Some white-collar workers are secretly balancing 2 full-time jobs and earning up to $600,000, a report says

They drop in and out of multiple meetings to avoid getting caught.

By Grace Dean

8/18/2021

Ladders is a job search site for white-collar professionals.
Hannah Beier/Reuters

Some white-collar workers are secretly holding down two full-time remote jobs at the same time.
It can be tricky to balance two jobs, but some are earning more than $200,000, they told the WSJ.
They drop in and out of meetings, or avoid them entirely, to ensure they aren’t caught, they said.

Some white-collar workers are taking advantage of remote work by holding down two full-time jobs — and not telling either employer.

The Wall Street Journal spoke to six workers who have held multiple full-time jobs. They told the publication that it’s a difficult balancing act but one that is worth it for the doubled salary. Most earn from about $200,000 to nearly $600,000 a year, The Journal reported.

The Journal verified the workers’ claims by examining offer letters, employment contracts, pay stubs, and corporate emails.

The workers said they’d used the extra money to pay off student-loan debt, top up their kids’ college-savings accounts, and buy luxury goods like an engagement ring and a sports car.

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Employment lawyers told The Journal that holding two jobs at once didn’t violate federal or state laws but that it could breach employment contracts and get people fired.

“I’ll wake up in the morning and I’m like, ‘Oh, this is the day I’m gonna get found out,'” a software engineer told The Journal.

Many workers said they had strategies to get around difficult situations and didn’t work more than 40 hours a week between both jobs.

A data scientist in Richmond, Virginia, told The Journal that he was teaching an online coding class at his second job when his first boss asked for a video call.

He told his students to take a short break and used his other computer to join the call, he said.

Another worker told The Journal he regularly attended two meetings at once by joining one on his computer and the other on his phone. If he was asked to speak in both meetings at the same time, he answered the questions in one call and dropped out of the other, before rejoining and saying he had problems with his internet.

And whenever possible, he tried to avoid meetings completely by telling colleagues he could help them on Slack instead, he said.

“Let’s be honest. You have to be pretty bad at being sly to get caught,” he said.

The website Overemployed, which focuses on the benefits of holding down two jobs, has tips for workers on how to do it, such as by being visible at meetings and carefully watching what they post on LinkedIn.

One of its cofounders said that he started applying for second jobs last year because he expected to be laid off from his job at a San Francisco Bay Area tech company.

He got an offer for a role at another nearby tech company and planned to quit his initial job — but decided against it.

At his first job, he started handing off some responsibilities to a new colleague and even took a whole month off using the company’s unlimited paid time off, citing COVID-19 burnout, he told The Journal.

The practice was around before COVID-19.

One software engineer in Europe told The Journal that he took a second job, a contract assignment, in 2018 by telling his employers he was attending a cybersecurity course in London. He said he spent several months in the city and earned an extra $350 a day. He’s been swapping between second jobs ever since, he said.

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Workers, with new perspectives and job options, are quitting in record numbers

By SYDNEY EMBER | THE NEW YORK TIMES

6/21/2021

At some point early this year, Justin Hoffman concluded that he was being underpaid.

The marketing director at an orthopedic practice in Findlay, Ohio, Hoffman was making $42,000 a year — about $13,000 less, by his count, than people were making in similar jobs elsewhere.

But when he asked for a raise in March, he was given only a small bump in pay.

“That was kind of the straw that broke the camel’s back,” he said.

So after some careful thinking, Hoffman, 28, did what he had long ached to do: He quit. His last day was June 4.

Hoffman is among millions of workers who have voluntarily left their jobs recently, one of the most striking elements of the newly blazing-hot job market. According to the Labor Department, nearly 4 million people quit their jobs in April, the most on record, pushing the rate to 2.7% of those employed.

The rate was particularly high in the leisure and hospitality industry, where competition for workers has been especially fierce. But the number of those quitting registered across the board.

Economists believe that one reason more workers are quitting is simply a backlog: By some estimates, more than 5 million fewer people quit last year than would otherwise be expected, as some workers, riding out the labor market’s convulsions, stuck with jobs they may have wanted to leave anyway. (And the millions of involuntary job losses during the pandemic surely accounted for some of the reduction in quitting.) Now that the economy is regaining its footing, workers may suddenly be feeling more emboldened to heed their impulses.

But another factor may be the speed with which the economy has reawakened. As the pandemic has receded and the great reopening has swept across the country, businesses that had gone into hibernation or curtailed their workforce during the pandemic have raced to hire employees to meet the surging demand.

At the same time, many people remain reluctant to return to work because of lingering fears of the virus, child care or elder care challenges, still-generous unemployment benefits, low wages or other reasons.

The result has been an explosion of job openings, despite a relatively high unemployment rate, as businesses struggle to recruit and retain employees — a dynamic that has placed power more firmly in workers’ hands. With employers offering higher wages to attract candidates, many workers — especially in low-wage positions in restaurants and hotels — are leaving their jobs and jumping to ones that pay even slightly more.

