By | SightsIn Plus | sightsinplus.com
The issue of moonlighting by tech professionals has ignited a fresh debate, polarising opinions and raising thorny questions like; what are the reasons for Moonlighting? Is it a legal issue/ethical issue/HR issue/social issue?
Moonlighting refers to employees taking up side gigs to work on more than one job at a time. It can be defined as working for one organization while taking extra jobs, usually without the employer’s knowledge. Moonlighting is side employment taken up at night or on the weekends.
Recently, India’s IT services provider company, Wipro has laid off 300 employees who were found working with its competitor companies at the same time employment with Wipro. Rishad Premji, Chairman, Wipro said on 21 September that their employment has been terminated for an “act of integrity violation”.
India’s second-largest IT services provider, Infosys has said that moonlighting is not permitted according to the employees’ code of conduct of the company and It described this with the taglines ‘No two-timing, no moonlighting’ and ‘No double lives’.
However, Tech Mahindra CEO C P Gurnani welcomed moonlighting and said that it is necessary to keep changing with the times and added, “I welcome disruption in the ways we work.”