I've been OEing for almost three years now, after an Ivy League undergrad and a top business school. From Thailand, I've doubled my income while juggling a brand-name consulting gig at my J1 & J2.

Welcome if you are new here! Since my last post, we have doubled (again!!) the # of people in the J2 Confidential community, to over 400. If you are new to OE, I urge that you to revisit the OE Hustlers Guide in your welcome email.

Through this newsletter, I hope to share genuine stories with readers who believe that we are undergoing a fundamental shift in the nature of work. All posts are written by me (no AI slop!!)

I am also experimenting with the cadence of posts, and today’s post is “Storytime Thursdays,” (name tentative until I cook up something sexier) to share my anecdotes as well as those from others. When I first started OEing, I was very skittish about what I was getting myself into. I hope these stories can inspire and also inform with nuggets of tactical advice.

I'm two months into OE, fresh and eager after a hell of a recruiting cycle at b school. My J1 is at a big-name consulting firm, and I'm going ‘balls to the wall’ so to speak — scheduling 1-1s with partners (consulting lingo for ‘your boss’) and volunteering for extra work in my industry vertical. I hyper-optimized on my performance. It is a function of optics, which is essentially your ‘visibility’ working on various things. Beyond daily work, I was all-in on supporting a proposal for digitizing public transport and was the only junior on the team, having extensively hyped up my so-called domain expertise in my resume 😅

J1 was ‘on paper’ hybrid and based in the East Coast, but I'd already snuck to the West Coast, dialing into meetings at 6 am but chilling on the beach at 2pm. J2, on the other hand, was two months in and ramping up but mostly chill.

Life was good until bam: a high-level meeting, consisting of SVPs from our firm and partners, set for lunchtime at the downtown office. They wanted me there in person.

Having been skittish since starting OE two months ago, anxious about this moment, I almost felt relieved knowing that my anxieties are no longer a distant worry. The other shoe had finally dropped. Not only had I moved without telling anyone, but now I had to travel back, and it meant being away from my usual OE setup.

I booked a red-eye flight right away, leaving the same evening. I would fly 5 hours East overnight, arrive morning, train to the city, crush the meeting, dip, train back to the airport, and fly back with enough time to spare to watch another episode of my 3rd rewatch of Death Note (Light Yagami was the original OE hustler).

Total cost: double the usual ticket price. Was it worth it? Definitely. I had $100K+ more to spare from J2 and my lower cost of living due to remote work.

Let me paint the scene of what happened after I landed:

I land bleary-eyed, grab a white Monster Energy, and head to the office.

I had already told my J1 manager before flying that I wasn't feeling great—casual small talk to ‘seed’ any extenuating circumstances that would detract from my J2 on this travel day. I also blocked my calendar during relevant hours.

I had my mobile OE kit ready: second phone as a hotspot, travel router hooked to a private VPN mimicking my J2's location, big power bank keeping it all juiced in my backpack. Why the extra phone? I needed a dedicated device to run the hotspot, one that did not have MS Teams.

I chipped in on J2 chats between J1 handshakes. By afternoon, meeting done, I'm on a train to the airport, back home like nothing happened.

Was this day a ‘win?’ Not exactly.

Being that eager beaver in J1 bit me. The extra networking and BD work pulled me into this in-person meeting, which could've been a video call. Irrespective of how cleanly I handle it, this could have been a situation that was avoided.

In OE, you can't afford surprises that drag you away from your standard setup. I learned quick to dial it back—focus only on core tasks that pay the bills, nothing more.

Soon after, I went fully remote, moved to Japan, and never dealt with that again. My J1 claims hybrid, but in consulting, RTO are impossible to enforce with geographically diverse clients.

OE isn't about slacking off. It's transactional. You deliver value efficiently, but cut out the fluff that doesn't boost your check. One can debate whether it is sub-optimal to not participate in extra work given career growth considerations. I believe it is not optimal; for my situation, promotions still considered seniority and impact on real projects, and my OE setup had my comp already at the level those 10 years more senior.

Push for remote-friendly roles where face time isn't mandatory. Otherwise, you're setting yourself up for more headaches.

Unrelated, but just thought I’d throw in a tactical musing I had while writing this post: I actually outlined this post during a boring work meeting. I run transcripts on every call—treat tools like Otter.ai or built-in transcriptions tools as your personal secretary.\

Most meetings are 90% filler: waiting, chit-chat, slow talk, too much details. I often run meeting transcripts through AI to 80/20 the meeting, using my extra bandwidth for higher-leverage items. OE is pragmatic, and small optimizations like this reclaim your hours without cutting corners on delivery.

Wrapping up, think about this: pulling off OE right means you optimize your life and situation-handling processes to optimize not only your income but also your attitude towards work itself.

I hope today’s post was useful. I take feedback very seriously and if you’ve read this far, I hope you can spend 1 second to rate this post. This will help me deliver the most relevant and useful content for you.