Amidst the growing debate on Moonlighting, IT companies are now taking a tough stand on it. According to a report in Times of India, Infosys has sent mails to its employees warning that they may lose their jobs if they join Moonlighting.
Actually Moonlighting calls for working with two different companies at the same time. In this, one can be a job and the other can be a project. The debate about this started when Wipro Chairman Azim Premji had termed it wrong and called it fraud against the company giving the job.
According to the report, Infosys has written a mail to its employees saying that moonlighting is not allowed as per the company's rules. If any person does this then action can be taken against him. In this, the employee can also be fired from the job. Infosys made it clear that no employee can take work from any other organisation during or after office hours.
The letter read that it has been clearly stated in the joining paper that the employee cannot work full time or part time with any other organisation. Only last month, Premji had said that doing someone else's work with a regular job is a fraud.
IT industry veteran and former Infosys director, Mohandas Pai had recently said that low salaries in the technology industry in the early stages are one of the reasons for moonlighting. He said that during the pandemic everything went digital and gig employment opportunities also increased. That said, if you don't pay people well, and they want to earn more money then this is an easy way to earn well.
Pai estimates that 6-8 per cent of people are doing moonlighting, whereas earlier this ratio used to be only 1 or 2 per cent.