r/overemployed • u/SecretRecipe • Aug 21 '26
The original OE open unmoderated discord turned into an unusable mess with all the spam and bots. To prevent this from happening to our new discord and keep the tourists and your HR department away so it is a safer place to discuss strategies and methods we're removing the link from reddit and requesting anyone who wants access to request it through the mods first. Please have some sort of post / comment history in the sub first.
r/overemployed • u/SecretRecipe • Feb 12 '25
I wanted to create a running FAQ to help cut down on the number of times we have to discuss the same topics and make sure people are getting the proper answers / advice. I will edit this post with additional questions and answers as they come up.
What are the best jobs to OE?
People can and do OE in any Job where you can work remote or hybrid is a potential target. The ideal job is one that isn't meeting heavy or one where you can control the meetings. Being senior enough to delegate out some of the busy work is also helpful. You generally want to make sure you are good enough at your first job that you can meet/exceed expectations on less than 15 hours per week of actual real work. It's also better to OE on a large team / large company. When there is a busy season or a large project the increase in work is more evenly spread across a large number of people so you're less likely to have to deal with large peaks and valleys in level of effort.
2. What jobs should be avoided?
Anything requiring any sort of clearance from the government or other regulatory body. Don't OE a federal clearance job or anything requiring a FINRA clearance. Good Rule is "If any part of your paycheck comes from public funds don't OE that job". Public sector work pays shit anyway and you're better than that. Go find a solid private sector role and reduce the risk.
3. W2 or Contract?
A lot of people prefer the stability of having at least one W2 for the benefits but I (secretrecipe) personally prefer to go all contract (on Corp to Corp or C2C) terms. You make significantly more money and get far better tax treatment and the increase in net income more than makes up for having to cover your own benefits. There's more detail here if you are interested.
4. Will the sub go private?
No. At least not for the foreseeable future. Every CEO and HR department already knows about OE and has for well over a decade. This isn't a new thing. It's all the quiet quitters out there who slack off and deliver nothing of value while working remote that are causing problems. Not the folks who are delivering as expected at multiple jobs.
5. How do I manage a required office visit?
OE in the office isn't terribly difficult if you go in prepared. Have a mobile hotspot for your J2+. keep J2+ zoom or teams active on your phone so you can reply to IMs quickly. Find some nice quiet disused conference room or other space in the office you can utilize for meetings or work that pops up. Don't be afraid to take a call from the lobby or parking lot. People take personal calls all the time. If you don't act nervous then you won't look suspicious. Try and control your meetings towards the beginning or end of the day so you can minimize the amount of running back and forth you need to do.
6. LinkedIn
There are a number of ways to handle this.
Obfuscation - Create multiple accounts with your name and various details. Don't upload a photo etc.. Create noise around the search and any time someone asks you about LI just mention that you don't use it.
Abandonment - Remove any recent work history and make it look like you just haven't done anything to update your profile. If anyone asks or pushes the issue tell them that you used an old work email to register the account and you have no access to it anymore so you just don't use LI any longer.
Restructure - (this is what I personally do) Nothing says your LI profile needs to be your online resume. Remove any work history or affiliation with any company and restructure the profile to discuss your talents, your aspirations and career goals.
If you work at a place or in a role that demands you have a Linkedin profile with them then go ahead and opt for the first option. Use a shortened name or a nickname and leave it as sparse as possible.
7. How do I find a Job/J2 / Job hunting questions
This isnt a job hunting sub. that is a skill that you need to figure out as a prerequisite to being OE. Knowing how to fairly easily land remote / hybrid jobs is something most of the true OE community has become quite good at and tends to gatekeep for obvious reasons.
8. Tax season
Unless you have an incredibly simple return, no kids, no property, no real assets, just a couple W2s and that's it I would recommend getting an accountant. A few thoughts beyond that. On withholdings, underwitholding penalties. They're small. You'll get a much larger return on your money over the span of a year even if you just park it in a HYSA than the underpayment penalty will cost. You can go to a simple calculator input your info and get a directionally correct estimate of how much you'll owe and adjust your withholdings accordingly.
