Much of the world needs to work two jobs. Chris Williams writes that managers should be careful in how they react to an employee working multiple jobs.
I’m not saying they’re justified in this, because frankly if someone is getting their work done, what they do outside of work hours isnt their boss’s business, but I can kinda imagine why a company might not like their employees to have a second job; people only have so much effort to give (consider all those stats people bring up whenever people talk about shortening the workweek, to the effect that working more hours diminishes productivity per hour and gives diminishing or even negative returns compared to fewer hours in many cases) and so a company might decide that an employee with a second job might not be as productive for them as they would be otherwise, due to being exhausted. Though really, if they do it’s honestly the company’s fault for paying so little as for someone to need a second job in the first place.
CEOs and executives do this regularly, so unless their jobs are a lot simpler than they’re claiming the “attention” argument is moot. They pay me to do a thing. I do the thing. They pay me what they’d say they’d pay. That’s it.
Frankly I don’t imagine CEOs and executives take a whole lot of effort, at least for sufficiently large companies (small business are a whole different animal of course). I can’t speak to how complicated it is to do those jobs, or how easy or difficult they are, but the mere fact that people who are so rich as to not need to work at all to live a lavish life, will often still take on jobs like that, speaks volumes I think.
I think the main difference is the time scale for their responsibilities.
For your average worker, they generally have daily tasks or responsibilities. Your c-levels generally “solve” the larger problems. The timeline for those isn’t daily but probably quarterly or longer. This would allow them to take on another role because of how the deadlines work.
Not saying it’s right, but just trying to explain it.
I’m not saying they’re justified in this, because frankly if someone is getting their work done, what they do outside of work hours isnt their boss’s business, but I can kinda imagine why a company might not like their employees to have a second job; people only have so much effort to give (consider all those stats people bring up whenever people talk about shortening the workweek, to the effect that working more hours diminishes productivity per hour and gives diminishing or even negative returns compared to fewer hours in many cases) and so a company might decide that an employee with a second job might not be as productive for them as they would be otherwise, due to being exhausted. Though really, if they do it’s honestly the company’s fault for paying so little as for someone to need a second job in the first place.
CEOs and executives do this regularly, so unless their jobs are a lot simpler than they’re claiming the “attention” argument is moot. They pay me to do a thing. I do the thing. They pay me what they’d say they’d pay. That’s it.
Frankly I don’t imagine CEOs and executives take a whole lot of effort, at least for sufficiently large companies (small business are a whole different animal of course). I can’t speak to how complicated it is to do those jobs, or how easy or difficult they are, but the mere fact that people who are so rich as to not need to work at all to live a lavish life, will often still take on jobs like that, speaks volumes I think.
But that’s different, because…
I think the main difference is the time scale for their responsibilities.
For your average worker, they generally have daily tasks or responsibilities. Your c-levels generally “solve” the larger problems. The timeline for those isn’t daily but probably quarterly or longer. This would allow them to take on another role because of how the deadlines work.
Not saying it’s right, but just trying to explain it.