Hustle-supporting boss shares why he fired remote worker who had a second job

A co-founder and chief commercial officer of a remote recruitment company fired an employee after the software installed in his work machine showed that he had been working two jobs simultaneously. Patrick Synge, who runs Metrickal, a business headquartered in Barcelona, Spain, said that one of his workers who was hired in 2022, began failing to meet his deadlines, and the employer started receiving complaints from clients who were extremely dissatisfied. 

"I had a feeling that he was doing something on the side, but because there was no proof, I didn’t want to jump to any conclusions," the CCO told Business Insider.

He also told the publication how he had a meeting with the employee to confront him and he still continued his poor performance. “While he showed some signs of improvement, his overall performance didn’t change much. This put a significant burden on the rest of the team, who had to cover his shifts and deal with missed deadlines," he added.

Back in December, the co-founder of the company wanted to test a four-day workweek which is why he asked his team to install DeskTime and tracked data on the users' computers to understand how his employees were spending their time and how he could increase their productivity.

The software DeskTime is a monitoring software that lets employers "look at not just how long [their] team members were working but also what exactly they were doing," according to its website. He later analyzed the data he got from the software and realized that the employee had been doing things during the workday that were unrelated to his position at Metrickal.

Moreoever, he found the name of the American business on the platform. The employee was reportedly spending close to half of his work time working for the second company. 

"It seems that he forgot about the tracking software since once it’s downloaded, it doesn’t require any manual switching on and off.I would have probably fired him anyway, but the tracked data was the missing hard proof."

Synge said it wasn't fair on the rest of the team who had to cover for somebody's poor performance. This is why he decided to fire him. "He wasn't fair and respectful to the team, and that's something I can't tolerate — his actions were just selfish," he said.

He also says how he believes that nobody can be this productive at two jobs even if they use AI. "As an entrepreneur, I have to think about my business and clients first. I can't afford to lose clients because someone wants to make extra money," he said.

He clarified that he has no issues with people having side hustles to earn extra income but they should be able to do that in their own time and that it should not affect the quality of their main job. 

"This is why keeping this employee of mine in the company wasn't an option," he added.