain. I met my savings goals ahead of schedule (nothing crazy, but enough to float for 2 years if needed).

I got laid off of both contracts in December, and have been job searching since… the job market is rough right now, especially for creative roles.

Yet, I can’t help but notice I’m happier now than ever. It’s been 5 months of uncertainty, on unemployment, and I spend my days working out in the sun at parks, enjoying going to restaurants and visiting friends and family.

Lots of posts in here are focused on financial freedom long term, and OE absolutely allowed me to be as stress free as I am right now, but I think it’s important to remember that the future isn’t promised and just like money, it’s important to invest in your happiness now for future growth.

Invest in yourself, friends. Spend time with the people you love and remember that money provides safety, but it can’t buy back lost time.

Landed a J2 6 month contract with a potential J3 FTE role in finals next week. Plot twist is I’m pregnant and due in November. I have some time to figure things out, but hopefully won’t have to give up anything and if anything can stack up and save in the interim.

Last time I had 3 Js was two years ago - two contracts and one FTE. The most amazing contracts too, so easy. Hoping for the same vibes this time around. Glad to be back in biz.

Title says it all, is this something folks in the UK are also doing? How does it work for you within the UK tax system?

Should I pick a skill and start learning? Go for certs? I'm computer literate. I'm sure I can pull off a basic help desk job, but I want to truly learn and develop to the point of possibly having my own business eventually.

Hi all, I have been OE’ing for about 4 months now. J2 is the epitome of a perfect OE job. Fully remote, no management watching over me, 1 meeting per week. I can go all day without doing anything and no one will notice. However the company is failing financially so Idk how long it will last.

J1 is full remote and I have meetings from 9am to 2pm and I’m done for the day. Will keep this job as I have been giving a large amount of RSUs and they will have a strong IPO soon.

TC: 230k. + bonuses.

However prior to OE. I was in financial ruin, family needed support and I was barely scraping by every paycheck even having as low as 0.02 in my account going to work. I gave my parents all of my savings (30k). Now I have about 35k in debt with 0 savings.

Should I save as much as I can and pay minimums in my debt? Or clear my debt as fast as possible and then start a savings? I would tackle both at the same time but I still have fixed expenses costing me about 3-4k a month. (Rent is 2.7k and groceries / utilities). Im a very frugal person and don’t care about lifestyle upgrades. I’m always in fear of my OE income falling apart and I naturally just want to acorn as much money as possible.

The most revealing part of OE threads is how quickly people expose their internal model of work without realizing it.
You can almost watch the cognition happen in real time.
Someone reads a post that sounds:
• unusually structured
• emotionally detached
• highly compressed
• low-friction
and before they consciously evaluate the argument itself, their brain already generates a social interpretation:
“this feels AI.”
That reaction is interesting because it usually occurs before factual disagreement.
The mind makes a rapid heuristic judgment first:
• unnatural tone
• suspicious fluency
• excessive structure
• insufficient visible effort
Only afterward does it begin constructing a rational explanation for why the post must be wrong, pretentious, robotic, or “LinkedIn-brained.”
In other words:
the conclusion arrives first.
The reasoning arrives second.
Which is why the rebuttals often focus less on operational reality and more on restoring social equilibrium.
“You’re overthinking basic organization.”
“You just discovered working smarter not harder.”
“You sound like corporate buzzword soup.”
Notice what these responses accomplish psychologically.
They reduce the perceived asymmetry.
Because if the post is merely pretentious, then the commenter does not need to confront the more uncomfortable possibility:
that much of modern work is governed less by objective difficulty than by unmanaged cognitive load.
That’s the deeper thing being defended.
Not necessarily the workflow itself…
but the emotional interpretation of the workflow.
Most people experience constant activation:
notifications,
messages,
status indicators,
meeting requests,
unread counts,
response latency.
Over time the nervous system stops distinguishing between:
• social pressure
• operational necessity
• genuine consequence
Everything acquires the emotional texture of urgency.
So when someone describes work in unusually cold or systems-oriented language, it can feel vaguely threatening because it strips away the emotional framing that gives the work its perceived weight.
The commenter then experiences two conflicting intuitions simultaneously:
1. “This is obvious.”
2. “I don’t actually behave this way consistently.”
That tension creates irritation.
And irritation is often resolved socially rather than analytically:
• call it AI
• call it buzzwords
• mock the tone
• flatten the abstraction
• restore normalcy
What makes this especially funny is that the accusation itself unintentionally reinforces the original premise.
The commenter is reacting not to automation directly, but to the absence of visible cognitive strain.
Which means “this sounds AI-generated” increasingly functions as shorthand for:
“this communication contains less friction than I subconsciously expect from a human under similar workload conditions.”
That is an extraordinarily modern sentence.
And a very OE-specific one.

