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Most leaders read this week’s labor news as a story about people staying put. Fewer people are quitting. Hiring is slow. Workers are worried about finding the next job. But there is a second story underneath it, and it matters more for how we lead: a growing number of people are building portfolio careers without ever leaving their day job.

They are teaching what they know in public. They are taking on a second ongoing role. Some are getting paid for it. And they are doing it while showing up to work for you on Monday.

That can look like a flight risk. I think it is more useful to read it as a signal.

Key takeaways

  • Employees are staying in their jobs while building careers alongside them, which makes the second role a signal to understand, not a loyalty problem to police.
  • LinkedIn data reported by Fortune shows creators on the platform up 60% since 2024, with 83% of them building content alongside a day job.
  • Portfolio careers reveal what a single role is not providing: visible growth, recognition for expertise and a sense of control over a career.
  • Leaders should define the standards that matter (reliability, quality, confidentiality) instead of treating outside work as a lack of commitment.

What’s happening: people are staying, and building on the side

On October 15, Fortune published an interview with LinkedIn CEO Daniel Shapero about professionals who build audiences while keeping their day jobs. According to LinkedIn data cited in the piece, creators on LinkedIn are up 60% since 2024, and 83% of them are building content alongside a day job. The share of members reporting more than one ongoing position has jumped 26% since 2019. Entry-level employees make up the largest group at 36%, but the article notes that senior professionals are close behind.

Shapero described the trend as an expansion, not an exit: “For most people, it’s not a replacement for a day job.” He also said he would hire a prolific poster rather than see them as a flight risk, and that it is “brand accretive” when employees share valuable knowledge. It is worth remembering that he runs the platform where this activity happens, so that view is not neutral. The data is still useful.

The context matters too. Two days earlier, Axios reported that concern about finding a job is spiking. Citing a Pew Research Center survey conducted September 28 to October 4, Axios reported that 48% of U.S. adults are very concerned that people who want to work can’t find jobs, the highest reading since Pew began asking in 2022. Axios also cited Federal Reserve Bank of New York data showing that 46% of respondents in September thought they would find another job within three months if laid off, a figure near an all-time low. Its summary of the moment: “Layoffs are historically low, but hiring remains weak.” Shapero made a similar point to Fortune: people are leaving jobs at a much lower rate than they have in the past.

Put those together and you get a clear picture. People are not moving. But they are not standing still either.

Why portfolio careers matter for leaders

In Chapter 10 of The Next Turn, “Fractional Work and the Unbundling of Jobs,” I argue that the full-time, fixed job has always been a construct. It bundled many kinds of work into one role partly because communication and coordination used to be slow. As those constraints loosen, people can see more ways to put a working life together. A second ongoing position, a following built on what you know, paid advice on the side: these are all versions of the same unbundling.

The instinct for many leaders is to treat this as a commitment question. Is this person really invested here? But I don’t think the second role creates the doubt. It surfaces something that was already true.

Fractional work does not cause that behavior. It reveals it.

The Next Turn

What does it reveal? Often, that the day job is not giving people a visible way to grow, to be recognized for what they know or to feel some control over where their career is going. When the external market feels tight, people can’t easily answer that by leaving. So they answer it by building.

This is where the two turns of the book meet. The definition of work, meaning what people believe work is for and what it should provide, has been shifting for years. Many people now see work as one part of a broader life strategy rather than the whole of it. The structure of work, meaning how work actually flows, has changed too: digital platforms make it possible to share expertise, find an audience and take on a second role from the same laptop you use for your job. Neither turn alone explains what LinkedIn is seeing. Together, they do.

The value exchange is being tested in public

Chapter 5 is about what I call the value exchange. The core idea is simple:

In an older system, loyalty was often given first and tested later. In the current one, value is assessed first and loyalty is built only if the exchange proves itself over time.

The Next Turn

A portfolio career is one way people keep assessing that exchange while staying in place. They are not necessarily unhappy. They are diversifying. And notice who leads the trend in LinkedIn’s data: entry-level employees, the people with the least visible growth path inside most organizations. That is a design question for leaders, not a character question about anyone.

It is also not only an early-career story. Senior professionals are close behind. This is a workforce pattern, not a generational quirk, and treating it as one generation’s lack of loyalty will lead you to the wrong response.

Separate the standard from the signal

In Chapter 13, I draw a line between standards and signals. Standards are what the organization actually needs: quality, reliability, accountability, sound judgment, follow-through. Signals are the visible cues we use to infer those things, like time, presence and responsiveness.

Exclusive attention to one employer has long been treated as a signal of commitment. But it was never the standard. The standards are things like: Is the work excellent? Is this person reliable? Do they protect what is confidential? Do they avoid real conflicts of interest?

Reliability may come from clarity rather than presence.

The Next Turn

If you define those standards clearly, a second role becomes much easier to evaluate. If you don’t, you will default to suspicion, and suspicion spreads quickly. People will either hide what they are doing or leave once the market opens up.

Your next turn

Here are a few moves for this week:

  • Write down your actual standards. What does your organization truly require of someone with outside work? Think quality, reliability, confidentiality and real conflicts of interest, not a vague sense of loyalty.
  • Ask what the side work provides. In your next one-on-one, ask with curiosity: What are you building outside of work, and what does it give you that this role doesn’t? The answer is design information.
  • Look for expertise you are not using. If someone is teaching thousands of people what they know, ask whether there is a place for that knowledge inside your team.
  • Check your growth path for early-career roles. If entry-level people are building visible growth elsewhere, ask what visible growth looks like in their first three years with you.
  • Make your policy explicit. If your expectations about outside work, public posting or disclosure live only in managers’ heads, put them in writing so people don’t have to guess.

Frequently asked questions

Should managers worry when employees build a side career?

Not by default. A side career is not the same as disengagement. The useful question is whether the person is meeting the standards of their role, such as quality, reliability and confidentiality. If they are, the side work is better treated as information about what they want from their career.

What is a portfolio career?

A portfolio career is a working life built from more than one stream of work, such as a full-time job plus consulting, teaching, content or a second ongoing role. LinkedIn data reported by Fortune shows the share of members reporting more than one ongoing position has jumped 26% since 2019.

How should HR write a policy on employee side work?

Start with the standards that protect the organization: confidentiality, conflicts of interest, use of company time and resources, and how employees speak about the company in public. Make those expectations specific and written down. Avoid policies that treat outside work as a loyalty test, because they tend to push the activity out of sight rather than make it safer.

The question underneath

People are staying. That is what the labor numbers say. But staying is not the same as standing still, and it is not proof that the exchange is working. More people are building something next to their job because they want growth, recognition and some sense of control, and they can now see how to get it.

You can treat that as a threat to manage. Or you can treat it as the clearest feedback you will get about what your roles are not yet offering. If you want more on how leaders are responding to these shifts, you can find other posts on the Next Turn blog.

So here is the question: if your best people are building something on the side, what would it take for more of that growth to happen inside the work you lead?

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