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Admin
I'd rather go to http://www.google.com/uranus but I can't seem to find it. [:$]
Admin
quoting user: "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? Over."
WTF???!?!?!!?1one!!1!!eleven1!1!!1onethousandeleventyone1111!!!!!
end quote
<FONT color=#a9a9a9 size=1>(stupid forum software giving "Non matching quote blocks in post". Go figure.)</FONT>
<FONT face=Tahoma color=#ff0000 size=6>"Do I hear another Dalek?"</FONT>
<FONT face=Tahoma color=#ff0000 size=6>"Inferior!"</FONT>
<FONT face=Tahoma color=#ff0000 size=6>"Eleventy is NaN!"</FONT>
<FONT face=Tahoma color=#ff0000 size=6>"Exterminate! Exterminate!"</FONT>
<FONT face=Tahoma color=#ff0000 size=6></FONT>
Admin
"Yeah, I'm gonna need you to go ahead and fire yourself. We have been having some dissent lately and I'm lead to believe that you are the main proponent. So if you could you know go ahead and pack up your stuff up, that'd be great"
Jim M = Lumberg
Admin
Actually no - but I'll definitely read it now. looks interesting thanks. :)
Admin
Good question - and I guess that's one reason why I'm curious to find one... just to see what it does. :)
I can understand their place a few decades ago when we were all still figuring out what was and was not acceptable hiring/firing OHS practices etc but that stuff seems to have crystalised fairly nicely into a set of laws that I'm fairly comfortable with (at least in Australia)... but they are dealt with in a generic manner rather than attached to any specific union.
So what are the unions for now? It seems they're only there for pay-rates now - and I don't see a need for them to be dictated in the IT sector. But perhaps I'm missing something?
Admin
A nation with a trillion dollar deficit isn't a healthy or productive one. The US is an economic basket case -- a great big economic basket case.
Admin
I too have experienced this, but the IT Manager was the one responsible. He loved to send out threatening emails regarding IT policy - "if ANYONE ignores the rules about personal email on company time I will PERSONALLY see to it that ALL of you lose ALL privileges on your desktop PCs, you will not even be able to change your BACKGROUND COLOR!"
The same guy sent out a note threatening to have terminated whoever had left a note on some vistor's car, as the visitor had parked at the entrance to the car park and nobody could go home until the visitor went home. The note was not particularly polite. Still this was kind of funny as the IT guy barely had the authority even to hire his own staff, let alone fire someone else's.
Admin
"The bottom line for the elevator employee is that his (or her) behavior is unethical."
It depends. Did the applicant ask "What's your opinion on the company?" or "What's the official opinion on the company?".
That makes a huge difference. If asked for a private opinion, the response should be the private opinion or a "I'd rather not talk about my private opinion in this matter.".
Admin
Well, unfortunately, you are not the new Sunzi so your own addition fails miserably.
First, The Art of War is directed at the generals and bosses, so as a guide for winning wars, it does not pay to say that "If the war fails, it's just because the soldiers weren't any good." What Sunzi says applies, even to the corporate world.
Then, your addition even contradicts those of Sunzi that you quoted. Sunzi never said anything about the stupidity of those orders, or about disobeying the orders in the quote above. What he said that if the general says "these troops will move to left" when he wants them to move to the right, and the troops move to left, the general is to blame. And even if the general tells to move them to right, and they still move to left, the officer is to blame, because obiviously he didn't tell the individual soldiers to move to the right. Your addition, as a understand it, is that it would be OK for the workers/soldiers to move to the left even when told to move right, if they just thought that moving to right would be stupid.
I cannot even begin to state the obivious errors in this kind of claim. Or maybe a do a few: first, what is considered "stupid" depends completely on the person. Second, a company that does not have any direction where to go to, will almost unvariably fail. Third, no one is master of everything, so I believe most workers are not business-oriented enough, or even interested in making business (I know I am not), so it is only sensible that the whole area of business is distributed. I am a lowly worker myself, and I am very happy that I have a CEO and salespersons, who do think about where we get our money from. I just concentrate on making things they want me to do.
Well, I could go on, but this post is long enough already... I know it's naive nowadays to say that "the management is the one who carries the burden of making profit" because it's not the case, but anyway, I'd rather like someone with real business knowledge and experience to make the decisions rather than me, or other lowly worker guys who have an illusion of understanding ANYTHING about the business.
Admin
That's a lot of assumptions, all of them wrong. The citizens are already coerced by the government in every nation exept those that have fallen into anarchy, so why should companies be allowed to operate under their own terms only ? Unless having laws in general constitutes to being a totalitarian state, that kind of view is null and void.
Admin
Do what you love and the money will follow...
Admin
At this same company, we would have day long company meetings, telling us to work harder, and how happy we should be to work there.
See, morale and attitude and performance were really important to the management.