Justin Hoffman, a marketing director at an orthopedic practice, in Findlay, Ohio, said he probably would have quit his job eventually but the pandemic hastened his decision. (Maddie McGarvey/The New York Times)

“There’s a lot of churn in low-wage jobs where people don’t really have a career progression,” said Julia Pollak, a labor economist at ZipRecruiter. “If you find a job that offers just marginally more, there’s no cost to you in switching.”

More than 740,000 workers quit jobs in leisure and hospitality in April, the Labor Department said, for a rate of 5.3%. A vast majority were in accommodation and food service.

The pandemic has driven workers to quit for other reasons as well. With fewer opportunities for spending, some people were able to save money and pay down their debts, giving them a cushion to leave jobs with which they were dissatisfied. Other workers, disinclined to give up remote work, are abandoning jobs that are no longer affording them as much flexibility.

For Hoffman, the decision to leave his job was the culmination of months of perceived injustices, which he said he was able to evaluate more clearly because of the pandemic.

As coronavirus cases swelled in the fall, he asked to work from home because of the risk he feared he posed to his sister, whose immune system is compromised. His request was denied, he said, crystallizing his sense that he was not respected or valued.

Over the past year, with the pandemic limiting his social interactions, he began to network over Twitter with other people in marketing. That was how he determined that he was being significantly underpaid.

Hoffman, who is now looking for work, said he probably would have quit eventually. But the pandemic, he said, hastened his decision.

“I think that if the pandemic hadn’t happened, then things wouldn’t have turned out this way,” he said. “It didn’t just change my perspective on my compensation, but I think it’s changed a lot about my understanding of the relationship between employers and employees.”

On a more philosophical level, the constant threat of illness, more time with family members, leisure time that gave way to new passions — all may have prompted some workers to reassess how they want to spend their time. Burned out, some people have left their jobs for once-in-a-lifetime experiences, like traveling the world. Others have seen an opportunity to shift careers or branch out on their own.

Startups surged during the pandemic, particularly in Black communities, as stimulus checks and unemployment benefits helped seed entrepreneurs’ dreams and bolster their confidence.

“The pandemic, for a lot of people, was really stressful and caused a lot of uncertainty, so I think what a lot of people did was reflect on their lives,” said Anthony Klotz, an associate professor of management at Texas A&M University who studies employee resignations.

Klotz said people were accustomed to work being at the center of their lives and identities — a reality that may have shifted during the pandemic.

“In general, we want a life of contentment and a life that has purpose,” he said. “And I think for many people, they’ve discovered that contentment and purpose for them may lie outside of work.”

That was the case for Matt Gisin, 24, who gave notice at his job as a graphic designer at a health and wellness company this month. During the pandemic, he was able to work remotely, and without a commute, he had more time for hobbies like CrossFit and video game streaming.

“I got very adjusted to all of this time and all of this freedom,” he said.

But slowly, his company began requiring employees to come back into the office — first for two days a week, then three, then four. With so many people commuting to work in their cars, his trip from his home in Mamaroneck, New York, to the middle of Long Island could stretch to two hours each way, leaving him little time for his pastimes.

“I wasn’t happy anymore,” he said. “I was finding happiness in a lot of outside activities, so I took this kind of leap to leave.”

He now hopes to find a job in the video game industry.

Economists expect the elevated level of quitting to continue for some time as the pandemic eases and the economy rebalances.

“I would be surprised if this ended before the summer ended,” said Andrew Chamberlain, chief economist for the hiring site Glassdoor. But he also said there was an “expiration date”: A high number of workers quitting will contribute to a labor shortage, eventually forcing employers to raise wages and provide other incentives, which will help lure workers back and reestablish economic equilibrium.

In the meantime, he said, workers — especially those with low wages — will continue to gain leverage over employers.

“The longer these shortages persist, the more bargaining power you put into the hands of very low-skilled workers,” he said. “There is some evidence that employers are moving in response, and that’s unusual.”

c.2021 The New York Times Company

Source: https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nation-world/ct-aud-nw-nyt-job-market-workers-quitting-20210620-4qjzz6jyjzbetefqnynsy742lm-story.html

Californians are headed to Texas. Why more people are moving to Lone Star State

Home prices are a big driver for tens of thousands of Californians to pack up and head to Texas, researchers say.

By Jeff Ehling

4/17/2021

More Californians are moving to Texas

The data proves Californians are leaving the Golden State and buying homes in the Lone Star State. See why and how many have moved here.

Californians are headed to Texas.

Researchers at Rice University’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research in Houston, Texas say home prices are a big driver.

It’s causing tens of thousands of Californians to seek out new places to live in the Lone Star State.

When Bill Fulton was recently asked by business leaders if Golden State residents were really coming to Texas in large numbers, he went to work to find the answer.

As the director of the Kinder Institute for Urban Research at Rice University, Fulton analyzed the numbers.

He found, on average, about 35,000 to 40,000 Texans move to California every year, but recently a noticeable number of people are doing just the opposite.

