What Would You Say In This Scenario?

You are a IT Professional. You might be first level help desk, or system administrator, it doesn't matter.

Scenario: You work a full 40 hour week, but you need some extra cash. You decide in your off-time you want to do some freelance work. (Fix people's computers, do some side business work)

However, you find out that from a corporate culture point of view, having a side job is frowned upon. However, you did not sign any papers when hired on stating that you would not work anywhere else while employed with said company. Also, during the hiring process, no such "corporate culture" thing was ever mentioned by your employer, or anyone for that matter.

You are not looking to steal any clients, and you would only seek out customers that had zero relationship or contact with your primary job.

What would you do?

 

Be like an oyster......I would seperate both professions financially, legally, emotionally, and dont tell anyone what they dont need to know!
Its your business, not their's.

 

Hmmmm.......depends if your help desk work is hardware or software. If you are tech support at the end of a phone talking people through problems then how could repairing computer hardware at home be a conflict with your day job. Playing devil's advocate here and having been the head of the research & development department in a major international company my only concern would be if you were fit for work. If you were working around the clock and became too tired to be effective in your day job then I would ask you to stop. On the other hand if you were doing a bit of moonlighting and mostly did the jobs on the weekend and it wasn't affecting your day job performance then not a problem.
Of course this doesn't cover the issue of company policy. Sometimes all the rules are not stated when you are first employed and only become apparent when you want to do something different. To cover this I always insist on a signed job description as well as a statement of my responsibilities and obligations. Included on the job description should also be a diagram of the chain of command and to whom you answer or report and who can fire you and also who is responsible for your annual performance review. With a signed job description as described then it is very difficult for either party to make changes to what has already been agreed and signed off......so no surprises


Good luck with your venture.......a bit of advice please consider public liability insurance because if someone sues you then it can be a costly lesson.

 

Go for it!
And like @Replicator said, keep them separate.

 

Some major companies bury this in their employee handbooks under either "ethics" or "conflict of interest" and take the view you're competiting even if you're not solociting their customers directly. The wording is deliberately vauge which can make it easy for the company to terminate the employee for "cause" and get out of paying unemployment.

Let's assume you're a Geek Squad Agent at Best Buy and start picking up some side work from friends and word of mouth. If you are found out by LP or HR, their argument will be your job (even off the clock) was to direct people needing service into your store; ergo you are guilty of conflict of interest which is grounds for termination. Even if you do such work on a hush-hush basis, you always run the risk of being outed by the guy who comes into your store a few months later and is appalled the virus removal you did under the table for $75 is now going to cost over twice that in the store.

If you decide to try this, stay absolutely quiet with all co-workers (even your BFF). Never mention your full-time employer to any side customer and, if they say something like "Didn't I see you in Best Buy last week?" remind them that what you're doing for them is strictly a side project between friends.

The best solution is to offer only services that aren't available through your company. As an example, I have recently edited raw wedding footage onto DVDs, a service unavailable though where I work. I'm also being considered for part-time contract work with a local town that requires both a DOD-level background check and on-site work during "downtime" (evenings and weekends) our company doesn't offer. If confronted by your employer, documenting this will water down or erase any conflict of interest issues.