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Ethics In Computer Consulting
"This is not an uncommon occurrence. Other consultancy firms seem to regularly help customers make decisions that are in the best interest of the consultancy and not of the client. If a sales person manages to convince a company that their product is the latest and greatest and it turns out to be useless software that crashes regularly then that is the sign of either a good salesman or a bad manager. Caveat Emptor.
Consultants are are supposed to provide a service, not sell a product. I know that the consultant is the product and there may be other products that the consultant uses that are beneficial to the client but that are not what the consultants purpose. The consultant (and this includes contractors) is hired by the company on the assumption that they will perform their duties to the benefit of the company as would any other staff member.
Is it ethically correct for me as a consultant to knowingly make decisions for the company that will increase the length or value of my contract even though I know it is not in their best interests? Obviously the answer is no.
I would hate to think that I am the exception to the rule but people in consulting with ethics appear to be few and far between. Where is the code of ethics for computing consultants and contractors? I have my own skeleton code of ethics but feel that it is time to put together a real one that could be used by consultants and contractors around the world. We are supposedly professionals and other professionals such as doctors and lawyers have one. Why not us?"
In a related question, E TiE asks: "What are good books for computer ethics and history?" Would anyone out there like to pass him a few ISBNs?
Dear RMS,
I sent you two mails back in Autumn and you still haven't replied, I guess there was a problem with the mail serverTruly yours,
Your biggest Fan,
This is Steve.
Dear RMS,
I wrote you an email a while back and you still haven't replied or chatted to me on IRC - I ain't mad, I just think it's fucked up that you don't answer fans. You could have at least chatted to my hacker friend from Australia man - you're his idol man, he's only 6 years old, he likes you even more than I do - he waited for you on a MUD for 6 hours on 33.6 connection, man. You know, my dog gets jealous when I talk about you 24/7Sincerely yours,
This is Steve
PS - We should be together, too!
Dear RMS,
I know you got my last two emails!! I wrote the addresses perfect and the mails didn't bounce!! So this is the WAV file I'm uploading to your FTP server!!!! I'm doing 90 on the highway....hear that in the background? That's my laptop man! I'm driving fast and the HDD is getting scratched...but that's OK...I can buy another one....you really messed up RMS...we could have been together....but now we won't....I hope you have bad dreams about it and wake up and scream about it!! Oh shit, how am I supposed to FTP this damn file, I left my cellular phone at home! Ahhhhh...I'm falling off the bridge, man....Dear Steve,
I got your emails, sorry, I was too busy pondering the latest GPL to reply. It is very important that you release everything that you think about under the new GPL thinking license. It will be beneficial to society if you do, and it will ruin society if you don't, Steve. Remember, it's not about the technical quality, only about the social implications, Steve. What's all this about us being together? That's the kind of stuff that only a BSD license user would say. That's the kind of stuff that'll make me not want us to meet. I saw a really terrible thing on the newsgroups the other day....a guy was driving alongRMS.
http://www.stallman.org
My dad owns his own business (practice, actually) and he recently hired a comptuer consultant. From day one I knew that this guy wasnt any good. He replaced the server UPS with a model 3 times as big, even though the old one was more than adequate. Also, when my dads 1 year old tape drive died, rather than RMAing it (it had a 2 year warranty), he suggested that my dad should buy a new one (even though my dad had several hundred dollars worth of tapes for the old one). It too the consultant 3 weeks (no backups in the mean time, not a good idea) to find the drive to replace it with. When I inquired as to what was taking so long, he said that IDE tape drives with capacities larger than 4GB (the server HDD is 6GB, but only 2.5GB is used) were "rare and hard to find". Finally he put in an OnStream Echo30, which has 5 times the capacity that my dad needs, and now my dad has to buy all new tapes to replace the ones he purchased a year ago! All in all, its been no fun, and when my dad had the consultant come to our house to install some software, I promptly logged out and said, "Give me the disks, Ill install it myself" due to a previous instance with the consultant installing spyware!
Mark Duell in southern California, looking for a good comptuer consultant
Mark Duell
I get almost all of my new business from referrals. Being honest with my clients pays off directly in the form of new business
Besides, happy clients will utilize my services over and over.
That said, I have faced the temptation to do things not in the clients best interest - usually they'll ask for something they read about in a magazine and I'll have to explain why it isn't right for them. Of course, I now get called to help evaluate new technologies, so even this leads to new business
Treat your clients right and you'll never want for business again. Screw them and you'll always be struggling.
