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When Ethics and IT Collide
jcatcw writes "IT workers have access to confidential data, and they can see what other employees are doing on their computers or the networks. This can put a good worker in a bad predicament. Bryan, the IT director for the U.S. division of German company, discovered an employee using a company computer to view pornography of Asian women and of children. He reported it but the company ignored it. Subsequently the employee was promoted and moved to China to run a manufacturing plant. That was six years ago but Bryan still regrets not going to the FBI. Other IT workers admit using their admin passwords to snoop through company systems. In a Ponemon Institute poll of more than 16,000 U.S. IT practitioners, 62% said they had accessed another person's computer without permission, 50% read confidential or sensitive information without a legitimate reason, and 42% said they had knowingly violated their company's privacy, security or IT policies. But in the absence of a professional code of ethics, companies struggle to keep corporate policies up to date."
The ACM has done at least one thing right:
http://www.acm.org/about/code-of-ethics
1) Not reporting something illegal when discovered in the normal course of business, i.e. whistleblowing. Fear for job safety or simple moral cowardice?
2) Actively doing things that the employee knows are illegal/immoral/unethical. Come on - does a "profession" really need a code of ethics to tell its members not to seek information to which they are not entitled? Maybe they need to reevaluate calling themselves "professionals".
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
You see the logs of some guy looking a kiddie porn and you report it to your HR department.
Where's the ethical dilemma?
If HR does nothing about it, you report it to the FBI.
Where's the ethical dilemma?
And ethical dilemma would be where there were two ethically valid choices with different consequences. If you have two kids and they're both drowning, which one do you save first?
There is a professional organization, of which I happen to be a member, Called "LOPSA"- "League of Professional System Administrators".
The code of ethics is found here:
http://lopsa.org/CodeOfEthics
While my IT department does not require membership in this organization, these rules of ethics are *posted* and violations of those rules are a fireable offense!
Another consultant who stuck it out.
"We are the Priests, of the Temples of Syrinx..."
A poll? What's the point of that???
5% of us would vote randomly
6% will definitely be stuffing the ballot box
7% Might be stuffing the ballot box
Or worse yet:
17% will choose the Cowboy Neal option
Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, For you are crunchy and go well with ketchup.
I have an ethics problem every time I get a paycheck for 40 hours of work when I actually worked 60.
Using company systems for your own needs? heck, the company is alreaady getting 40 grand worth of free overtime. Is that ethical?
Never mind legal, is is ETHICAL?
I think these numbers are bogus.
I know of people instantly fired for doing such things. There is an unwritten IT code and the vast majority of IT people I have known or ever come in contact with follow it.
If it was like the PMP, CMA, CPA or other professional certifications/licensure that industry requires for certain jobs, then code of ethics violations would mean loss of certifications/licensure. That would weed out all those unethical assholes in IT.
In God we trust, all others require data.
When I was sysadmin for a small company years ago, I discovered shortly after installing ProxyServer in our Exchange machine that the boss (or someone???) had been surfing porn on his machine. I was delicate, mentioning in a private moment that we (sysops) could see exactly what sites had been visited, on which machine, and who was logged in at the time. We never spoke of it again. I later left the company voluntarily, under no duress.
Probably a million stories similar to mine...
Violating company policies and snooping is one thing, but employees do not own their computers and staff administering machines do not need permission to access systems.
If you have an ethics issue with your current job, you should quit, and find a new job. The last thing you should ever want is to be thought of as a person who will compromise his principles for money.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
- morally wrong (going against your own personal conscience)
- legally wrong (going against codified law)or
- sinful (going against your religious beliefs)
Watching child pornography is illegal in all relevant legal systems, and not reporting someone to the authorities could be considered a crime of omission or obstruction of justice. It might be sinful, depending on your religion. It is probably considered morally wrong by the majority of people.The problem I see with the dilemma posed by the article is that he tries to conflate these areas and to get a mental map that divides things neatly into The Right Thing(TM) and The Wrong Thing(TM). I think this approach vastly over-simplifies things; take file-sharing, for instance: many instances are illegal since they break copyright law. Yet I wouldn't think it is immoral, since the laws appear to be unjustly slanted against consumers. I couldn't say how religions see the issue (the closest I could find was a quote from the Bible: "go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor" which seems to speak out against hoarding property), so I won't make a qualified judgement on that.
But it should be clear that this is a complex issue, and people trying to frame it in terms of "right" and "wrong" without specifying the framework they're using makes a good answer almost impossible.
-- Language is a virus from outer space.
Sure, I have unmitigated access to everything that comes, goes, or happens in my company. And if I don't have access to some particular facet of the boss's operation it's pretty trivial to give myself access. But do I snoop through other employees' email or documents or browsing records or whatever? No. But, admittedly, not because of any particular integrity or high moral standards on my part.
I just don't care. Yeah, it might be nice to intercept early the memo that says I'm going to get canned tomorrow (or whatever) but I have more than enough things on my plate and no time, motivation, or incentive to play Secret Squirrel with other people's stuff. I have news for you: 99.9999% of what happens on a business network is mind numbingly boring. Memos. Transmittals. Materials lists. Spreadsheets. Schedules. Business correspondence so packed with legalese and ass-kissing and meaningless paradigm shifting buzzword bullshit it makes my brain hurt just thinking about it.
If I want to abuse my authority and misappropriate company time and network access, it's easier and less mind-frazzling to just delegate the job to somebody else and go read Slashdot.
That's where you are incorrect. There was never any privacy when someone was using their "work" computer for "personal" use. If you think you have any privacy using a computer provided by your employer, using your employer's resources to access the porn, you are mistaken. Courts have held numerous times employers own the equipment and have the right to view (i.e., spy) on your usage.