Just started J2 last week - FT contract role. J1 I have been at 4 years but it's a sinking ship. I could be let go anytime but I have been saying that for a year. J1 also highest paying.

Anyway, applied for potential J3 (as a J2) a while ago and never heard back. They fast tracked me suddenly last week and now I'm expecting an offer.

The conundrum: I messed up with J2 and they contacted J1 to verify employment. I checked do not contact, but they did anyway. HR asked and I said it's just a side gig to build savings - they were completely fine with it and even said they'd give me a recommendation if needed.

J3 lists offer is contingent on a background check. J3 has my current employer from my resume, so I run the risk of them contacting J1 to verify... again.

J3 pays less than J1 but is solid - chill boss, easy workload and decent J1 base potential for future. I'd really like to take it if possible, but am fearful of getting too greedy and HR getting suspicious if they get contacted again.

Creative ideas? Things I'm missing? Quit J1 and just roll with the 2? TIA

I didn’t make my job easier, I just stopped doing parts of it

Not in a “I broke the system” way

More like… I got tired of doing the same low-energy stuff every day. Rewriting the same follow-up emails, cleaning up notes into something usable, updating docs nobody actually reads but the 3 people who invented them.

So I started messing with prompts and small automations to offload it. Nothing crazy. Mostly just forcing structure into repetitive work.

Now my day is basically skim what got generated, fix the parts that sound like a robot wrote it, send.

It’s not perfect, but it shaved off a lot of the dumb effort.

Weird part is… the work didn’t get easier. Just quieter. I guess that easier.

Curious how many people are doing this vs still grinding through everything manually.

I think I could handle 3-12 more jobs.

I started J2 two months ago and it is very OE-friendly. The only thing I hate is that they pay me every 45 days, so every 20th of the month I receive the payment for the previous month. Also, it’s through an international transfer, so the bank takes around 300 to 400 USD monthly in fees. Do you think that if I get another job, it would be better to quit J2?

I am trying to think about what is the best way to OE. I come from a cyber security background but currently in a tech sales role, this job is too demanding for OE so anyone working in cyber security doing this?

I have accepted two jobs and doing on boarding for one of them big company and the posted me on there website as new hire and will have articles on me in there website. The work I do requires state licensing.. second job will start in June in different state and they have no presence online they are working in there website still .

Should I keep both and try or give up the big company pays 160k since small one pays waaay better 200k

Hey everyone, I’m looking for some perspective from people who may have dealt with similar background check situations. I was previously overemployed and have since been laid off from my most recent role. I’m currently unemployed. My timeline is as follows: I started J1 in 2021 and then added J2 in 2022. In 2024, J1 required a return-to-office, so I left that role since J2 was fully remote and higher paying. In 2026, I was impacted by layoffs at J2. While job searching, I included both J1 and J2 on my resume to reflect my full experience. My resume shows J1 ending when I started J2, so it does not reflect any overlap between the two roles. I’ve made it through interviews and reference checks, and I’m now at the First Advantage background check stage. Actions I’ve already taken include:

• Disabling data sharing services like The Work Number
• Removing/locking down LinkedIn activity

I’m trying to understand how best to handle potential discrepancies that may come up around overlapping employment and separation timelines. The two approaches I’m considering are:

1. Disclose everything as accurately as possible on the background check, including overlapping employment periods and the actual end date at J2, even if it doesn’t perfectly align with what’s reflected on my resume.
2. Keep the information consistent with what I’ve presented on my resume and support it with pay stubs and W-2s where needed, while avoiding drawing attention to differences in overlap and termination dates.