-Loopy
I'm not aware of any ethical guidelines for computing - it's mainly a case of individual corporations embracing ethical guidelines. Every engineering society that I know of has a set of ethical guidelines, however. Here's the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of BC's code of ethics and here's the IEEE code of ethics. (#s 2 and 7 would apply in this case if you were using these guidelines, #s 3,4,7, and 9 would apply from the APEG code) As far as your case go, the particulars are very important to determining whether you are ethically bound to speaking out.
I don't think this necessarily needs to be a profits vs. ethics dichotomy. Obviously a consultant that looks to squeeze every last dime out of its customers will make more money in the short term, but its customers will suffer in the long term as a result. Especially now that the dot-com bubble has burst and investors are demanding real profits, a successful company needs to trim the fat -- whether that means laying off extraneous employees or firing an exploitative consulting firm. Companies that employ these swindlers won't be able to compete with those who get honest consulting advice. Ultimately, they'll fold, taking the reputations of the "unethical" consulting firms with them. So you can be ethical and make $$$, too.
Cheers,
IT
Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
I have seen good consultants, I have seen bad consultants. I have seen good and bad people in all walks of life. Unlike many other jobs out there, computer programming and computer science is one where ethics are treated with importance during the learning process. I know that every computer science class I have taken has talked at one time or another about the ethics of managing systems, of writing programs, of handling information. I know there are plenty of college ethics classes available at most colleges that teach computer-related fields. The information and discussion is out there, and I would hope that any computer anything worth his or her salt would have taken a few of them.
Perhaps we need a certifying organization like many other industries out there? Not Microsoft-certified, not being called a Realtor (tm), and certainly nothing like TRUSTe, but maybe some kind of board that would allow people to be certified members in good standing, and then based on complaints about them and recommendations and positive comments made, they could keep or lose their membership. It would be an online system, of course, with a small fee, and then potential employers would be able to check feedback profiles.
Just an idea, it would probably take a lot more thought to work out all the details.
consultant --> Techie Hooker
consulting firm --> the Pimp!
its a comparison that i keep hearing... and hey its funny, so dont start a flame. Hell when i was in college i was pimped out many a times to do troubleshooting (low class techie hooker;)
what do you ppl. think ? ? ?
Non-Deterministic Finite Automata
Rather, performing consulting work ethically is essential to your survival and long-term success.
The rationale of all your consulting work is to help your clients succeed: "Help your customer succeed, and you will share in their success!" is one of my email heading tags.
You don't help your clients well by falling into conflict-of-interest situations, overcharging for your services, or failing to solve their problems in the most efficient ways.
Individual consultants (and even large consulting firms) that forget or overlook this basic business truth eventually see their jobs dwindle, customer base diminish, etc.
When you see ethical lapses, report them (either within your firm, or directly to your client if you're independent). Your views will be valued, even if your firm or client takes no immediate action, simply because you were honest with them.
Then again, there are a lot of grey areas and your assessments should be based upon objective facts, rather than personal preferences. Be careful - don't accuse lightly.
This is an important topic. I'll be interested to see what others have to say about it. However, as a person who "resigned" from a Big-5 firm because I refused to lie to a big client, I've lived this. (And yes, I have a good job with a better firm now, partly because I observed consulting ethics.)
Case study in point, I work for a small company
They decided is was high time to get a real network connection (fractional T1 512KB data, 512Kb voice). They where worried about script kiddies and the likes so they said we have to have a firewall of some sort. Smart move, the provider recommended this consulting firm out of Salem NH.
They quote, I say it's not gonna work, our programming coop agrees. We get 4 different quotes from 4 different vendors, all cost less and I like the technologies (netscreen, sonic wall, 24/7 monitoring services, Cisco's ect...).
I get over ruled, because this other company was recommended by our ISP...
They wipe out our MRP system for the month of December, Keep us from shipping product for the better part of the month. Finally they get the system installed, wipe out email for one of our two subnets, still not resolved, keep pointing fingers at everyone as to why things aren't working, first the ISP, then the Bay Network stacks that connect the two networks, then our computers, ect. They go way over budget, a firewall that was supposed to cost $10,000 has now cost us $30,000. And to top it off the proxy server blue screens every 24 to 36 hours...
Solution I blow up at the one of the VP's so bad on friday that he closes his door and we get into a shouting match. I doubt I will get a favorable review this year, but we are heaving that Windows 2000 Server Proxy server running otis proxy software into the dumpster and reconfiguring the Cisco 2611 it was behind to properly route data from the two subnets to the outside world and act as a firewall. Then placing Zone Alarm on the individual user machines as a second layer Firewall.
