That's an interesting way to put it. I was overemployed from 2021 to 2024. I worked two full-time start-up jobs (well, a W2 job and a full-time contract position that was for all intents and purposes a full-time W2 job, just that it paid me without the deductions and such). When one company shut down, I continued doing contract work but not at a full-time capacity.

During my tenure at both companies, my higher-ups liked my performance so much that when it was time to select people for raises/promotions/rate increases etc, I was among the few selected. I took this as a sign that my half-performance was valued enough to earn me more money so I wanted to stay like this forever. Alas, it didn't.

I'm extremely fortunate that everyone was pretty flexible. If I couldn't make a daily standup (or whatever regular meeting), I'd just say I can't make it and no one would ask why. Same if I had to leave a meeting early. As long as I got my stuff done, no one complained.

And really, that's what I appreciated the most. I'd happily work for either single one of these companies simply because they just respected everyone's time and treated everyone like adults. I acknowledge that I was technically taking advantage of this trust by working a separate job, but I cannot stress enough how happy my employers were with my half-performance. So as you mentioned, it's either give full-performance to one company for half-pay (or well, regular pay I guess), or give half-performance to two companies for double-pay. The economics made perfect sense, and because the companies felt good about the value they were getting from me for their money, I didn't feel guilty.

But it did make me think -- how many other people are giving full-performance to a company when half-performance would be satisfactory, if not exemplary? Especially now in the age of AI where many people are more productive than ever, why couldn't companies consider a full work-week 20 hours a week instead of 40, if they can still extract the same value? I think most individuals would be so much happier to work under those circumstances, and if they wanted to fill in the rest of the 20-hour week with another job they could, and not have to play this game.

I mean, the obvious answer is obvious, but a guy could dream.