The first rule of Overemployed is that you don’t ever talk about being overemployed. While big-tech companies are implementing hiring freezes, laying off workers, and battening down the hatches as they anticipate an economic recession, a swath of Silicon Valley tech workers—mostly programmers and engineers—are slyly working two, three, or even four jobs at the same time and reaping mind-boggling benefits. They spend their days juggling multiple Zooms simultaneously, using devices called “mouse jigglers” to ensure that their computers do not go to sleep (which would alert their supervisors that something is up), and sitting at 12-foot-long desks that are lined with a half dozen laptops and multiple computer screens as they go to virtual work and receive salaries that can add up to as much as $1.2 million a year.

The “Overemployed” section of Reddit, which was started a year ago in the midst of the pandemic, has quickly grown to 110,000 members, who spend part of their time sharing tips and tricks for how to pull off multiple jobs and the rest of their time bragging about how much money they are making. This new world of work has its own mini subculture, with new lingo. A first job is called a J1, a second job is a J2, and so on…all the way up to a J5. (I have yet to find a worker who has a J6, but I’m sure they are out there.) Second jobs are often referred to as “burner jobs,” like a burner phone, that can be easily tossed away if something goes wrong.

On that rare occasion that you’re forced to sit in two Zoom meetings at once, one overemployed worker noted that the trick is actually quite obvious. “Single-ear headsets in each ear, mute very deliberately. Nobody says it is easy, but it can work.” When asked to come into the office a few days a week, or at the very least, for in-person meetings, one employee wrote on Twitter: “I only come into the office with a laptop,” rather than a backpack, so people think the employee is just coming out of a meeting, rather than just showing up to work. This way, the worker can come and go as they please, and co-workers think they are just entering or leaving a meeting.

It turns out that the first rule of being Overemployed, or working multiple jobs at the same time in Silicon Valley, is true. When I began calling around trying to figure out who might be working two jobs at once, no one wanted to come clean, fearing that one of their many bosses might find out. But several investors and tech workers I spoke with knew people who were engaged in this trend. “Your boss doesn’t know if you’re playing video games or watching a movie while you’re writing code or designing something,” one Silicon Valley tech insider told me. And that realization, this person said, led some workers to realize that they could use their new available time to double their salary by taking on another job.

One source code engineer recently wrote on the forum that he had two jobs, one of which pays $200,000 a year, which takes up about 15 hours of his time, and another which pays around $95,000 a year, which takes up “zero” hours. “I am not sure if they even know I'm here anymore,” the source code engineer wrote on Reddit. “I’m a ‘source code engineer,’ some shit they made up, and I'm supposed to manage the source code uploaded by devs, but the problem is the team I work with hasn't uploaded anything in months, I've gotten a total of 13 emails in 3 months 10 of which were automated.” The programmer was recently debating getting a third job. “All my paychecks are still coming in,” the engineer wrote, “but the fear of being found out is never-ending.”

There’s also the new take on the famous line “Always Be Closing,” from the movie Glengarry Glen Ross, which in overemployed-land is now “Always Be Interviewing.” On the website Overemployed, a guide to how to hold two or more jobs at the same time, there are resources—books to read and “success stories” from people who have pulled off holding multiple jobs at once. There’s even a 12-step guide for newcomers, including the advice to “Be Average” so you don’t stand out to your bosses. “The more attention you bring to yourself, the more people will remember you,” the guide notes. And, like Fight Club, there’s the first rule of working two remote jobs: “Don’t Talk About Working Two Remote Jobs.”

In another recent post, another software engineer said that he graduated from school in 2017 and bragged about having four jobs—yes, four—which added up to around $450,000 a year. Another programmer detailed how they make more than $500,000 a year with their multiple jobs—some of which are “contract” gigs, which are part-time. There are workers who are claim to be making as much as $1 million a year, and even one IT worker who took on five jobs simultaneously, going from making $16 an hour to making $1.2 million a year with their multiple jobs.

The types of tech of companies these people are working for run the gamut from smaller startups, with teams of a few dozen, to larger companies of several hundred. But I saw several people bragging on the message boards that they also work for Faang companies, which include Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google, which all run extensive background checks on new hires, and call references—tactics that are evidently not working to weed out employees taking advantage of a clearly broken system.

Part of the reason these engineers even have an opportunity to pull off this exacerbating magic trick, if you will, is that tech companies have maintained work-from-home policies even as many financial services companies, media outlets and other industries across the country have returned to the physical office. It’s understandable why these tech companies are the outliers in the return to work trend. For many, part of their business model is coming up with software solutions that allow other companies to have remote workforces—after all, they have to eat the sausage they are making, or at least appear to. And, unsurprisingly, tech executives have found it more enjoyable to work from their multimillion dollar mansions. (Yes, I’m talking about you, Mark Zuckerberg, who works about half the year from his 1,610-acre Hawaii estate.) “Companies that are in the office are more productive than companies that are still remote,” one major tech venture capitalist told me, noting that it is not surprising some people are taking advantage of the work from home policies. “Covid taught us that remote work is possible but is not the most ideal situation for productivity in the workplace.” While it might seem antithetical for tech companies to put up with lackadaisical employees, there has long been a shortage of competent engineers in tech, and companies are constantly in fear that their most talented workers will leave for a competitor.

But still, sometimes things go drastically wrong for these work-jugglers. In one instance, an overemployed worker heard that someone they work with at their first job (J1) was leaving to go and work for their second employer (J2). “Feel very stressed out now,” the overemployed worker, who goes by bluedrg198 on Reddit, wrote. “How to deal with this situation? J2 is the best job ever paying 340K for 2 hours of work each week so cannot quit.”

Last week, Davis Bell, the CEO of Canopy, a cloud management company, posted a letter on LinkedIn warning that his company had just discovered, and subsequently fired, two employees who were secretly holding two jobs at once. “We've caught and fired two recent hire engineers who never quit their last job at a big tech co when they came to ‘work’ for us,” Bell wrote. “They were following a new trend of picking up a second, full-time job while lying about it to both employers.” Bell likened the act of holding both jobs to “stealing” and called it an unethical practice that no honest person would participate in. “These were people holding down two, full-time synchronous jobs and lying about it—trying to be in two meetings at once,” he wrote. Shortly after posting the letter on Reddit, Bell wrote that he got an anonymous call from someone “telling me they hope I die in a car crash.”