The power structure is weighted against the employee with respect to the creation of these policies. That makes ethical considerations a bit murky, a person cannot work in society without working under policies of this sort, there is no free market of labor to allow for competition etc.
So the real question is, is it unethical to violate a code of conduct that you do not regard as fair & equitable, applying unequally to the top C-level execs compensated by their positions on various boards of other companies but with comparable-- to your level of employment-- options closed off by corporate policy to common workers. Is it unethical violate that code of conduct when imposed upon you without recourse or ability to negotiate it.
I view this in the light of the philosophy of civil disobedience. I.e., a person may (or should) act against those prohibitions with which they disagree. Though also that you do so with eyes wide open on the potentials consequences of that disobedience. In the case of OE, that means accepting without complaint getting fired if an employer discovers the dual jobs.
I want to be clear though-- When I look on OE as a reasonable endeavor I do so only if the employee is actually doing the chunk of work expected of them in a satisfactory way. There's a lot of nonsense and busy work that can be cut out and efficiencies realized if a person puts their mind to it to perform a full time job's expected workload in well under 40 hours. WFH makes this even easier. I also would regard it as unethical to do this if the job is paid as an hourly wage. In that case there is an explicit contract to work $X hours. That's a bit more than just an employee handbook policy and I have a harder time reconciling sandbagging hours there even if you're getting the the work done because you explicitely agreed to receive $x for each hour of work performed. If it takes you less time, take the appropriate pay and find other OE work to fill your time or whatever you want. The key thing is that a person should do the work they agreed to do, otherwise you're just a scam artist.
So the real question is, is it unethical to violate a code of conduct that you do not regard as fair & equitable, applying unequally to the top C-level execs compensated by their positions on various boards of other companies but with comparable-- to your level of employment-- options closed off by corporate policy to common workers. Is it unethical violate that code of conduct when imposed upon you without recourse or ability to negotiate it.
I view this in the light of the philosophy of civil disobedience. I.e., a person may (or should) act against those prohibitions with which they disagree. Though also that you do so with eyes wide open on the potentials consequences of that disobedience. In the case of OE, that means accepting without complaint getting fired if an employer discovers the dual jobs.
I want to be clear though-- When I look on OE as a reasonable endeavor I do so only if the employee is actually doing the chunk of work expected of them in a satisfactory way. There's a lot of nonsense and busy work that can be cut out and efficiencies realized if a person puts their mind to it to perform a full time job's expected workload in well under 40 hours. WFH makes this even easier. I also would regard it as unethical to do this if the job is paid as an hourly wage. In that case there is an explicit contract to work $X hours. That's a bit more than just an employee handbook policy and I have a harder time reconciling sandbagging hours there even if you're getting the the work done because you explicitely agreed to receive $x for each hour of work performed. If it takes you less time, take the appropriate pay and find other OE work to fill your time or whatever you want. The key thing is that a person should do the work they agreed to do, otherwise you're just a scam artist.