They had a day long, mandatory out of town pep rally to improve morale. When they told me about it, I asked if I could stay and work, since I had been working so many hours to keep the project on schedule, and I would be able to finish my work for the day and leave before 9PM, and I was really looking forward to having an evening off. Sonny, the Executive VP asked me if I could explain to him why I felt that I deserved special treatment, and that it sounded to him like I needed to improve my attitude more than anyone else there. He was sort of right, but wasting a day at a pep rally wasn't really helping. I had to be there at 7AM(after working until midnight) to catch the chartered bus to the pep rally. When we got back at 6PM, I went in to my desk and finished the tasks I had to complete for that day to stay on schedule. I ended up working until midnight again.
The good part is that the next day was Saturday, and since no one else would be in the office, no one would know if I came in late, so I didn't show up for work until about 10AM. You see, Mike(the president of the company), monitored the elevator in the morning during the work week, and if you came in any later than 8:25 AM(our workday was supposed to start at 8:30AM) and he caught you, he would march you into your boss' office to receive a written reprimand. There were several nights that I just slept there, since going home at 4AM seemed like a waste of time.
That particular position at that particular company has proven to be pretty typical rather than a bizarre exception in my 20 years or so of experience. The one good thing about working mostly in environments like this, it has led me to really appreciate a good boss, and my standards for being a good boss have been set pretty low. But still they are rarely met.
As far as being loyal goes, I've seen it rewarded only once, but it is lauded by management universally. In this case, it was less a matter of being loyal, and more a matter of wanting to see the application work when I was done. I had invested alot in it, so it was more a matter of personal pride as anything else. But there was a point when I decided enough was enough, and I quit. Granted, it was two weeks before they were supposed to pay out bonuses, but I've only worked for one company that actually paid the bonuses they promised, so I doubt I would have gotten any financial reward anyway.
Every word that I've written about this job is truth. I still have my timesheets(I was on salary, but we had to turn in hourly timesheets), and most of the propaganda, just so I can look back on one more horrible pointless job, at another horrible, stupid company, and to remind myself the next time around, when things start looking grim, why company loyalty and dedication are pointless qualitites for an employee.
Pretending you are loyal and dedicated while you look for another job is another matter.
Admin
I love to drink whiskey.
Admin
It doesn't really matter what was asked. If you are asked a question, the answer to which you cannot ethically give, then the only ethical response is to decline to answer.
Of course, that assumes that the prospect asked anything in the first place. This underscores how little is known about the actual sequence of events, which in turn leads to the one error in my analysis: I was making assumptions about what exactly the elevator employee said (and specifically, I was assuming that the CEO's statement of what was said was at least loosely based in fact; which may not be the case).
According to the CEO's letter, the employee told the prospect that he should not take the job and that the company was not a good place to work. Neither of those statements would be acceptable, no matter what question was asked.
Another possible backstory: The prospect asks the employee about working at this company; the employee gives a factual reply, which includes some facts like "we have been working long hours lately" or "we've been in a round of layoffs". These facts lead the prospect to decide that this isn't a good place to work, and that he shouldn't take this job. The prospect relays his own conclusions to the recruiter as "what the employee told me". In this case, my assessment of the employee's behavior would depend on how he (or she) presented the facts.
I still can't find a scenario where I would rate the employees behavior both ethical and intelligent, though.
Admin
I work(ed) at this company. I can't give away the identity of the company, but to avoid speculation about which company it is, I will let you know that the company is in south Florida. So if you are thinking that Jim M is actually the CEO were you work or are applying for a position, don't worry too much. Jim is his actual name.
The company itself isn't so bad, but it has a lot of problems. The founding fathers were ejected. The CTO and VP and several other executives were fired with no warning. Developers, including architects, keep quiting or being fired. Some come back after quiting only to be fired a few months later. And don't even get me started on the code (you've seen some of it in previous WTFs ("Generic Generics")).
I don't know whether it was unethical for the employee to warn the prospect or whether it would have been unethical not to. However, the CEO should have approached the situation differently. He should have turned the problem into an opportunity to address the problems tearing the company apart. Instead, he let his emotions take over. He did later admit to overstepping the bounds. All CEOs seem to have two personas: a professional, friendly, almost fatherly persona; and a Mr. Hyde when things don't go well.
Let this WTF remind you how important good working conditions and team spirit are in a company. If you have these, don't take them for granted. The places I've enjoyed working the most have been places where I've made long-term friends.
P.S.
I am not the elevator guy. He was never "caught", but the developers who work for the company are confident that they know who he was. He has since been fired for a different reason: lack of motivation. However, he is doing well and is not a bad person. He was just in a bad situation.
As for what constitutes being "fired in a spectacular fashion," we never found out. However, given the company's pirate theme (corporate mascot, flags, bobble heads, etc.), I imaged that the employee would have been made to walk the plank. Perhaps even fed to the sharks (with lasers on their heads?) on Florida's coastline.
