Moonlighting is a term used for a worker who takes up a second job secretly, without telling the employers. The IT industry these days has been divided by moonlighting.
While some firms are okay with it, there are many against it; but mostly everybody is calling it unethical. It is a case of a worker working for another company, dealing with everything that the first company is doing.
When Rishad Premji, the chairman of Wipro called moonlighting, cheating, he was criticized a lot. He has fired 300 employees of Wipro after he found them working for competitors secretly.
Premji says that for a worker to be working in another company without the knowledge of the first company is not honesty. He claims that he doesn’t mind an employee taking up a second job, but the employee should be upfront about it. He further adds that an individual can talk openly about a second job in his organisation as long as he is honest about it.
Premji has been very vocal about it at an All India Management Association Event where he said that working for a rival company was a complete violation of integrity in the deepest form.
NG Subramaniam, chief operation officer of Tata Consultancy Services has called moonlighting an ethical issue. CP Gurnani, CEO of Tech Mahindra is of the opinion that it is okay if an employee takes a second job for extra money but also warned employees of committing fraud.
Infosys, a major IT firm has warned employees of being sacked if they take up a second job during or post-working hours. Infosys says that all their employees must read the contracts carefully before they pick up another job. They too want complete transparency from their employees and have specifically warned employees against taking up a second job without letting the company know.