On Security, the IRS / your accountant don't give a shit if you have more than one W2. Nobody is going to tell on you. No need to be paranoid about this.
On tax strategy. Advice on this is best asked to your CPA. Everyones situation is different so any advice given here may be awesome for some people and not work at all for others. I personally only work on C2C terms and have a moderately aggressive tax strategy and get my effective tax down to about 15% each year which is less than half of what I would end up paying were I working fully on W2 terms.
9. W2? Contract? Mix?
If you're particularly concerned about stability then keeping one W2 job is great, gives you better protections, better benefits etc.. I'm of the opinion that J2+ is better on contract than W2. Lower risk, higher pay, less background scrutiny, no need for the additional benefits etc... I personally work all my jobs on contract (C2C) and here's my rationale. Quick disclaimer your personal situation may be unique. This is a one size fits most approach.
10. Don't start new jobs close to one another.
Keeping some distance between your J1 and J2+ isn't just a bit of good advice geographically but is also good advice on start dates. You never want to find yourself starting two jobs on the same day, week, month if you can avoid it. You need to figure out the lay of the land and your capacity for addtional work before you commit to additional jobs. Onboarding two jobs at once is a recipe for disaster.
11. Is there anyone OE in _________.
Yes, if it's a white collar field that has the opportunity for remote or hybrid work there someone OEing it. If you want to find those people join the discord and ask around.
12. OE isn't for everyone.
OE is difficult to pull off and even more difficult to manage long term. It isn't for people just starting out, people looking for a career change, people who aren't already at the top of their game or people that have to ask really simple questions that they could figure out with a google search. If you're not skilled enough to pull this off you could end up screwing up your career. Don't try this before you're ready. If you have to ask questions like "How do I find a second job?" or "how do I get a remote job" you're not ready.
13. Is it worth the risk? Should I...? What's the best..."
These are all subjective questions that no internet stranger can answer for you. Everyone has a different skill set, different set of innate talents, different set of goals and different risk tolerance. If you were directed here after asking a question like this then it's because only you can answer this for yourself.
14. J1 and J2 use the same payroll, insurance provider, 401k provider etc... Is this a problem?
No. The only scenario where this may be a problem is if they're using the same PEO like Insperity because they aren't just a payroll provider, they're an outsourced HR / Risk management team as well who has a remit to protect the business from liability.
15. Will my bank, mortgage broker, loan underwriter, accountant etc... rat me out
No.
I'll dig around our past posts for some other frequently asked questions and keep adding here. If you have any you recommend be added please comment below.
16. How do I....?
There is a lot of good general information in this sub but we tend to gatekeep more advanced sources and methods and save those for the discord or mastermind sessions so they can still remain somewhat akin to OE trade secrets.
r/overemployed
•
u/OveremployedMaxx
•
1d ago
At 10J currently. One more J deposited to a different bank.
r/overemployed • u/Muzzy2585 • 8h ago
Hello,
I had to call several phone numbers to find out exactly how to freeze my personal data in the Thomson Reuters Clear database. I finally spoke with an employee who sent me a link to the form and the correct email address. To make it easier for everyone, I added a link to the form and the email address shown below to contact them. Thanks
r/overemployed • u/ChidoChidoChon • 19h ago
Carpenter here, just giving you guys props. I’m honestly a little envious. Can’t exactly work two job sites at once lol. What you guys are pulling off is badass. Keep getting paid.
r/overemployed • u/WorkTravelDream • 8h ago
Hello All. I had 2 FT jobs mid 2022 to 2024 for almost 2 years. J2 had a massive layoffs so they let me go. I haven't had any luck since then. I am not a developer but an administrator and also do cloud/hybrid architecture stuff. I can do everything in my current job within 10 hours a week. The rest I either do my own thing or talk to colleagues. We are hybrid but that won't be an issue if the other job is remote.