Admin
I hope that this is just sarcasm. The employee didn't do anything unethical, in fact just the opposite, if the place is a bad place to work he did the right thing. Who knows what was said inside that elevator, but if the company is going done in flames, encouraging the prospect to work there is unethical.
Should the employee be punished? For expressing an opinion? NO!
The guy in the elevator may have lacked tact, but it was not wrong, nor unethical.
Admin
Nope, no sarcasm whatsoever. One assumption (addressed in another post), but no sarcasm. Employees have an ethical responsibility to their employers, and if this guy told a prospect that he shouldn't take the job, then he isn't living up to that responsibility.
I did not say that the employee was ethically bound to "encourage" the prospect to take the job, and indeed that may (depending on the real state of the company) also be unethical. Probably the most ethical thing the employee could do is keep his mouth shut and let the prospect make up his own mind. That's the funny thing about being ethical: it's often a narrow path.
Removing context certainly makes it easy to make statements that sound good. But the fact is, there are MANY cases where an employee should indeed be punished for expressing an opinion; it depends on how he expresses it and to whom. Not only can many combinations of "how" and "to whom" be unethical, there are a fair number that are also illegal.
Admin
I've earlier addressed the fact that from the informaiton that we have, there is no way to tell what if anything was said by the employee referenced by the CEO or even if there was an employee at all. But it is troublesome the amount of responses like the one above who state that they can not see any possible way that the employee could have recommened the candidate not take the job and have been ethical and smart.
Well here are some scenario's that I've thought up:
1. Employee knows of situations in the workplace that would prove dangerous to anyone filling the position being advertized for and has confirmed with the candidate that he wasn't told of those situations. I don't believe it would be ethical to with hold this information from the candidate. Being an ethical employee should not include being a party, even if just by omission, to placing someone unknowingly in physical danger to help make the company succeed in business.
2. If the company is knowingly engaging in some sort of highly unethical and/or illegal behavior, would it be ethical to knowingly with hold that information so you could help your company succeed? I don't think so.
3. If the employee had 1st hand knowledge that the company had misrepresented the working conditions of the job being interviewed for, would it be ethical to keep silent? Again, I think not.
Ethics is not blind loyalty. It is being honest, having integrity, and doing the right thing even if it might not be in your best financial interests. It's putting people's lives and health above making a buck. Ethics is obeying the law.
Sure it's possible the employee was repeating things he didn't know to be true. Or he could have been taking petty revenge against the company. Or he could have been seeking to keep the company from hiring a potental replacement for himself. Any one of these and several other secnario's would have been unethical IMO.
But I would add there are much fewer cases where telling the truth is less ethical than in not telling the truth. And I don't think that every whistle blower is ethically bound to quit before they can blow the whistle. Too bad someone didn't feel compelled to blow the whistle on Ken Lay before he destroyed the savings of thousands of individuals.
Admin
Let me state the issue this way:
A good company does not have to worry about their staff giving their honest opinion. In fact, a good company will have staff that will have a positive honest opinion.
Once you have gone that far, it's fairly easy to see where the problem starts. If the company is bad, the boss carries most of that responsibility. The employee is not a problem, just a symptom.
Admin
Whoever this CEO is, however ill-tempered he is, at least he's not William Shockley.
Paranoid. Vindictive. Self-destructive. And to top it off, racist.
Admin
Disagreeing with your point of view is troublesome? Interesting.
Well, what you claim I said (and what you fnid troublesome) is in fact a weaker statement than the one I made. I am saying outright that recommending to the prospect that he not take the job is unethical. There are variations on what conversation might have taken place in which the employee may not have done anything unethical -- i.e. may not have actually recommended against the job -- but in all reasonable cases I can find, he was still acting unwisely.
That's quite a stretch, but if it's the case then the employee is ethically bound to raise these safety concerns to the appropriate government authorities (perhaps OSHA?). Trying to address the issue with individual candidates is both unethical and unintelligent (as it increases his personal risk in the event of something like... oh, I don't konw, what happened).
Now, perhaps our now-extremely-hypothectical employee is reporting to the appropriate authorities, but because that route is so slow, he also found the need to talk to this candidate. And as long as he's just presenting facts that may be ethically ok; but as soon as he offers opinions ("this is not a good place t work") or starts drawing conclusions for the prospect ("you should not take this job") to the detriment of his employer, he is behaving unethically.
But ok; I should have said that I can't find a remotely believable scenario, based on the facts given, in which the employee was both ethical and intelligent in his behavior.
The above covers my responses to the other hypothetical scenarios just as well.
And if you were to actually read what I'm calling unethical behavior, you would see that I agree with that. This does not change the fact that an employee does have ethical responsibilities to his employer, and that telling a potential hire that he shouldn't take the job breaches those responsibilities. Being ethical means keeping up with all ethical responsibilties, not merely those owed to the party to whom you're most sympathetic.
