'You want the job? Approved, it's yours!': Programmer tries to get secret second job, accidentally successfully applies for a demotion

Brad Dickson • Managing Editor

Aug 18, 2023 12:00 PM EDT

If you consider yourself to be smart and clever, you might think that you can get away with gaming the system, and it's only when it blows up in your face that you realize how much you overestimated your intelligence. Congratulations, you played yourself.

Maintaining one full-time job is a lot of work, so it really makes you wonder how some people have been, reportedly, managing to work two at the same time. Every now and then, you see a story pop up online about someone who has been holding down two full-time jobs simultaneously, and you can't help but wonder how they're managing to juggle the two.

This poster explains how a high-level software developer, who worked for them, earning an annual salary of around 240k, had been struggling with underperformance in their current role. It turns out the developer had been looking for additional work and had unknowingly applied for a scrum master position at a subsidiary of the company, successfully interviewing and being offered the job. However, after going to enter the candidate's details into the system, the interview team at the subsidiary noticed the candidate was already in the system and was even an employee of the group. The interview team contacted the poster, the candidate's current boss, to enquire about the "transfer" application, and—unbeknownst to the candidate/developer, the poster approved it while the candidate/developer accepted the role.

The developer was shocked to realize that not only had they not secured themselves a side hustle, they had actually successfully applied for their own demotion within the company, costing them their main hustle as a result… See the original post below, along with the reactions it generated.