In 2018 and 2019, about 80,000 people a year made the move from California to Texas.

The Kinder Institute found as housing prices go up in California, there is a steady migration to Texas.

It has a real-world impact on housing prices in the Lone Star State and those who were born and raised there when they try to find an affordable place to live.

“The consequences it does have is the people who already live in Texas who maybe do not have a lot of home equity and are not used to those California home prices, they may have a more difficult time buying a house, at least the house they want to buy in the place they want to buy,” said Fulton

That means lower income families may have to move further away from the city center to find affordable housing, making their commutes longer and more expensive.

As for whether or not those moving Californians could turn Texas blue, researchers say there doesn’t seem to be enough migration to make that happen on its own.

Source: https://abc7news.com/californians-move-to-texas-why-are-more-people-moving-rice-university-kinder-institute-for-urban-research/10488205/

Flat-Fee MLS Listing Service in Northern VA

**Neighborhood Specialist (McLean, Falls Church, Vienna)** |
**Helping For Sale by Owner (FSBO) & For Rent by Owner (FRBO)**

DIY Landlord – Renting out Properties Safer and Quicker!

By David Chen

4/15/2021

Q. We purchased our first home some years ago, and are about to move to another home. We are considering to keep our first home as an income property. We heard of the free ads on CRAIGSLIST and zillow.com, but some landlord friends told us it could be a challenge to find qualified tenants through CRAIGSLIST and zillow.com. Is there any way to rent our property out quicker and safer with minimum cost? We are the kind of persons who would like to try things ourselves, and have some spare time.

A. You may have already done the initial research and have figured out the range of monthly rent of your property.

If the monthly rent is low such as $1600.00 or below, you may want to do it through CRAIGSLIST, https://postlets.com/, zillow.com, or similar web sites. The renters interested in the low-priced rentals may not go to the Realtors community for assistance.

If the monthly rent is $1600.00 or above, you may want to consider listing your rental on brightmls.com for the Realtors community to market it for you.

Bright MLS is made up of nine forward thinking MLSs (43 Associations) in the Mid-Atlantic region who put aside their differences and came together with a shared vision to help solve MLS market overlap and empower everyone to get more out of the MLS. Bright will serve parts of 6 states plus Washington, D.C. encompassing 85,000 real estate professionals who serve over 20 million consumers and facilitate approximately 250,000 transactions a year that are valued at more than $70 billion.

Dozens of public real estate websites (such as: zillow.com, redfin.com, brightmlshomes.com, etc.) pull data from brightmls.com through syndication. In a few hours, your listing will show up on dozens of websites and will get the maximum exposure. It is a lot quicker and safer finding qualified tenants than doing it through CRAIGSLIST and zillow.com. You may talk with a Realtor for assistance. Please be aware some Realtors take rental jobs, some don’t.

Over the years I have helped some landlords in the community renting their properties out with very low cost. A popular arrangement is to help the landlords ‘DIY’, which has been working well for those experienced landlords.

The good side of ‘DIY’ is that the landlords can ‘screen’ the potential tenants from the very beginning, have 100% control of the whole process, and enjoy the feeling of “on top of things”.

If you prefer minimum service, I can help you ‘DIY’:

1. I provide CMA, list your rental on brightmls.com, put a realtor’s lockbox at the front door if needed, provide the access log (if needed), support you through the whole process.

I charge a flat fee for the minimum service.

2. If you would like me to prepare the lease or review the lease, there is another reasonable flat fee. This service is optional.

3. You answer phone calls, work with the tenant (if the tenant doesn’t have an agent) or the tenant’s agent, run credit check, verify employment, check references, etc.. You pay the tenant’s agent (if there is one) directly on the move-in date – usually 25% of first-month rent.

If you need full-service, the commission is first-month rent – which includes the commission to be paid to the tenant’s agent.

If you need any customized service (between minimum service and full-service), we can work out an agreement.

Some information:

CMA stands for Comparable (some called Competitive) Market Analysis, that will help you determine the market value of your property for sale or for rent.

I use Sentry-key lockbox. Any Realtor with membership of NVAR (Northern Virginia Association of Realtors) or any other VA Realtors association can access and show the property.

The access log tells when the agents enter the property and their contact info. which can help you follow up with the agents.

If you like the DIY experience, I would recommend you to use the minimum service.

Please feel free to reach me if you need any assistance.
—
David Chen
Realtor (Licensed in VA) | Neighborhood Specialist (McLean, Falls Church, Vienna)
Libra Realty, LLC
dchenj@gmail.com
703-395-5406

WeChat ID: dchenj2015

Websites that will show your flat fee mls listings

4/15/2021

Almost all real estate websites that offer the ability to search brokerage listings use a data feed from the MLS called Internet Data Exchange (IDX) to pull in listing data. Depending on the number of sites tapping into your MLS, your listing could appear on hundreds of websites. We do not control the content of any of the websites listed below. updated periodically & subject to change at any time Here are some examples of national websites by area that pull listings from the MLS:

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