LOL
Telling an employee not to take a position at a company is not "blowing the whistle". It would do nothing to avert what Lay did.
You really would do well to address this story in its own context, rather than confusing it with every case of "boss vs. employee" you've ever read.
Admin
The company has problems, but that doesn't make the employee right.
Nobody's right when everybody's wrong.
Admin
The only one I was able to think of was this:
Employee recognizes that Candidate is not suited for the position and will be a liability to the Company. Not being involved in the interview process, and asked for advice by Candidate, Employee gave his personal advice that Candidate would be better off somewhere else.
It's dubious; in such a situation it is best not to say such a thing to the Candidate directly and instead try to find out who the recruiters are and let them know that one has reservations about Candidate. But it's the best I could think of.
In general, one should not bad-mouth the company to someone outside the company. It is unethical. There are very specific exceptions to this, such as whistleblowing, but you should exhaust all internal avenues for your concerns first. Talk to your coworkers. If that doesn't fix the problem, talk to your manager. If that doesn't fix it, talk to *his* manager. If that doesn't fix it, register a complaint with the company's internal systems (ethics hotline, process improvement suggestion box, etc). If that doesn't fix it, go outside. If you work for a government contractor, there's a DoD hotline for that sort of thing. No matter who you work for, you can also contact OSHA and various other government agencies. If that fails, and it's still important to fix the problem, you may want to try the press.
Under absolutely no circumstances should you bring your concerns before a competitor or a client. This falls under conflict of interest rules, and may even be criminal depending on exactly what you disclose. Since Candidate has not yet been hired and may be hired by a competitor, treat him as if he is a potential competitor. Tell him nothing that you could not tell a competitor. Whether you like the company or not, revealing damaging company secrets is unneccesary and unethical as long as you are still legally beholden to the company.
That said, employees working for various companies do disclose details of the working environment to candidates and people working at other companies routinely. Sometimes they fall under the category of warnings. And some are tolerable. But you need to be very careful about what you say. At the very least, it can be grounds for a reprimand, and depending on the nature of the disclosure, it may even be grounds for termination. It's unlikely that this scenario would be criminal, but certainly there have been criminal disclosures of a company's shortcomings.
Admin
What if the candidate asks: "How is it like working here?"
and you answer (truthfully): "Well, lot's of unpaid overtime, and salary cuts too, during the last 6 months..."
does this already count as "unethical bad mouthing the company"?
Admin
I've worked in a couple of companies that were almost this bad [idiot executives... the BOD eventually fired several over a really bad public incident involving Indian outsourcing]
I feel nothing wrong with venting out loud personally--as long as I no longer work there. If I'm employed there, then I just state facts. If the job candidate catches me on the way to get coffee in the canteen during the interview process and asks "should I work here" or "do you like this place" I would say what I feel. If I'm happy: yes. If not, "no." I'm not going to lie in a binary question like that. It's 1 or 0.
It didn't seem to matter at once place I worked at recently. I was a part of a wave of people who quit the company after morale dropped precipitously low. One particular job (an admin) they are on their 5th replacement in as many months. Recruiters have even asked me about the company [they saw the wave of people leaving] and I explained outright what was occuring. Better jump on the chance since people are so unhappy, you're liable to make a ton of commissions with hiring replacements all the time.
Admin
Agreeing or not agreeing with my point of view has nothing to do with it. I was remarking on how dissappointed that I was with how many posters here seemed to see no other possibility that the employee was conducting unethical behavior. I just expected more open mindedness to possibilities when so little is known about the alledged event.
Sounds like a very narrowly defined definition of ethical behavior which is unduely biased IMO towards the interests of the employer.
Well this was an actual situation. It was reported to appropriate governmental authorities, who just blew it off without even bothering to investigate. And believe me, I would have recommened to anyone that I could have not to work there. The problem was gathering sufficient proof for the authorities. You can see something with your own 2 eyes, but rarely is that sufficient proof. I have contacted several government agencies on my behalf or on the behalf of a spouse to address work place violations. It has to be very blantly over the top with corroborating evidence before most will get off their lazy butts and do anything other than make a few phone calls. Like calling up the employer and asking if they racially discriminate in their hiring practices or if they knowingly violate child labor laws or force unpaid overtime out of hourly workers inorder to keep their jobs. Of course they'll say no. And unless you have a smoking gun piece of evidence there is not much you can do even if you personally heard them admit to discrimination or personally say the child labor violations or were forced to work the unpaid overtime. It's a nice ivory tower answer that doesn't always translate into real world situations.
Of course you can always tell the company to shove it and just quit, but in some cases that would mean being homeless at best. And if you have a spouse of child going through chemotherapy like a friend of mine, they could die if you loose the ability to pay for the treatments.
The bottom line is if your company is attempting to defraud a potential hire with your knowledge of the attempted fraud and you choose not to sit back and do nothing to warn that person I find it hard to believe that this would be considered unethical by most people or by most of the common definitions of ethical. If your company attempts to unethically damage another person be that employee, investor, client, vendor, or potential hire and you have full knowledge of this and do nothing to warn that person, I do not see how that can be considered the ideal model of being ethical???
