Clouded moon of Moonlighting

 Moonlighting has been in public debate since last few days. Moonlighting actually means working secretly to earn extra money apart from normal day job so literally meaning working in night. The reason for secrecy is for everyone to guess !

Very recently a union minister talked about legitimizing moonlighting in IT and other industries , and this got many of us thinking about the validity of the argument as well as possible repercussions.

Moonlighting was always in practice because it feeds the need for extra money. When you take a full time employment with an organization, it is a contractual bind. Working for some other employer albeit on personal time for the purpose of extra money is treated illegal in some areas and unethical in general. Full time employment means the person is supposed to work for the paying employer during working hours and rest of the time is personal. How to spend this personal time is everyone’s prerogative. How ever getting into another employment contract may give rise to conflict of interest and hence the employers are reluctant and outright opposed to the idea.

IT industry moonlighting is primarily limited to developers who can handle multiple development jobs due to nature of such jobs. The purpose is mostly to earn additional money. At times, people are driven to work on something they believe in ,such as a product idea in a start-up or some idea which needs prototyping and some development efforts. Such persons opt for moonlighting, where the primary responsibility is still the day job and rest of the possible time is spent on their choice of moonlighting work. Duration of such moonlighting would also be smaller, as it is physically impossible to work full time and some more for all their working life.

Then came the pandemic in 2020, and most of the IT industry workers had to resort to work from home. Saving on transportation time, sitting in the comfort of your own home, it was like dream come true for many. And few months later we saw incidences where people were caught working for multiple companies, keeping all of them in dark about the other employment. The discussion started and now we have come to a point where some voices want moonlighting to be legal !

Those who are sympathetic to this demand may think this as simple ‘poor slave worker vs all mighty employer’ stereotype. It may also feel almost like a class struggle!

But reality is something beyond this.

Strata of ‘Moonlighters’

Who can really do moonlighting? Primarily the developers, coders and testers are the people which can be given a piece of work and their completion can be estimated to some extent and delivery can be quantified. For example, a coder can be asked to develop a library of functions and routines, or a tester can be asked to test an application module, write test cases or a maintenance engineer can be asked to resolve specific number of tickets in specific duration. These jobs which are part of software development life cycle, can be done remotely with the help of internet connectivity . Similarly, such piece of work can be delegated without giving out the big picture. In today’s skill crunch situation, fueled by various external factors, finding developers of required skill can difficult. Hence those having such skills become attractive to multiple employers and get selected for jobs. Working from home facilitates working for multiple such employers simply because you don’t have to show your face physically in the company. Remote logins, multiple laptops, multiple phones all can be arranged to create a façade where employers will not doubt the loyalty of their employees even when they are working for multiple such employers.

This is the ‘strata’ of IT industry who can actually take up such multiple assignments with multiple employers. Taking up jobs for multiple employers invariably impacts the productivity of the individual. Stretching the work beyond hours if case of need is out of question in such cases and this can adversely affect project timelines. Juniors in IT industry are also expected to learn more skills or enhance their existing skillset. However time would be in short supply for such individuals who have taken of moonlighting for multiple employers and consequently they will suffer in the process.

It is hence unethical and impractical on employee’s part to take up jobs at the cost of its employers at the same time reaping the employee benefits offered by them.

As the person steps up the ladder, the responsibility increases along with workload. Hence higher up in organization, person will not find time or energy for moonlighting. Hence senior level IT managers will hardly opt for moonlighting except in certain cases where they would be pursuing a different career path such as writing, teaching or training.

Hype around ‘Skills’

One argument doing rounds favouring moonlighting is the lack of skilled engineers. Moonlighting cannot be compared with work of doctors or lawyers where they might work with multiple firms. These professionals run the business on their own individual skill and hence working with multiple firms helps in better time management and turns out be more beneficial for end users which are patients and clients in this case. A patient visits a doctor for the skill and experience which is unique. A doctor or lawyer also work in teams however they are the ‘sun’ of their own solar system.

Comparing these skills with IT development skills of junior professionals is incorrect. IT skills can be developed over time. And individual’s knowledge in ASP .net, Mongo DB or Angular JS or PHP is still something that can be taught to others in short duration and hence the individual is replaceable. That is not the case with professions such as medicine or law.

Part of the Big picture

Another point of difference is the importance of the individual in entire scheme of things.

The ’strata’ of IT industry who can effectively moonlight is one section of an IT project. IT projects typically involve many people even up to 1000 at times and can continue for quite a duration , 6 months to 1 year or more. It has multiple roles and require multiple skills such as project management, architects, business analysts, infrastructure specialists, coders, testers, middle managers, sales teams etc. Not ALL these roles are suitable for moonlighting. Some are client facing and onsite while some are intense and require lot of concentration and efforts. Hence legalising moonlighting is a step taken for a small section and it will in turn result in impacting the project deliverables itself, thus harming the IT industry in turn. Legitimizing a flawed arrangement for want of better solution is short sightedness.

The big questions

Allowing employees to work for multiple employers will give rise to several situations which have to be handled.

Many clients expect absolute privacy for their projects, sometimes insist on monitored and controlled physical access to working areas where project team is located. Work from home itself was a difficult transition. How can a ‘moonlighting’ employee be given access or entry into a project where such privacy is part of sales contract?

Employment benefits such as provident fund, pension schemes, promotion schemes are based on the premise that the individual is part of the company and is loyal to the company during the tenure. Working for multiple employers violates this assumption.

Working for multiple employers will create conflict of interest issues if both employers are competitors. It is a ‘no win’ situation for all parties involved, when basic trust gets compromised. Drawing watertight legal agreements for such ‘moonlighting’ individuals will be cumbersome and costly in all terms.

Having said this, if an individual’s skill is in high demand, then instead of moonlighting, the person should opt for working on contract basis for all interested parties. Even in current situation, moonlighting is a possibility when the employers are not in dark and have no objection professionally. This works in cases when individuals are helping or starting on new ideas, writing a book or pursuing another career option in spare time. How ever the underlined assumption is the loyalty to primary employer.

The recent spate of cases which have come up where companies found out about moonlighting individuals only due to EPF scrutiny, tells us about other side too. It speaks volumes about lack of work quantum given to an individual. For a billable full time employee, the workload seems to be less and that is how the individual is tempted to work for more employers and collecting more salary cheques. This observation in turn implies flawed project estimates and overcharging the customers.

It can be understood that set notions about employment can get changed with time and with individual freedom taking a front seat. How ever while legitimizing such terms and concept, we should be aware of pitfalls and possible directions where the industry would be headed.

Published at 

https://manishachitale-26610.medium.com/bitter-moon-of-moonlighting-975561851141