Commenting on people taking up projects on the sidelines of their regular jobs, Wipro Executive Chairman Rishad Premji tweeted on Saturday that moonlighters in the tech industry are a “scam”.
The reference could be that food tech startup Swiggy allows its employees to take up other jobs in their spare time for “economic considerations”. According to internal approvals, employees of a SoftBank-backed company may work outside business hours or on weekends, but must ensure that their projects do not conflict with Swiggy’s business.
Unless Swiggy can ensure that a certain number of employees earn a certain amount, it may seem like a public relations and talent retention experiment, experts said.
“There’s a lot of talk about people moonlighting in the tech industry. It’s a scam – plain and simple,” Premji tweeted.
By the way, Wipro has capped employee variable pay above a certain threshold, mainly due to pressure on margins, inefficiencies in the talent supply chain and investment in technology. Moonlighting is not a new phenomenon. A recent Kotak Institute Equity survey of 400 people in the IT and ITS space found that a staggering 65 percent of people are aware of pursuing part-time opportunities or moonlighting while working from home.
