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During the COVID-19 pandemic (2020–2021), some employees secretly held multiple…

2026-08-04 · 17:27 UTC ·@aymanalabdul ·0 min read

Brief

The post traces a thread from pandemic-era 'overemployment'—coordinated via r/overemployed, where people juggled multiple remote jobs and some were publicly exposed and fired—to a 2026 trend where those same people are building AI agents that serve dozens or hundreds of companies. It argues CEOs are fast to hire these agents, suggesting a shift toward renting out agent fleets as a solopreneur revenue model and even replacing traditional senior hires with agent-powered roles.

Why it matters

During the COVID-19 pandemic (2020–2021), some employees secretly held multiple remote jobs simultaneously, organized around the r/overemployed subreddit as an underground playbook.

Key details

  • Several overemployed workers were publicly exposed and fired (including live-TV incidents), after which many have turned to building AI agents that can operate across dozens or reportedly hundreds of companies.
  • CEOs are now rapidly hiring these AI agents; the post predicts a solopreneur model where individuals build and rent agents for recurring revenue and that senior hires (e.g., VPs) may increasingly be agent-driven rather than human.
Source evidence

During the pandemic, employees were secretly working 10 jobs.

It became a phenomenon. r/overemployed was their underground playbook.

They got caught. Fired on live TV. The internet roasted them. (Cue the "shame" scene from Game of Thrones.)

Now those same people are building AI agents that work for hundreds of companies.

And CEOs are rushing to hire them.

The future of solopreneurship: build your agents, rent them out, and collect checks while they work.

The future of hiring: your next VP might just be an agent.