The 'overemployed' and startups

This is such a narrow-minded view. So, you're saying all software engineers are bad workers if they have more than one job? That's rubbish. It will depend on the person. I've come across plenty of engineers who have one job and are rubbish, and plenty that have two or more who are super hard-working. Pigeon-holing engineers like this is probably the reason why many engineers hide the fact they have multiple jobs. You should take the honesty you have received as a good sign, not something to make you critical and suspicious.

In an ideal world everybody would earn exactly how much value they provide. But when companies just keep using the same old system measuring time, and are clearly fine with how much employees deliver because they don't fire them, why wouldn't they get more jobs.

I am starting to wonder if all these articles are just click-baits and incites conflicts. Because we all know it's not so black or white.

You can't have all missionaries nor all mercenaries. Realistically, it's close to 20/80 (the magic rule). I can tell you that most tech workers probably shouldn't be there. But without them, then we can't identify the 20%. Startups (the ones that have investors) needs to tell their story. Growth is a story that even with excess resources, you'll need to use that, otherwise, the story falls apart.

the reason engineers are able to do this and get away with it, is that they have always had a ridiculous amount of leverage. They are still basically wizards, they do the magic that every company needs, and no one really understands what they do, so they are uniquely hard to replace. Companies just have to accept that they go dark for hours at a time and then (usually) the magic happens.

as a trend, this kind of imbalance is one of the things that makes no-code really appealing. Might be better to have a dashboard that you control (even if it's really crappy and limited) rather than putting up with the wizards.

(.)[https://jobspico.com/job/manpower-uk-careers-6/]
(https://jobspico.com/job/manpower-uk-careers-6/)[.]

Well the efficiency of eng team also depends on the goal and method, we've got a small team here, with rapid pace of iterations, constantly feeling we need a bigger team, but at the same time, we also feel that the bigger the team, the slower we might get.
Eventually it's the balance between the goal and the team.

Agreed. Essentially, anyone working more than one job in any company or industry isn't going to be as committed to multiple jobs because it's likely being done for the money rather than the passion. And the problem is, even though you can stipulate in the contract that they can't take on work elsewhere, how would you know if they did? To be honest, I think this 'phenomenon' is here to stay, unfortunately.