All the situations that I described were real situations that either a close family member or myself was involved in. I guess you're lucky that they don't occur in the ivory tower so much.
An employee has no obligation to aid and abet their company commit fraudlent act either by acts of commission or omission. In fact one of the few exceptions to both doctor client and attorney client privledge is when the doctor or lawyer knows their client is intending to commit a crime. Then the doctor or lawyer is bound by their ethical codes and the law to notify the authorities and do all reasonably within their power to prevent said crime from happening.
You miss the point here. As an employee you have an ethical responsibility to make know to the investors and/or athorities any knowinly misrepresentation of facts by management which could reasonably cause damage. But really you have an ethical oblication to do make know to anyone who would likely be damaged by the knowingly misrepresentation of fact by your company.
The problem with Enron and many other companies was that employees who came upon evidence most likely valued their jobs over their ethical responsibilities. If it's just hurting me or the person doing it then that's different. If it's damaging a 3rd party then the ethical onus is to do all reasonable within our power to avert the damage from the intentional misrepresentation of fact. If no one is to be damaged, then it is a moot point.
Now, if I know that my company has intentionally misrepresented facts to an interviewee. And that the misrepresentation will most likely result in serious damage to the new hire if he accepts the job. I would ethically feel compelled to make every reasonable attempt to warn him warn him.
Now certainly I would hardly expect these conditions to be an everyday occurrence. Nor would a presume that an employee warning a potential hire not to take the job is an everyday occurrence.
I would strain my imagination to create a scenario more than a handful of scenario's at best where being ethical would require sitting back and not attmpting to prevent an innocent from being harmed by intentional misrepresentation of the facts when I could probably help the innocent individual avoid that harm by simply warning them.
Admin
You know, I can actually relate to the CEO's statement, and can understand where he's coming from:
"The people in this company who work hard everyday to accomplish their jobs do not need the distraction of the bitchers that unfortunately every company has eventually."
I've been in a position where I had to put up with a guy's incessant complaining - and even though he was right half the time - his constant whining to me wasn't going to improve the situation. What a downer. HOWEVER, the end of the WTF clinches it all...
"after a series of pay cuts, mandatory overtime, and benefits slashing,.."
I mean, what does the CEO expect? Saying it's not a good time to join the company is a pretty accurate statement in light of the above facts. You don't have to be a whiner to say such a thing. Besides, the CEO doesn't know what actually was said. Information that is passed on by a 2nd or 3rd party is bound to be inaccurate, and this guy made a fool out of himself because of it. A CEO should have better leadership qualities than this guy - a bit wiser with regards to human nature, and keep his emotions more in check. I think the board of directors should consider firing the CEO! (if it's a public company)
Admin
Isn't agile-team-oriented waterfall-centric an oxymoron?
Admin
The only correct answer to that question is "I can't decide that for you". This would be the case even if you weren't employed by the company. The decision to take a job (or not) belongs to the prospect; it is too big to be delegated.
Just because someone asks the wrong question doesn't mean you should give the wrong answer. It's not 1 or 0; it's 1, 0, or NULL.
I have not once suggested that the employee should have lied.
Admin
Attempting to be "open minded" about what constitutes ethical behavior results in discussing something other than ethics.
Of course, it is true (as I've already acknowleged) that my original statement made too many assumptions. I have corrected for that error, and it's time to move on now. I stand by my revised statement.
Luckily, standards for professional ethics are not a matter of opinion.
Ivory tower? Nope, sorry; I've worked at a small company with more management problems than you can shake a stick at, and more recnetly at a Fortune 500 company. My views are in fact grounded in reality. We're not here to discuss my qualification, though; if you think I'm not credible, quit debating me.
Note the emphasis I added to my above quote. Your situations may be real, and I never disputed that; but they aren't the situation we're talking about. The stretch isn't that these scenarios could occur. The stretch is trying to compare this WTF to those scenarios. Moreover, to take the information given in this WTF and transform it into your scenarios shows that you aren't willing to discuss the case at hand, because you have an ax to grind elsewhere.
Hiring into a work environment you don't like isn't fraud. Fraud is a fairly specific legal term.
I didn't miss your point, but it appears you've missed mine. All the fraud, Ken Lay, hazardous work environment, etc. scenarios you're throwing around are irrelevant and sensationalistic. This is my last comment on material of that sort.
Oh, and the ethical point you keep avoiding: All other obligations aside, under no circumstance would it be correct for an employee to tell a prospect "You should not take this job." There is a huge difference between providing factual information or corrections vs. telling the candidate how to interpret the information he's been given.
Admin
A lie of ommission is the worse kind of lie.
Admin
Wow, what an astonishingly stupid statement. Well done.
