TLDR, i am not performing as I used to in my job before i made my side hussle and idk if i should do anything about it.

every since covid started and companies started laying off people, I started realizing im in danger when no company was able to match my current salary, and the ones that do would, make me do a hunger games hackerrank competition with thousands of other people which I don't really wanna take part of..

My company even laid off a lot of people due to budget cuts a while back and i didn't feel secure at all, and knowing that i might end up with less salary should i get fired and settle for the next company that accepts me, kinda made me lose any trust i had for the whole being an employee thing... I have financial goals i want to meet and depending on this one company to not fire me is scary...

I registered a tech company and hoped I could take on some high budget projects, got nothing the first year but slowly i started getting some projects and now im hiring contractors to help with projects and its going great and im really happy and excited about it.

But i often need to manage said contractors, have calls with clients and even do some coding myself. Some of that i end up having to do in secret in my company time... we work in a big co-working space so i get to sneak into a meeting booth and do all that.

my manager lives in another country and basically im in a situation where i can get away with it without anyone noticing.

However, I used to be one of the top contributors in the company. I used to finish a butt load of tasks every day and i ended up being promoted to manager, but i still get some coding tasks. But generally, if it weren't for my side hussle i would still be a top contributor and shine like i used to, but now i mostly do what is expected on me, and im afraid someone would ask me at some point why im not as productive as I used to be.

nobody asked me anything but i just feel kinda guilty and miss having the one job to focus on and taking credit for a lot of things and helping everyone, but at the same time i dont trust that the company cares about me enough to give me any guarantees or stocks or bonuses so i feel i need to keep growing my side hussle to have a safety net..

thank you for reading my rant