Slashdot Mirror
A Corporate Code of Ethics?
Ethically Challenged asks: "Under the guise of recent legislation everyone at the publicly traded software company I work for is being asked to sign a 'Code of Business Conduct and Ethics'. In part, we have to swear to the following: we should not use company resources for any non-business purposes (I probably can't even write this); we must disclose to the CFO any relative that works for a customer, competitor or vendor; and, we are required to narc on coworkers who we suspect violate the code in any way. Are developers at other companies being asked to do this? Does it bother anyone that lowly workers like me are being asked to sign these things because executives are too immoral to behave themselves? Isn't all of this a colossal waste of time since most of it is common sense and it's pretty clear that the bad guys will ignore it anyway?" Most of this stuff sounds like the boilerplate protections most companies put in their employee agreements in the first place. Since you generally have to sign such agreements before you get your first paycheck, this new initiative seems rather redundant to me. Can someone more clued-in explain the justification behind this one?
Sometimes you see companies doing this in order to make the rules more strict or to communicate to the employees that you are about to enforce them.
For example, we once had to sign a similar agreement about patents we held or had been granted at a previous job--even though we had already signed something similar when we came to work in the first place. (We were not granted any stock options unless we signed the new agreement.) The idea was that my current company wanted to ensure that their list was valid so that they would be justified in defending their own patents, or going after any that employees were granted during employment there.
It's just a lot easier to enforce an existing rule after you remind everyone that the rule is in place. That's why you hear around the holidays that the highway patrol will be cracking down on [insert your favorite violation, most often seat belt wearing where I'm from]. The law is already in place, and it is probably *possible* to enforce, but it is *easier* to enforce and subsequently prosecute if no one has an excuse of being ignorant of the law.
You're being asked to do this so your company can say that they adhere to a code of ethics. They think that having one means they're following one, and, in the eyes of many, that's true. It's form over substance. Companies with ethics policies appear to be ethical.
If you sign it, keep a copy of it for yourself.
The only reason they are doing this is to "show" the world or the investors, "we are commited to integrity, and will not tolerate blah blah blah" This will more than likely be a marketing ploy, or if something big does happen maybe they can place the blame on everyone and not just the top honchos.
Useless sig.
Would anyone EVER start any kind of busisness, if when it failed, or had an accident, they could be sued barefoot and out of thier own house? With corporations, there is less personal risk involved. If they did away with corporations, something else identical with a different name would pop up, or the entire worlds economy would die in about a day.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
This post is exactly why these companies are making people sign agreements that seem to simply restate common sense stuff that "everybody" knows.
The fact is that, what is common sense to you may not be common sense to the goober in the next cube. All too often this is the case, people seem clueless at the most common sense matters, as I stare at them in amazement. How could anyone be so stupid to not know that already? I frequently ask.
But, then there is the next level, where they do know the common sense ethic and they have even been formally informed of the policy and the punishment for breaking that policy, yet they justify their illicit actions with some form of glib nonsense that they feel makes it perfectly acceptable. As is so eloquently stated in the poster's final comment: I should not be surfing slashdot during work hours, but since they cut my pay by I say f****'em! I'm taking it out in bandwidth.
The agreement won't be regarded as a waste of time to them, when they fire you for breaking the company's policy, which you explicitly agreed to and signed.
What happened? Did they fire you? I've always just signed the damned things and tried as best I could to live up to the agreement.
I still think Google put it best: Don't be evil.
When violence rules the world outside / And the headlines make me want to cry / It's not the time to just keep quiet