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The traditional “one job, one employer” model is facing a new challenger: polyworking.
But is this trend a mere blip on the radar or a seismic shift that will redefine the tech workplace?
We asked industry leaders to share their insights on the potential impact of polyworking, and their responses reveal a complex landscape of opportunities and challenges for tech companies.
Read on!
Brian Pontarelli
In the tech industry, polyworking—juggling multiple professional roles or projects—has potential, especially considering the evolution of work norms. At FusionAuth, we’ve always valued flexibility and multi-disciplinary insights. This mirrors our capability to operate both on-prem and in the cloud, emphasizing adaptability. However, managing focus and productivity can be challenging. During FusionAuth’s early days, balancing CleanSpeak and new ventures taught me that divided efforts can hinder success if not managed well.
Nevertheless, embracing polyworking can drive innovation. Our iterative product development approach, which evolved from CleanSpeak to FusionAuth, benefited from diverse skills and perspectives. Building scalable and flexible authentication solutions required both depth and breadth of expertise. Yet, it’s crucial to draw a line between benefiting from different experiences and being overextended. Companies can thrive from polyworking by setting clear goals and leveraging diverse skill sets judiciously, ensuring the focus remains on long-term growth and sustainability.
Polyworking—juggling multiple professional roles—feels less like a passing trend and more like a fundamental shift driven by remote work’s rise and a redefined approach to career growth.
Benefits: The tech firms can use polyworking to attract talent that desires flexibility, creative and cross-disciplinary efforts. Professionals with a number of different roles are usually able to have a wider approach and ability to resolve issues.
Drawbacks: It poses risks to conventional definitions of loyalty and can incur costs to firms if poorly implemented. Setting boundaries and reasonable expectations is necessary to prevent employee exhaustion and overwork.
In the end however, polyworking tech firms are more likely to develop a more mobile innovative workforce enabling them to reshape the workplace in favor of expanding talent and versatility.
Polyworking brings a new layer of flexibility that’s hard to ignore in today’s tech environment. Rather than a passing fad, polyworking may become a standard approach, as it allows talent to diversify their skills and stay engaged by working on varied projects.
For tech companies, embracing polyworking could mean tapping into a workforce that’s sharper, more adaptable, and continually learning from cross-industry experience. But it also presents challenges in terms of maintaining focus and accountability when teams are spread across multiple commitments.
As this trend grows, platforms that support asynchronous collaboration and effective task management, like Telegram or Notion, could become essential, enabling seamless project flow without rigid time requirements. Embracing polyworking might just be a competitive edge in keeping top talent engaged and inspired.
At its core, polyworking is about blending different skill sets and experiences, creating unique insights that aren’t easy to find when focusing on a single area. Instead of just juggling various roles, it’s a way to build connections across projects, which often leads to fresh solutions or improvements.
Take, for example, someone with UX skills who’s also comfortable with coding. This blend doesn’t just make them more efficient; it changes how they understand the user journey, making their contributions richer and more informed.
While balancing multiple roles can be challenging, polyworking keeps things interesting and provides a deeper toolkit to handle different challenges. It’s a way to keep learning, stay adaptable, and shape a career that’s genuinely reflective of diverse passions and interests—all things tech, at its core, appreciates.
Polyworking has the potential to reshape the tech industry’s work culture. It appeals to tech professionals seeking variety and autonomy, allowing them to explore diverse skill sets, earn multiple income streams, and keep their work dynamic. For companies, embracing polyworking could mean access to highly skilled, multi-faceted talent without committing to a full-time role, which can be a win-win in today’s project-based, agile environments.
However, managing polyworkers comes with challenges. For instance, loyalty and focus might become divided, making it tougher for companies to build cohesive teams or retain exclusive talent. There’s also the risk of burnout, as juggling multiple roles can be exhausting over time. If handled well, though, polyworking could become an efficient way for tech companies to collaborate with top-tier talent flexibly, meeting project needs while allowing workers the freedom they increasingly seek.
Polyworking brings both benefits and challenges for companies and employers, especially in today’s remote work environment. On the positive side, it allows employers to scale up /down and tap into specialized expertise for short-term projects without long-term commitments. For example, we once hired a part-time contractor from a large dating app to gain insights and best practices, which was invaluable for our growth.
Allowing some side gigs can also serve as a retention strategy, helping employees supplement income without seeking full-time roles elsewhere. Overall, polyworking offers flexibility, but it requires thoughtful management.
However, I’m cautious about salaried employees polyworking, as it may lead to burnout or a drop in productivity. To manage this, we set clear, trackable goals and maintain frequent communication (calls, slack, emails to avoid micromanaging) to ensure focus.
The Techronicler team thanks these leaders for taking the time to share their valuable insights on polyworking.
If you wish to showcase your experience and expertise, participate in industry-leading discussions, and add visibility and impact to your personal brand and business, get in touch with the Techronicler team to feature in our fast-growing publication.
