IBM India tells employees they can moonlight – but only for good causes, with permission

An email appears to have come from the desk of IBM India's managing director informing Big Blue's worker bees they must secure approval for tech-related activities they undertake on their own time, as the company becomes the latest to have its say on the controversial-in-India topic of moonlighting. "The moonlighting concept …

[Pascal Monett]

"cheating – plain and simple."

Maybe if you paid your employees a proper salary they wouldn't need to go find another job.

So who's cheating ?

[John Riddoch]

To be honest, I think my last 3 employment contracts (UK based, FWIW) have had something in them to the effect of "work outside of $company has to be approved by your line manager" so it's not entirely unusual to have something like that. I've never been in a position to need to get permission for a 2nd job, so I don't know how much they'd push back on it.

That said, the heavy handed rhetoric from managers seems a bit over the top; I don't know if it's a cultural thing in India, demanding that sort of loyalty?

[DrXym]

So IBM's work life balance is...

...we own both. Any company that tried telling me that I must beg them for permission to do anything related to tech in my own time could fuck right off.

[Trollslayer]

IBM have changed over the decades.

[TVU]

"IBM India tells employees they can moonlight – but only for good causes, with permission"

This is all very well but both IBM and Oracle have highly publicised track records on employment practices and not in a good way (anyone remember dinobabies?).

This move could potentially backfire on the staff concerned later on when IBM suddenly finds that their external activities have been found in contravention of their employment contracts all along so that they can fired with little or no compensation. You could write the script.

[pimppetgaeghsr]

If you work in IT and have 4 remote jobs all the more power to you. Decades of outsourcing and cutting corners you may as well make that money before you are discarded.