To moonlight or not to moonlight: What IT industry experts are saying

Lending his voice to the “ongoing” debate on “moonlighting” that has ensued in the Indian IT industry, CP Gurnani, managing director and chief executive officer, Tech Mahindra said, “We live in a world where a certain amount of discipline and time management exists. So, as long as an employee is achieving the set productivity and efficiency targets and is not doing anything against the ethics of the company, Moonlighting should not be a problem,” Gurnani was speaking at India@100 Economy Summit, a leadership summit organised by Business Today on Friday.  

There is a lot of chatter about people moonlighting in the tech industry. This is cheating - plain and simple.

— Rishad Premji (@RishadPremji) August 20, 2022

Moonlighting refers to the practice of taking projects or other work — ideally after work hours — besides an employee’s daily job, to make extra money — and is not a new concept, but sparked widespread debate in the Indian IT sector following the comments made by Wipro’s Executive Chairman, Rishad Premji, on ‘moonlighting’ last week. In a tweet, Premji said that moonlighting is “cheating, plain and simple” which led to social media users taking to different platforms to voice their opinions on the practice.  

IT sector veteran Mohandas Pai also disagreed with Premji. Speaking at the same event, the former director of IT giant Infosys, said, “No, moonlighting is not cheating.” He explained that “an employment contract is between an employer who pays an employee for working ‘n’ number of hours in a day for the company. During that time the employee has to abide by the rules and conditions of the employer including client confidentiality. At this time, the employee can’t work for anybody else. However, what the employee does after this period is his/her freedom. They can do whatever they want”.   

Tata Consultancy Services’ chief operating officer N Ganapathy Subramaniam had also spoken about moonlighting. “Moonlighting is an ethical issue, we need to inculcate the ethics and (the idea of) being right and if we make something like this for short-term gains, in the long-term we will lose out,” he said.  

“Probably, I am going to make a policy that if you want to do it, just be open about it and share with us.” He further added, “If you’re a millennial and if you can do two jobs, you’re a superhero.”  

While business leaders consider it as an issue, there is no overarching law explicitly explaining the legality or illegality of moonlighting by IT sector professionals, as per corporate lawyer Reshmi Chowdhury. She, however, cautioned that moonlighting could be considered a breach if an “employee’s contract is non-compete and single employment”, which is again a case with the majority of conventional IT employment contracts. In that case, if an employee is caught moonlighting the company can press charges only if it is in violation of the employment contract and there is evidence that the employee has been moonlighting. However, she added, “It is not cheating if the employment contracts do not have such a clause or offers relaxations”.  

The trend of ‘moonlighting’ gained popularity and scope during the Covid-19 pandemic when the work from home became a norm. “Official figure of moonlighting is currently about 10-15% in the IT industry,” said Sumit Kumar, Chief Business Officer, TeamLease Education Foundation, a specialised staffing firm, who noted that smaller IT organisations may not be in a position to afford and attract full time resources, they resort to encouraging such practice to control costs.”   

Arjun Ramaraju, CEO of Conneqt Business Solutions, a Quess Corp Division and a digital IT and BPM services provider in India, too said, if there has been more than a 50% increase in moonlighting from the pre-pandemic times, it is not an issue that one needs to be perturbed about if done in a transparent manner. He estimated that officially very few workers (less than 2-3%) in the IT industry admitted moonlighting, but even today the number, post-pandemic, is not more than 10%. At the same time, it remains an open secret in the IT industry. “Only with adequate policies and protocols in place, employees will be more open about moonlighting.”  

He believes that eventually employers will resort to moonlighting in specialist roles such as high-end coding, specialised marketing and content jobs and data analytics, where there is a clear demand-supply gap and candidates are keen on taking up challenging projects not just for money, but for personal and professional growth. Just like gig economy and work-from-home were frowned by many employers earlier but now become a norm, this concept will also be popularised going forward.”  

Some are already working towards this goal. Swiggy earlier announced an ‘industry first’ policy that allowed moonlighting for its employees. “Any project or activity that is taken up outside office hours or on the weekend, without affecting productivity, and does not have a conflict of interest, can be picked up by the employees,” Girish Menon, human resource head of Swiggy said in a statement.   

Venkatraman Narayanan, Managing Director & CFO, Happiest Minds Technologies, said, increased levels of engagement with managers, employers is the best solution to address this issue at the moment and back to office is one best way to start,” he said.