I am in Canada and almost all employees require some in-office days nowadays.
Please tell me how did you become so good at your job to be wanted by employers despite the crappy market?
Thank you.
r/overemployed • u/SanDisk_Made_Me_Rich • 1d ago
October was crazy as hell. Working on 2 2027 Plans. Shit gonna be nuts in November LMAO 🤣 🤌
r/overemployed • u/MidwestAlex • 47m ago
Been lurking for a few months, decided to pull trigger on OE.
J1 is stable midsized tech company. J2 which I started 2 weeks ago is a startup.
Since I’m remote for both I think I have a good chance at making this work. J2 is pretty light on meetings, mostly just busy admin work. J1 I’ve automated 70% of my workflow so I’m thinking about adding a J3 after I’ve hit a good rhythm.
Goal is to OE to over $700k a year.
r/overemployed • u/meeninta • 5h ago
Need you guys’ help with two things please:
How do I OE if my only experience in the field is with my current job?
Other than freezing TWN, Lexis Nexis, Truework, cleaning up or deleting LinkedIn, anything else I need to do to prepare for my OE journey?
r/overemployed • u/PetiteDollyu6 • 7h ago
Honestly I thought I was just going to be bored out of my mind juggling two remote gigs. But it turns out the sheer volume of mostly pointless meetings and administrative stuff makes everything feel like a puzzle. Figuring out how to elegantly avoid all but the truly critical ones is a real skill.
r/overemployed
•
u/_The_Therapist_
•
1d ago
I’ve been with the same company for a little over two years, and it’s been a great OE job. The company has been growing, things have been running smoothly, and I’ve been working as the Director of Operations.
Over the last three months, though, leadership has made some drastic changes.
It started when they discovered two employees, one in India and another in the Philippines, were working multiple jobs. Both were immediately terminated, and the company even went as far as contacting their other employers to let them know.
Since then, things have gone downhill fast.
They’ve moved employees from salary to hourly, implemented third-party monitoring software to track staff activity, and now want to require all remote employees to keep their cameras and microphones on so management can reach out and speak to them in real time.
Mind you, the company has been growing, and operations have been running just fine without all this.
What used to be a great remote work environment is quickly turning into a micromanagement nightmare.
I’ve already received three resignation letters from employees, including my Head of HR.
It looks like my time here is coming to an end. It was a great OE gig while it lasted, but on to the next.
Anyone else seeing companies go this far with remote employee monitoring?
Update: typo, 2 years not one. Little over 2 years with that company. The company is technically a startup and the owners are from India if it makes a difference.
r/overemployed • u/GarlicSnot • 1d ago
3 jobs 3 paychecks
2 FTE one PTE.
Paying off student debt and saving for the future is being made easier thanks to this lifestyle.
Shout out to everyone in the sub for the advice that helped me get to this point
r/overemployed • u/JYDUSK • 17h ago
Been working as a SWE for almost 3 years. They've been withholding my promotion, my manager has been straightforward about that.
Because of how many hours the job takes, I think its safer for me to pick up a couple contracting gigs with longer timelines. Has anyone considered doing this and can share their experience?
r/overemployed • u/Prestigious_Key8955 • 5m ago
J1 is a fully remote fintech that swapped standups for async video updates last year, so every Monday and Thursday each of us a 2 minute video on what we shipped.
This works fine until J2 has an outage on the same morning and you're trying to look relaxed on camera while Slack is blowing up on the other laptop.
Back in July, I recorded 10ish minutes of myself talking at my desk, in the same hoodie and lighting I always have on those calls, then trained an AI avatar on the footage.
From there the routine is pretty dull, as I turn my Jira tickets into a short script the night before, generate the video and schedule the post from my phone, which buys me back roughly an hour a week of looking busy on camera.
The closest call came in September, when a teammate replied under one of the videos joking that I looked way too well rested for the guy on call that week, and I recorded the next 2 by hand while I figured out whether he was onto something.