Admin
Image that you are interviewing with a company, IniTech. You speak with a manager, executive, ceo, whatever. The company looks great. You really need a good, stable job because your wife just had a baby girl. This seems like a great job -- the ceo was a most excellent talker and made it sound like this company is going to make every employee a millionaire.
As you are in the elevator leaving the interview, you ask a current employee there, Bob, what he thinks of the company. Bob hesitates and then replys, "I can't say anything bad about it."
So you turn down a descent job with CyberTech to work for IniTech. The CyberTech job was alright; it paid well and was stable, but it's no IniTech, and after all, you want the best for your family.
Two weeks after you accept the job, you see the writing on the wall. Half the employees have been fired or have quite. The ceo is a raving lunatic. The company is on the brink of bankruptcy. There is a delay in issuing paychecks due to "technical difficulties." You call up CyberTech, but they have already filled the position you turned down.
Your wife calls you up and tells you that little Jenny is very sick. You go to your bosses office and asks if you can get a cash advance on the late paycheck because you need to pay some medical expenses and it's another two weeks before your health benefits kick in. Your boss tells you that he has bad news; your services are no longer required and the company is scaling back.
As you enter the elevator to leave the company, you see Bob. You ask, "Bob, why did you tell me that you could not say anything bad about this company?" Bob replies, "it would be unethical for me to say anything bad about a company I work for." You punch Bob and yell, "btch! My baby daughter is dying and I can afford the medical bills to save her life because you think it's unethical to warn people about bad companies!"
There has been a lot of talk about the employee being unethical. What people are forgetting is that when a company loses an employee or a prospective employee, it’s not big deal. Even small companies have resources much greater than individuals. However, when a person loses his job, it’s a very big deal. It affects his career, his family, his financial and medical health, and it’s a hell of a lot more difficult for the individual to recover than it is for the company.
People have a higher ethical responsibility to the other people in their industry than they do for a company. The employee was right to warn the prospect about the problems. Imagine the harm the prospect could have endured had he actually taken the job and turned down others. Imagine being that prospect. Wouldn’t you want to know the truth?
Admin
Admin
Wow, what an astonishingly stupid statement. Well done.
How e
Admin
How exactly is this a stupid statement. It sounds quite true to me and you have not offered any reasons why it is not. Are you going for proof by intimidation?
Admin
You forgot the part where you find out that the CEO was the one poisioning the daughter all along, and the wife dies from an airplane landing on her head, which was coincidentally flown by the Bob's alcoholic satanistic step-brother.
Admin
Wow, you've seen the sequel already?
Admin
Seriously?
Intimidation? WTF? Stay on the track, Casey Jones.
Admin
Silly rabbit, it's pronounced "SQL"
Admin
If it's obvious, than it's easy to prove. Actively spreading misinformation is not necessarily worse than withholding critical information. What matters is the consequences. Many politicians have caused great harm through lies of ommissions. Witnesses have comdemned innocents to long prision terms by withholding truth. That's why the oath is "to tell the truth, the WHOLE truth, and nothing but the true." Recently in California, jury members said that they were decieved by the judge in a marajuanna case because he refuse to let the defense inform the jury that prescribing medical marajuanna is legal in the state of California. Whether or not you agree with the legality of marajuanna is irrelavent (I'm not for it either). The point is the jury reached a guilty verdict and immediately regretted doing so once they found out the truth. Perhaps you remember this highly publicized case being on t.v. Unfortunately, in our society crap like this happens all the time. You seem to be missing that point.
Admin
If you live in a decent country, your daughter gets proper medical treatment no matter how poor you are.
While I agree that's it's not a big deal for the company to lose a prospective employee, the same cannot be said in all cases about losing a long-time employee. Of course it's a WTF on the side of the company if they depend so much on a single mortal that losing him means big problems, but such situations happen - especially in IT.
BTW: unless you are very desperate, chosing the wrong job (and therefore quitting within the first month) should not be a big deal for you, eighter.
Admin
You're right. I have no idea what point you are trying to make with your rambling, tangential example.
Sure, a lie of omission is bad. Sure, some situations have ended up worst because of a lie of omission. But the blanket statement "A lie of ommission is the worse kind of lie" is absurd.
If you withhold info that you would have some morally obligation to disclose, it is bad. However, if you go out of your way to make a false statement, it's worse. This is a pretty simple concept, that is widely accepted as part of the basis for human morality.
And I find it abso-fooking-lutely hilarious that I'm being criticized for not providing reasons upfront to support my statement, when my statement was a direct response to such a blanketly unsupported statement (but "it sounds quite true to me" is considered a valid reason, heh).
Admin
> You're right. I have no idea what point you are trying to make with your rambling, tangential example.
Wow, I've never been both flattered and insulted at the same time. You aren't, by any chance, Dr. McKay from Atlantis?
> But the blanket statement "A lie of ommission is the worse kind of lie" is absurd.
