For the unversed, ‘moonlighting’ is when an employee works an extra job along with their full-time employment, after their regular working hours. Recently, Infosys warned its employees against moonlighting through an email titled ‘No two-timing, no moonlighting’. The email also said that moonlighting is not permitted according to employees’ code of conduct and any violation could lead to disciplinary action including termination of employment. Here’s what Reddit has to say on this whole ordeal.

1. When my brother started working for Infosys in 2012, he was offered an annual package of 3.25 LPA.

When my friend started working for Infosys in 2021, he was offered a package of 3.75 LPA.

So Infosys can go suck a dick with that attitude. They are just exploiting Indian population.crasshumor

2. In politics you can have multiple portfolios allocated to you, a businessman can own and run multiple businesses, somebody can be chairman at 2 or more companies and receive compensation from all – but an underpaid employee cannot increase his income by a fraction? theslick1

3. Lol look at who is saying… these mass recruiters have completely failed to keep up the salaries with inflation.

I will give an example. The current starting package of a fresher at Infosys, TCS etc. out of an engineering college during mass recruitments is around 3.2-3.3 lacs right (please correct me if I am wrong)?

Guess what? When my elder brother graduated in 2010, his package at TCS was 3.2 lacs as well! At that time too it was quite less, but a person could still survive on it, buy a two-wheeler with his salary (bikes, and scooters used to be 50-60k) and now after 12 years, the package is still the same!miney_mo

4. I personally feel that after working hours, it’s none of their business what employees do.nonstop-nonsense

5. When we become employees for a company we are selling a few hours out of our 24 to the company. We are not selling our life to them. What we do outside of office hours is none of their effing business.MugiwaranoAK

6. Many reasonable-sounding justifications will be given by employers. They’ll involve terms like legal liability, intellectual property, client agreement, code of conduct, and so on.

But the underlying psychology is something darker. Everybody in every company subtly learns to think of employees as property, not partners. This thinking is at every level. Even the lowest in the hierarchy think of themselves as property and employers as their “owners”. It’s worse in these oldy conservative companies like Infy.

People realize it only when they get out of full-time employment and turn into contract consultants or service providers. Now they’re “equals”, and the change in respect and treatment is like night and day!tech-writer

7. They can suck on a big fat doodoo. They’re paying literal bheekmangey ka salary relative to what people are earning abroad for the same work, the same quality of work. This is the real “wage gap” discussion we ought to be having. I mean I get it, white folks outsource only cause we do shit for dirt cheap but the companies basically rake in the moolah and shortchange its employees, not even paying 10% of what the client is paying for every bench occupied. More power to those who are moonlighting, and folks on the internet should devote more time to engineering resources that help them manipulate productivity evaluation tools so they can’t get on anyone’s dick.ConsumedByDeath

8. You see, you are easily replaceable – no matter who you are – in these companies. While you shouldn’t work on your employer’s time or use their resources, what you do after work is your business and your business alone.

When you take on a side project, consult, or build something on your time, you learn how to own your career, growth, and overall development. Money is an added bonus. The psychological shift in how you see work and compensation is far more beneficial than the extra money you make. For me it was life-changing.

If I hadn’t put in those extra hours after work to do some side gigs, I would have never had the courage to drop my papers and move out for better opportunities.

It’s disappointing that the likes of Wipro, Infosys are trying to do this. What they don’t realise is that this Indian ambition to do more, to make something out of nothing, will always win over their stupid policies one or the other way.

My prediction is that they will keep pushing this messaging internally and externally. It will scare people off. But then people will find a way to do it anyway.heliumguy

9. Maybe they should look at their offered packages before such warnings and threats.BodhiChatterjee

10. It’s none of their business, what we do after business.cereal_killer_no

11. So an organization which has a concept called shadow resource and tags people to work on multiple projects without the client knowing, has a problem with employees working two jobs? Hmm.1amkalai

12. I would say they shouldn’t even have the right to take action against you despite working an extra job that is similar. As long as I don’t leak any proprietary information, Infosys should not have any right to take action against me. atlas_kun

13. Indian Companies will have a rude awakening from this. Since as an employee you are responsible for 40hr/week, making sure you don’t work in the competitive environment of your employer outside of that. An employer doesn’t control your life and doesn’t need to know what you do in your free time. This is what you get when you have “Service Based Companies” which think there “Fortune 50” companies.

PS: If you don’t your employee to moonlight, then pay them a respectable wage. Everyone knows the peanut salaries you pay for your fresher and how you milk your clients.drifterx001

It’s high time moonlighting becomes a new norm. If not, companies should start paying employees enough that they don’t have to take on extra work, in their supposed personal time, to lead a comfortable life.

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