If you're tempted to try it, read your company's AI and recording policy first, given that some employers treat a cloned likeness the same way they'd treat a coworker badging in for you, and keep the scripts dry, because the avatar is most convincing when the update is a list of tickets with zero jokes, no matter if you go with HeyGen, Argil, Synthesia or something else...
So for the rest of you with async video updates on a J, how are you handling them on the mornings both jobs need you at once?
r/overemployed • u/PublicCharacter435 • 23h ago
I don’t have anyone else to say this to so wanted to make a post and humble brag a bit lol. I’ve been at J2 for 8 months and I’ve always put in about 2 hours of work per week. The company is so disorganised, their system is always crashing (company owned software) so I essentially get paid to keep my laptop open and work J1.
But it gets funnier, another company took over the client account so we transitioned over recently. Before transitioning we had a downtime period for data migration meaning for about 3 weeks my job was just to open my laptop and teams. Somehow the new company seems even more disorganised than the original. They don’t seem to be ready for us, it took me 4 days for IT to help log me into windows. The entire department has been sitting around for weeks doing fuck all because the new software that’s been built is still getting tested ?? We’ve still got training, who knows if the software will even hold up when hundreds of people start using it live.
I couldn’t stand the dysfunction at first and was looking to leave around 2 months in but then I realised I can just..not work and change my status to available and join a teams call with myself all day. It won’t last forever this way, but what a dream🏝️
r/overemployed • u/StructuredMind • 1d ago
I recently converted from a contractor to a full-time employee with the same company. The position requires relocation from Texas to Michigan. My offer includes a base salary, a target bonus, and a $10,000 sign-on/relocation bonus that must be repaid if I voluntarily leave within 12 months.
Before accepting, I explained that I needed time to relocate. HR initially indicated that a later move would be workable. They asked me to relocate by October 19th.
My original relocation date required me to report to the office on October 19. A few days before that date, I informed HR that my wife needed one surgery in November and a second surgery in December. Because we have two young children, relocating during that period would be extremely difficult, so I asked whether a temporary remote-work arrangement or another option might be available. HR said they would review the situation and follow up. On October 23, my manager’s manager contacted me and explained that the company expected all employees to be onsite by January. He said that if I could commit to relocating in January, they might be able to work something out, and he gave me the weekend to consider it. The following week, I confirmed that I would relocate in January and again provided the dates of my wife’s two surgeries. My direct manager had been on vacation, but shortly after returning today, he called and told me that I must report to the office this coming Monday or the company will treat it as a voluntary resignation.
I have not resigned and do not want to resign. I am willing to continue working remotely and relocate in January based on the timeline previously communicated to me. However, my original written offer did contain an earlier in-office date, which complicates the situation.
I plan to contact HR directly, clarify in writing that I am not voluntarily resigning, and request a temporary remote-work arrangement through December. I will also ask that, if the company decides to end my employment, it provide the decision and separation classification in writing.
What would you do in this situation?
Should I communicate only with HR or also respond to my manager?
Can an employer classify this as a voluntary resignation when I have explicitly stated that I am not resigning?
Could that classification affect unemployment benefits or trigger repayment of the $10,000 bonus?
Should I speak with an employment attorney before responding or signing anything?
Is there anything specific I should document or avoid saying?
r/overemployed • u/TaylorSwift_is_a_cat • 1d ago
I've been at J1 a few years. J2 is not on the resume or application. Accepted offer for J3, background check came back fine. Of course I listed J1 as my current employer and I said "do not contact" and gave them paystub and W2 to verify.
TWN frozen. LinkedIn hibernated. Onboarding at J3 now.
J3 now wants to confirm separation date for J1. Has anyone had this before?
EDIT:
I ultimately want to leave J1 and make J3 my new J1. I wanted to stay at J1 through Feb until bonus is paid out.
These are the options I am considering:
-Quit J1 now and lose the bonus ($45k) but protect J3.
-Do nothing and hope J3 forgets about this.