Who will reconfigure the Cisco, probally the same consultants...
You can't win, I've had plenty of computer consultants leave really bad tastes in my mouth.
TastesLikeHerringFlavoredChicken
TastesLikeHerringFlavoredChicken
Of course that doesn't mean you can't recommend higher quality products, that fit within what they're trying to do, which may incidentially cost more (but fail less, thus costing less on the long run), but keep in mind that you're working for *them*, they've hired you to work for them. People who tend to screw over their employers, often find them selves without a job.
Stupid is as stupid dies.
But as a result of many horror stories from my own experience and that of my friends, I decided to stop dealing with them and I explain why publicly in Important Note to Recruiters and Contract Agencies.
To make it easier for other consultants to not have to deal with recruiters, I wrote Market Yourself - Tips for High-Tech Consultants.
To directly address the question, though, I think ethics are of the highest importance in the work of a consultant, and are probably the most important guide for you to follow, more important than writing good code. You at least have the hope of debugging bad code.
The question goes both ways though, clients are occassionally unethical and many clients who wouldn't think of screwing you if you were a full-time employee would be happy to short you for weeks of pay earned as a consultant.
You have to protect yourself, start early by finding a good attorney before taking on work - certainly before trouble starts - and have your attorney review all your contracts before you sign them.
Also trust in your feelings and don't do business with someone you feel is not ethical. It's just not worth the heartache.
Michael D. Crawford
GoingWare Inc
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
I am a computer consultant for a small firm who regulary partners with the big guys. Often Anderson, Deloitte, E&Y will subcontract to us. Time after time I see these companies bringing people into the project with little and no experience. These companies expect their consultants to learn of the job, while billing several hunderd dollars an hour. To me this is one of the bigger problems in the world of consulting. On top of that it seems like companies use the big 5 merely because of thier size. Why is this? What will it take for company management to realize that bigger is not always better? My experience has shown me that the better consultants go off on their own. Bottom line: Just like politicians the companies that are the most powerful, are usually the most unethical
This touches on matters both of ethics and of engineering judgement.
You say, I should just write it to spec, but in practice I often don't have that detailed of a spec. In my work I write software on contract (rather than install systems or set up networks), usually for software publishers and sometimes for websites.
I frequently do ports or complete rewrites to a new OS, and it is common for my spec to consist of nothing more than a working Windows version of a program and a request to make it work "just like it" on the Mac.
The problem is things are done differently on the Mac than on Windows, both internally in the code we write and what the user expects. I feel it is important to give a client a product that will make their Mac users happy, even when the client is a Windows user/developer, and either doesn't understand the Mac or doesn't agree with it.
A more serious question is when the client is asking for shoddy work. I make it clear to my clients that I do high quality work, and they shouldn't come to me if they want crappy, cheap software. But sometimes that's exactly what they want, in part because they want to cut development costs and also because they believe (I feel mistakenly) that they will reduce their time to market by sacrificing sound engineering principles.
One thing I have started to do is to redesign my website to emphasize my ideals of quality work, as opposed to the spam I get that advertised offshore software development for $25/hour or less. Yes, this likely scares off some potential clients but they're probably the ones that would give me a pain in the backside anyway.
I do try to involve the client in the decisions. The problem is that they are often not technically competent to help me make the judgement, and their arguments make this resoundingly clear. So very often I just go off and do what I think is in my client's best interests even if I know they disagree with it.
Michael D. Crawford
GoingWare Inc
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
Once upon a time there was a shepherd tending his sheep at the edge of a country road. A brand new Jeep Grand Cherokee screeches to a halt next to him. The driver, a young man dressed in a Brioni suit, Cerrutti shoes, Ray-Ban glasses, and Jovial Swiss wrist watch, gets out and asks the shepherd: "If I guess how many sheep you have, will you give me one of them?" The shepherd looks at the young man, then looks at the sprawling field of sheep and says: "Okay." The young man parks the SUV, connects his notebook and wireless modem, enters a NASA site, scans the ground using his GPS, opens a database and 60 Excel tables filled with algorithms, then prints a 150 page report on his high tech mini printer. He then turns to the shepherd and says: "You have exactly 1,586 sheep here." The shepherd answers: "That's correct, you can have your sheep." The young man takes one of the animals and puts it in the back of his vehicle. The shepherd looks at him and asks: "Now, if I guess your profession, will you pay me back in kind?" The young man answers: "Sure." The shepherd says: "You are a consultant." "Exactly! How did you know," asks the young man? Very simple, answers the shepherd. "First, you came here without being called. Second, you charged me a fee to tell me something I already knew. Third, you do not understand anything about my business and I'd really like to have my dog back."
"Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far
If you think this bad, check out this letter to Iambe. Our industry has its rotten spots alright.
--
Remove the rocks to send email
On the whole, I find that I prefer Slashdot posts to twitter ones because I don't get limited to 140 chars before
> The customers are stupid. If you weren't there, they'd be doing something even worse
> with their money and time.
:::boggle:::
Let's cut thru all of the crap & ask a few simple questions:
1) Do you want to a job that you can point to in the future with pride?
2) Do you care that you did the right thing, & gave your customers what they needed, & not some placebo buzzword that they thought they wanted?
I've been in the computer business for about five years. Not long enough to be an expert, but I think I know a few things. And it pains me to know that the average person trusts a used car salesman more than a software salesman. (And this is not a slam against Microsoft: CA & Oracle make MS look like the old buddy you'd trust your girlfriend with if you were out of the country for 3 years.)
Or to put it another way: I've dealt with a few plumbers -- guys who might have a high school education & make a living from the knowledge gained from two weeks of experience -- & without an exception they show more social skills & more trustibility than the average computer geek.
In a nutshell, the whole computer industry stinks. People are making millions thru ripping off the end user. Yes, part of the reason is due to cluelessness on behalf of the customer. But instead of selling them patent medicines & nostrums, shouldn't we make an effort to educate them & make them better consumers?
Or is UCITA our moral compass?
BTW, you're not the same Ben Schumin who is responsible for http://ben-schumin.simplenet.com/ are you? The maturity is simular.
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
His son nods. "Yes Dad, I'll do my best to live up to your standards."
"Son", his father continues, "Suppose a customer comes in. She buys $5 worth of goods, says 'I only have a fifty' and hands over the money. So you give her change, and she leaves the store."
"You then notice that she didn't give you a fifty, but a one hundred dollar bill. But you look up and she's already walking down the road. Now here's the ethics question:"
"Yes Dad?"
"The question is: Do you tell your business partner?"
--
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
The question of ethics does sound reasonable on the face of it, but in reality it has only the slightest relevance in the current technical, political and economic climate.
The western world runs on deals and power and money and technology, not on ethics. Ethics is given lip service occasionally, but only in the context of "if one doesn't stay roughly in the ethical/PC ballpark known and loved by Joe Six-pack then markets or politicians may suffer and that would be bad". That's the only real relevance of "ethics" in our third of the globe, ie. the relevance is minimal, and I'm sure that for many even mentioning the word ethics in such a barely ethical context is a travesty.
Consultants merely play their part in this scheme of things. Some may recommend GPL'd software for the Navy and some may recommend Microsoft, but don't look for reasons based on ethics for their decisions. The driving force may be power, money, freedom, technological competence or lack thereof, and personal or institutional politics of many different types, but not ethics. And for that matter the recommendations won't be objective either, regardless of the side of the fence on which one sits.
Whether that's good or bad is a totally different question, and not necessarily one with an obvious or simple answer. But for better or for worse, that's how our world works today.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
I found her PDF on how to Market Your Consulting Services very helpful in my own practice - and she's got a lot of tips that I don't mention on my own marketing tips page above (while I have some she doesn't mention).
I've also found that Janet has been quite helpful and responsive in answering the occasional questions I've emailed to her.
In general, I prefer the resume sites which do not require a fee for the end client to search and get meaningful contact information from. Some of these require a small but very reasonable fee from the consultant, some are supported by advertising.
You'll probably find as I do that the sites that require the client to pay a few are frequented mostly by headhunters, and they also often don't allow search engines to index them, so your clients won't find you.
Other sites I recommend are The Software Contractor's Guild and Guru.com - know any others?
Finally, read alt.computer.consultants.moderated - but be sure to read the moderated newsgroup, the unmoderated one has gone all to hell.
Michael D. Crawford
GoingWare Inc
-- Could you use my software consulting serv
There is a set of established code of ethics for computer professionals, at least for those who are members of IEEE or ACM.
IEEE Code of Ethics
ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct
ACM/IEEE Computer Society Software Engineering Code of Ethics and Professional Practice
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Oooh! What does this button do!?
almost 20 years ago I worked for awhiel asa rep for a magnificient word processor. At the time the "standard" was wordstar.
I still remeber the consultnat/sofwtare dealer I called on and showed hoi m the product, and how I could teach anyone to run it in a hour. His comment?
"Why on earth shoudl I sell soemthing easy to use when I get paid $60.00 an hour to teach my customers WordStar???"