I’d really appreciate any thoughts from people who have dealt with background check mismatches between employment history and employer records, especially in cases involving overlapping employment or differing separation dates. Thanks in advance.

* RESOLVED* Just ran into this on a Google search 😳 Please tell me this is not true. Considering taking FMLA at J1, but not J2.

You cannot legally "opt out" of combining Short-Term Disability (STD) with FMLA if you are taking leave for your own qualifying medical condition. FMLA provides job protection, while STD provides income replacement. When both apply, employers usually run them concurrently.

Edit: First time in my career attempting to use FMLA and have never had to use STD/LTD so please forgive my ignorance and moment of panic. My company pays for STD/LDT so was just looking for confirmation they couldn’t force me to use STD. Thank you for confirming!

I have standup conflicts every day, though I’ve only actually been called on in both meetings at the same time twice.

It’d be helpful to have a program where I could click a button to automatically unmute and play a pre-recorded status update I had set beforehand.

I can see this being useful for just responses too. Like "sounds good" or "thanks", as I'm talking for one of the J's. I can definitely do the multitasking, but cannot physically multitask my talking.

Hey everyone,

I’m currently interviewing for J2s to eventually become my J1. My current J1 is low-maintenance and perfect for stacking, so I plan to keep it.

I’ve realized that my interview success depends heavily on the "brand" on my resume. When I used a contract role, I got interviews but no offers. Once I swapped it for my current, more reputable J1, the engagement has become significantly stronger and I feel like I'm finally close to an offer.

My concern is the long-term resume narrative. If I land this J2, I’m unsure how to structure my resume moving forward to keep getting interviews without creating background check issues:

• How do you handle the BGC without it flagging concurrent employment?
• If I drop J1 from my resume after the BGC clears, does that create problems down the road?
• Is it even a bad idea to be interviewing with J1 on resume if I plan on stacking?

I've read that its not a good idea to have J1 but its getting me places now...

Anyone with experience can help me here please?

Thank you!

I started my second job four weeks ago today as a project coordinator at a small consultancy and the first full paycheque cleared into my account this morning. 3,800$ after tax. I genuinely sat at my desk and stared at the screen for about ten minutes.

I grew up on a council estate with my nan because my parents werent in the picture, and i left school at sixteen with nothing to show for it. Ive spent most of my twenties bouncing around admin jobs that paid just enough to keep me one missed shift away from disaster.

My main job is a customer ops role at a saas firm that pays 64k base. The second one brings in another 48k flat and ive spent the last month going slightly insane while i learned it on top of the old one. Both managers think im weirdly keen and i keep getting praised on calls for being "responsive."

Today the second paycheque hits and i pay off the entire 2k credit card balance ive been dragging behind me since covid, and i still have something left over. Im going to make my nan dinner this weekend and not check the bill before i pay it for the first time in my adult life.

If anyone is lurking and wondering if you can pull this off coming from nothing, you genuinely can.

I just had a J2 and J3 offer but they contacted me through my main LI account

Of course, I'm thinking of hibernating my LI when I accept it.

The main issue is, what IF one of the J2 or J3 just asks someone from J1 if I am still working there?

Did that happen to someone? I know I am overthinking but, yeah, it will be a bit suspicious as soon as I accept J2 and J3 to hibernate LI but I think that's the only way

Thoughts?