Any statement is absurd if you don't understand it. The "a lie of ommission is the worse kind of lie" statement was intended as a play on a well-know quote, "a half truth is the worst kind of lie". Sorry if this wasn't clear.
> criticized for not providing reasons upfront
I did not intend this to be criticism, but rather an honest request to discuss the issue rationally rather than aggressively. Too often people assume that the person who yells loudest wins the argument. I believe this is a bad philosophy that ultimately does more harm than we realize.
I do not have a problem with someone proposing an idea without immediately justifying the idea. After all, such proposals generate useful and interesting discussion. When asked for justificiation, the proposer can then go into details. I did not originally, because I did not think the idea would have been so strongly rejected. However, if one does reject an idea, then one is asserting rather than proposing a statement. At that point, the rejector should give the specific reasons why the idea should be rejected, clarified, or modified. This can be done politely without white-washing the issue or weakening the rejector's position. Sarcasm is generally not a strong counterargument, and the rejector should give the proposer the benefit of a doubt that the proposer is well-intentioned unless it is clear from the prososal that he is not.
Admin
Once again, you have missed the point. When I refer to "open minded" I'm not talking about the definition of ethical behavior, but to the number and type of possible details which could create mitigating circumstances in a scenario that has precious little detail.
I also stand by my statement.
Professional standards like laws are subject to some interpretation and opinion. This is why we constantly are seeing judicial rulings over the meaning and interpretation of laws. Generally professional standards are no more detailed than laws. Still I will agree that there is a very limited area of opinion that falls within the general and often legal interpretation of Professional Standards.
The set of professional standards for licensed engineers in the state of Texas, which is also a law in Texas, is a good example of the importance that is placed on the welfare of the general public by the standards.
Here is a link to a pdf document of the complete set of standards: http://www.tbpe.state.tx.us/downloads/law_rules306.pdf.
<FONT size=2>From this document:
§137.55 Engineers Shall Protect the Public
</FONT><FONT face="Times New Roman,Times New Roman" size=1><FONT size=2>(a) Engineers shall be entrusted to protect the health, safety, property, and welfare of the public in the practice of their profession. The public as used in this section and other rules is defined as any individual(s), client(s), business or public entities, or any member of the </FONT></FONT><FONT face="Times New Roman,Times New Roman"><FONT size=2>general population whose normal course of life might reasonably include an interaction of any sort with the engineering work of the license holder. </FONT></FONT>
<FONT face="Times New Roman,Times New Roman"><FONT size=2>...</FONT></FONT>
<FONT face="Times New Roman,Times New Roman"><FONT size=2><FONT size=2>(c) Engineers shall first notify involved parties of any engineering decisions or practices that might endanger the health, safety, property or welfare of the public. When, in an engineer’s judgment, any risk to the public remains unresolved, that engineer shall report any fraud, gross negligence, incompetence, misconduct, unethical or illegal conduct to the Board or to proper civil or criminal authorities.
...
<FONT size=2>§137.57 Engineers Shall be Objective and Truthful
</FONT><FONT face="Times New Roman,Times New Roman" size=1><FONT size=2>(a) Engineers shall issue statements only in an objective and truthful manner. Engineers should strive to make affected parties aware of the engineers’ professional concerns regarding particular actions or projects, and of the consequences of engineering decisions or judgments that are overruled or disregarded. </FONT>
<FONT size=2>(b) The issuance of oral or written assertions in the practice of engineering which are fraudulent, deceitful, or misleading or on which in any manner whatsoever tend to create a misleading impression constitutes misconduct. </FONT>
<FONT size=2>...</FONT>
<FONT size=2>§137.61 Engineers Shall Maintain Confidentiality of Clients
</FONT><FONT face="Times New Roman,Times New Roman" size=2>(a) The engineer may reveal confidences and private information only with a fully informed client’s or employer’s consent, or when required by law or court order; or when those confidences, if left undisclosed, would constitute a threat to the health, safety or welfare of the public.
</FONT></FONT></FONT></FONT></FONT>Now while I can certainly see how other might not interpret this code of code exactly as I do, I do not see how any reasonable person could not see the possibility of interpreting it to mean that the engineer would not have the responsiblity to make know to an interview candidate that there welfare could or would be damaged by accepting a position with the engineer's employer. This is opinion of the engineer based on fact. It may be, I know my employers are planning on breaking the state building codes on the project that you are interviewing for. Based on that, I would recommend that you don't quit your present employee and lose that source of income, thus affecting your financial welfare, and certainly not take a position where the company is planning to place evidence to incriminate you if the violations are discovered which would affect not only your financial welfare but your freedom. Or the engineer could simply state that the company was only planning on employing the new hire for 3 months and then firing him and attempting to deny him unemployment benefits when they do. There are many potential events which involve fraud, of the mirepresentation of facts to the interviewee which would likely affect the welfare of the interviewee.