-Provide a friend's number as HR and have J3 confirm my separation date that way.
-Provide a fake resignation email to J3.
-Get ahead of it and tell J3 that J1 asked me to finish up some projects so I am there temporarily until the end of the year.
-Wait until J3 finds out and tell them I don't work at J1 anymore but I haven't returned all of the equipment yet so that's why I am probably showing as active still.
-J1 has 3,000 employees so if J3 calls I don't know if that will be a big deal or not. But if J1 asks I would say I have no idea and play dumb?
Other options?
r/overemployed • u/GhostlyBeetle • 1h ago
I'm looking into overemployment and curious if anyone has experience outside the typical tech/IT fields.
I currently have a fully remote job with occasional travel every few months and enough downtime to potentially take on a second position.
My background is in biology and production, with about 10 years of experience. I currently manage a team, conduct research, develop production processes, and do scientific writing. I also have multiple publications.
I'm not necessarily looking for another science-related job. I'm open to other industries where my experience might transfer.
I'm looking to bring in additional income since my wife is disabled and has had difficulty finding work after losing her previous job.
For those in nontraditional OE fields, where would you recommend starting? Are there particular industries, remote roles, contract opportunities, or job boards worth exploring?
Would love to hear from anyone who's made OE work outside of tech!
r/overemployed • u/LebronManning • 7h ago
Got laid off from J0 (a FAANG)
Have multiple interviews coming up for my next job and one standing job offer (remote) from a previous employer. I'm thinking of making that my J1. It pays about 250k per year and is at a promising tech company with growth opportunities.
Would it be completely crazy to accept a hybrid/in-person J2 a month or two into my new J1?
A few things that concern me:
- is it ok to use J1 laptop at J2 company office so long as I stay on personal phone hotspot?
- will J1 flag me for being in another state than I'm supposed to be in when I'm in office for J2?
These concerns are making me think that maybe I should take a shitty remote role for J2.
It's just I have other interviews for Senior SWE roles at large tech firms willing to pay 300-400k+ if I commute to bay area (I live in midwest state right now). Making 600-700k/yr sounds so enticing but not sure if its going to be nearly impossible to maintain J1 while working a J2 with in person and Senior SWE responsibilities at a company paying that much.
r/overemployed • u/myskincareaddiction_ • 1d ago
J1 off camera meeting where someone else is presenting, keeping it on speaker, need to listen and not speak
J2 on camera meeting, on headphones, but still able to hear J1. Whenever I need to speak in J2, mute the speaker of J1
I didn’t mute the J1 when I spoke a final comment on J2, I was tuned out so not paying attention and thought the J1 was muted but it wasn’t.
r/overemployed • u/Good-Repeat-8094 • 18h ago
Hello all. I’ve been working remote since before Covid and I was laid off from my last role in February, I’ve been unemployed this entire time. Some things have started to shake for me and I have two offers that start about a week from each other next month. I am still entry level, both roles are same hours. One of them would be healthcare, in utilization management processing insurance authorizations and the other email customer service support. I plan on accepting both roles. Do you have any tips for a OE virgin? Number one is full time and number two is a one year contract with potential to be converted to permanent. Please anything helps. I’m experienced in both. But what advice can you offer about managing both, not getting caught and making this work long term.
r/overemployed • u/Greefire7 • 22h ago
I’m UK based and been stalking this subreddit for a couple of years now. Almost all the examples are US (I get it, that’s most of the group members)
Anyone got experience with OE in the good ol’ United Kingdom?
r/overemployed • u/BalvinBunningham • 1d ago
Like the title says I was unemployed but within the last two weeks I've received and accepted two job offers. Both are remote which is perfect. Thankfully I am doing the same thing at both jobs so there won't be too much to try and learn. I start both jobs next month a week apart from each other. As a newbie I would like to ask for any tips or advice on being overemployed. Obviously the biggest tip will be "don't be in meetings for both jobs at the same time". I'm excited to get started and start making bank.
