What do my coworkers do at work? Work, of course. What else? browsing at break, chatting, gossiping, a cup of java, just some normal things. But that’s not all.
When I was working on a consulting assignment on site with a insurance company, I discovered that many of IT workers are silently working for themselves during business hours, running their own part-time business and earning second income.
Working with a team of 9 IT workers, I discovered that 7 of them are actively doing their own business during work by spending about 25% of company time on average. What kind of business are they running? Let me give you a complete list of their lucrative activities person by person:
1. Jay, System Admin, Team Lead – He and his family has a real estate business in South America. Usually during before/after lunch or late afternoon, he spends quite some time on the phone talking on Spanish. I don’t understand Spanish so that I asked a friend at work. “Acquiring lands.” My friend answered. Jay is not afraid of letting us know his business. Sometimes he talk about it. He is proud of it.
2. Pamela, Help Desk – Pamela is a Mary Kay consultant, the direct market seller of lady’s stuff. I know this because I saw Mary Kay sticker on her car and catalogs with her contact info in the lunch room. Sometimes I over heard she talks about her business with her friends on the phone, such as “such such items are hot sale, I ran out all of them, have to reorder!” or “it’s slow this month.” It seems she makes good money from her side business and really enjoys it. But she never target her coworkers as potential customers.
3. Vince, Development Lead, Supervisor – Vince is a tech guru who follows emerging technologies closely. He is a blog fun and runs several blogs in various topics from sports games to hi-techs. I saw him several times writing postings during works. He makes money via advertising on his blog websites. “It’s small money, but a lot of fun.” He explained. I don’t know how much he makes from blogging, but the earnings may not be small, or he may have bigger plans.
4. Raj, Programmer - His cell phone could ring at any time during work. Then he answers and talks about schedules, locations, courses, and fees. He usually walks out of the office for continuing private conversation for about half hour. Then he comes back seeming as nothing happened. It is like a mystery but I finally get to know what he is doing. He provides tutoring service to high school students in evenings and weekends for preparing math test. Sometimes parents send kids to his home, sometimes he goes to student’s home. I don’t know how much he make but for sure his business in booming since his cell phone rings so often. Raj is a smart guy, he got degree from top India college (I think it is India Institute of Technology). To him math is a piece of cake.
5. Loral, Programmer – Loral is involved in business with Market America, a kind of MLM. She always wants to talk about it and tries to get others to join. As she said, her friend in Intel introduced her to this business. From my understing, the success of this business depends on how many people you get under you. It’s a team building effort. Loral just started it couple of months ago, I don’t think she has made any money yet. But I can tell she has great enthusiasm on it.
6. Michael, DBA – He and his brother Mark run an IT consulting business. They get all kinds of web development projects. A few months ago Michael got a small project for Mark from the same company thus Mark worked in our office for a while. Michael is always busy on his PC but I know he is not doing his job all the time because I can tell sometimes he works on Ruby on Rails, that’s his own project. The company’s internal projects run on Java/J2EE.
7. Dan, Systems Analyst – Dan’s wife is a local realtor, Dan is a big helper to her. This couple talk over the phone daily to discuss their business thus we all know they are making big bucks from the house market. They live in a up scale community that Dan couldn’t afford by working for the insurance company only.
8. Ming, Database Designer – He doesn’t talk much thus I don’t really know if he runs any business. I only noticed he is online a lot on Chinese web sites but I don’t know it is for business or just for fun.
9. Susan, Help Desk – She doesn’t have to do extra work because her husband runs a construction business and makes enough money already. One day she said the good thing she comes to work is that she gets good health insurance coverage for her family.
That’s what my coworkers are doing in additon to work during business hours, – making extra money. That makes me wondering, how do they get started? why they need to earn a second income? how do they manage the time? how easy to maintain a part-time business while have a full time job?
Let me find out more and keep you posted.
In my place I know many office workers use company time to buy and sell stuff on ebay, and trade stocks. You don’t see anyone doing ebay business or stock trading? Surprise.
Nowadays many companis install internet monitoring software, all your web activities are tracked, and alerts sent to managers. If you are on ebay or stock broker sites frequently, mangers will come to talk to you, be careful. Doing business on the phone should be safe, if you have cell phone with internet access, you still can ebay and trading.