Now if you know of a widely accepted code of professional conduct that contradicts this, please by all means post a reference. But I haven't heard of any.
Then perhaps I mispoke about the ivory tower, but having worked at 2 companies is not a great breadth of experience. I worked for or with dozens of companies including several fortune 500 companies as well as several private companies both large and small. I've worked with low level imployees to directly with C level management and everywhere in between. I worked over a very broad field of industries including transportation, financial, insurance, telecom, defense, government, hospitality, retail and manufacturing. I'm not saying that my experience better qualifies me as compared to you, but it does provide for the possibility of being exposed to a diverse set of experiences as relating to corporate cultures.
I find you credible in reguards that I feel that you speak from what you believe and the facts as you know and interpret them. But I still disagree with a few key points and a several interpretations.
The WTF does not present enough detail to definitively say whether my scenarios would or would not apply. In fact the WTF is incredibly open ended and only bounded by a few loosely descriptive conditions.
And I have no axe to grind, those companies have ceased to exist or those individuals have reaped what they sowed. I gained some valuable, if somewhat painful at times experience. I would however feel a ethical obligation to warn people away from situations like those if I knew in advance to the person's accepting a postion of that their welfare could and probably would be adversely impacted and this had been misrepresented to them by their potential employer. Whether or not I worked for that employer would have no impact on how I felt. An employer gives up any rigtht to confidentiality to it's employee's when it knowingly misrepresents facts to indanger an innocent individual. And I see nothing unethical in giving my opinion especially when asked which may or may not have been the case with the WTF.
fraud is has a definition outside of a legal context. The legal context involves the ability to prove it in a court of law. Fraud can still be committed and you can know that it has been committed without being able to prove it in a court of law. Fraud needs 3 things to happen. 1st a fact must be misrepresented. 2nd the misrepresentation must be intentional. 3rd the misrepresentation must cause damage to a party other than the one who intentionally misrepresented. You're right in this has nothing to do with just hiring into a work environment you don't like. Although you probably wouldn't like a work environment that was causing you damage and which had been intentionally misrepresented to you.
The situations are relevant as in they are all examples of abiding by the principal of protecting public welfare as described in section 137.55 paragraph a of the Texas code of ethical standards for licensed Engineers.
This is not true. In several cases, including the Texas engineering ethical code, it is required that an individual issue a professional opinion which must be based on fact. That is vastly different than being fact. I am familar with no ethical code which would prohibit offering the opinion of not taking a job when you have knowledge that the job would in your opinion endanger the individual to whom the advice was being offered especially if the advice was solicited. Generally I would expect the advice to be followed or preceeded by facts supporting the opinion, but not necessarily so in all cases.
Admin
I've seen fellow patrons in a restaurant get cold soup or bad service at the same time I did. When they threw a screaming fit, were abusive or engaged in some other poor behavior I might have understood their motivation but that doesn't come close to making it okay.
We don't know exactly what happened in that elevator (if anything, given that it's on the 3rd station in its game of employment telephone) but we know how a CEO responded to the news of it and - most importantly - how he spoke to EVERY employee in his email.
Admin
In principle you are correct. In practice, you are not. The IT industry is extremely competitive. It looks very bad if you are at a job for only one month. It also looks bad if you have a one month gap on your resume. There is risk associated with accepting one job over another or quiting your cuirrent job to accept another. This risk is real, and so are it's consequencies. Perhaps young professionals are less aware or sensitive to this risk, but it becomes very important when you settle down, have kids and/or a mortgage. As you get older, you will find that you have to which risks you take more carefully then you did when you were 20.
I suppose in a "decent" country, even the poor would get proper medical treatment. Unfortunately, that simply does not happen in America. Even most middle class households get poor medical treatment. Compounding that problem is that in America health insurance is tied directly to employment and employer. The health care system is extremely troublesome and inaccessible to the downsized and health problems will come unexpectedly to you sometime in your life. Often younger workers overlook this fact of life until it is too late. Some say that the youths still erronously believe they are invincilbe. This illusion goes away when you hit 30. This is why knowing the true nature of a company is important.
Admin
So if someone asks me if I enjoy working for my company and I decline to answer.... didn't I just implicitly tell him that it sucks? There is no "1, 0 or NULL" - in this case, NULL leads to a presupposition of 0... It's human nature.
Admin
Really? My expericences, here in Austria, are very different. BTW, I'm 36. Of course, the problem with kids and/or mortgage is that you have to ask your prospective employer for a lot of money.
Well, at least you live in the most productive society, so if you die because of medical treatment being unavailable, it's for a good cause.
Admin
"Do you enjoy your job?" is not the question we were talking about; it would be nice if we could maintain some level of coherency in the discussion... but ok:
1) Saying that I personally am not enjoying my job is not nearly as big an ethical problem as saying "you should not take a job here"
2) If the person reads an answer into a non-answer, that's not the fault of the person giving the non-answer.