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Patrick Synge fired one of his employees for secretly working a second remote job.
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He explained how he caught the employee and why he decided to fire him.
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He says overwork is “unethical” and hurts worker productivity.
This as told essay is based on an email conversation with Patrick Synge, the co-founder and CEO of the business process outsourcing and remote recruiting company Metrickal. The company has its headquarters in Barcelona and has 10 full time, fully remote workforce, in addition to more than 200 contractors worldwide. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
I am the CEO of a company where every employee works completely remotely. In January, I caught one of them secretly working a second full-time job remotely.
Here’s how it all went down – and why I decided to fire them.
My company is headquartered in Barcelona, but one of my employees was based in Peru. He was hired in 2022 and he did his job very well at first. But then I started receiving complaints from customers about missed assignments and deadlines. He also became completely unresponsive. These client complaints began to become somewhat regular.
When this employee started refusing certain shifts he normally worked, I became suspicious. I had a feeling he was doing something, but since there was no evidence, I didn’t want to jump to conclusions.
So instead, I had one-on-one meetings with him to discuss his job performance. When the same problems persisted, I told him that if things didn’t change, I would have to let him go.
Although he showed some signs of improvement, his overall performance did not change much. This placed a significant burden on the rest of the team, who had to cover his services and deal with missed deadlines.
How I finally caught him
In December, apart from this specific employee, my company rolled out time tracking software DeskTime.
My long-term goal is to implement a four-day work week in my company, and I decided that the first step in this process would be to understand how my employees spend their time and what can be optimized to increase productivity.
That’s why our entire team of full-time employees and freelancers started using DeskTime. They all had to install the app on their computers so that everyone was well informed that this was being implemented.
After a few weeks, I looked at the struggling employee’s tracking data and noticed that the name of another company – a US company – appeared regularly in the data. It became clear to me that this employee had worked on tasks for another company.
I fired them the next day.
The DeskTime data showed that the employee used software unrelated to his work duties during the workday. It also included a screenshot feature that captured his computer screen – showing him that he was working on a platform where the other company’s name was visible.
Based on the DeskTime data, I estimate that he spent almost half his time working for this other company. It seems he forgot about the tracking software because once it is downloaded, it no longer needs to be manually turned on and off.
To be honest, all the other signs – missed deadlines, lack of flexibility and unresponsiveness at certain times – had already made me pretty sure he was doing something else during work hours. I probably would have fired him anyway, but the records kept were the missing hard evidence.
I believe he worked full time for the other company because shortly after I fired him, he updated his LinkedIn profile to reflect that he worked full time at the other company.
Why I think overtime is unethical
I know some people may judge me, but I really don’t support the overwork trend. I think it’s unethical and just plain wrong.
First of all, I don’t think it’s fair to the rest of the team if they have to cover up for someone else’s poor performance. That is why it was not an option to keep this employee of mine in the company. He was not fair and respectful to the team, and I cannot tolerate that; his actions were simply selfish.
Second, I don’t believe anyone can productively do two tasks at the same time, even if you use AI or other tools. Their attention will be fragmented, causing the quality of their work to suffer. As an entrepreneur, I have to think about my business and my customers first. I can’t afford to lose customers because someone wants to make extra money.
I really don’t mind people having side jobs to earn extra income. But this should be something they do on their own time and it won’t affect the quality of their daily work.
Are you working multiple remote jobs at the same time and are you willing to provide details about your salary and schedule? Has a colleague or employee of yours done this? Please contact this reporter at jzinkula@businessinsider.com.
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