There was no privacy here, therefore no ethical issue.
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IT work outside of the well-paid areas is a breeding ground for discontent. It's thankless, low-paid work where you have to deal with a lot of stupid people. Add on to that that people who go into IT who are ambitious, ethical and hard-working are probably going to be more attracted to the engineering side (software, hardware and network) than the grunt technician work and you have a big problem on your hands.
I have never met a person who works in IT support that I would trust with my personal PC. That's just my experience, but I have known guys who would abuse their access to people's PC to get all sorts of files they shouldn't, which is why I didn't hesitate to believe the Consumerist story about Geek Squad employees abusing their customers in that way.
You know what needs to be done? They ought to be treated like a repairman who is caught going off into a totally unrelated part of the house and rifling through personal belongings. It may not be stealing since they're just copying, but that's the closest thing that we can compare it to.
It's not uncommon to have a higher ethical obligation to provide food, for, say, a child, which takes precedence over your ethical obligation to quit rather than work unpaid overtime. If the OP is basically incompetent, he may not have any additional job choices which would allow him to fulfill the first obligation in order to satisfy the second.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
I think the problem here is that most of these sites get paid for clicks / ad-loads. So you actually are contributing to the financial welfare of the hosting site simply by looking. The result may be increased demand for such images.
I can understand the kiddie stuff. But what's wrong with asian women? Last I checked, asian women were beautiful, and there is nothing illegal about viewing them. It may be against company policy, but THAT is not worth calling the FBI over.
I know what the author was trying to get across, and there was plenty of cause to call the FBI, but lumping the asian women with children is just demeaning to the women.
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If I had mod points I'd cite this as insightful. You raise a good point. Salaried employees are paid for 40 hour work week, but average much more office time. Do those employees receive a discount (comptime?) at the end of the year? Most likely not so it is an ethical question to post to the employer.
Now, the other side to that discussion is understanding the that typical salaried employee is not *working* eight hours in the day. Even removing 10 minute breaks and lunch the average time spent actually working is only 3 to 4 hours a day. (I cannot remember the article at the moment). We talk to co-workers, surf the net, stare at the screen, but we do not (nor cannot) produce a full 8 hours of productive effort.
So, the 50 or 60 hours spent in the office may actually add up to 5 or 6 hours of productive work a day still leaving us "short" on the salaried contract of 40 hours paid time. Thus are the workers being ethical?
What is lacking is the 40 hour work week pay structure. It does not fit the information age work place found mainly in development/enginerring shops today. Since I started in my profession many many moons ago I have never understood this mentality of 9 to 5, 40 hours a week. I work on projects. SOmetimes I work better in the early morning, sometimes at night. there are days when my brain is stuff with wool, days when I cannot be stopped. Yet up until recently I would get in my car, drive to a uninspiring cubicle and attempt to think for "The Man" to justify my salary.
Thankfully these days I now work at home, adjust my schedule to fit my personal and professional needs, and still make my project dates. I have a boss who understands how to manage that situation for which I am blessed. At work they block web sites, streaming radio, and even hae a policy on headphones so like a 1984ish nightmare I am to sit and work work work till the whistle blows.
Okay, I digress, but I do feel there is an ethical issue when companies attempt to keep you "working" past 40 hours without some compensation, but we do have to understand that generally we are marking some time during that work day, it is not all production.
Good point!
Life is a great ride, the vehicle doesn't matter
This isn't specific to IT, but it happens a lot.
Most newbie Admins poke around in places they shouldn't soon after getting heightened access to the systems.
Almost anyone, in any career where they have access to sensitive information end up abusing it to some degree.
Doctors, Nurses and medical records people read the files of friends or relatives all the time, and that's certainly illegal.
Also, if you come across that kind of stuff in your routine work, you are actually required by law to report it to the police.
After 15+ years in IT, all data looks the same to me.
I can help someone adjust the font on a document and not even notice what it says.
Sorry to ask, but why simply looking at images of children porn is usually seen as a problem? I'm all for sending to jail those who make such images, those who distribute them for profit, and those who pay for them, since all of these persons are directly or indirectly harming children. But just for looking? This is silly.
Because those who look at them create a demand to produce them.
I don't know where you live, but in my country the employer has to state in advance that usage of PC equipment and internet resources can be spied upon. Otherwise viewing porn at work is not a firing offense.
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Not too many years ago I worked for a "web startup" (i.e. small company founded by Harvard MBA who smoked lots of weed, drove a VW, and was out to "save the world") as IT manager. As the market tanked, the CEO became more and more concerned for the future of the company and with good reason! We'd gone from regular upper 6 figures per month to less than half that, with three locations whittled down to essentially one and a half. Many employees left for greener pastures. When things REALLY started to go down hill, the CEO asked me to intercept any emails between current and former employees, and then "hinted" that since so many of our clients had their email hosted on our email server, couldn't I do the same with them. I know that, legally, he had the right to get access to current employee email, and any former employee whom he had granted continued use of our email system (not sure on that last bit, IANAL). But asking me to, or suggesting I should allow him to, read client emails was a final straw. While he may have the "legal right" to read employee emails, it left a very bad taste in my mouth. Suggesting I allow him to read client's emails? It was like licking a rat. At the end of the day I had to go home and see myself in the mirror, and I knew that reading other people's personal, private emails was something so abhorrent. (Rimmer: "Lister, that is my private, personal, private diary; full of my personal, private, personal things." Cat: "It's gone public.") Now all that said, at another job, myself and some other IT workers suspected one of the devs of possibly being a pedo. We didn't read his emails, we didn't pour through his computer (which we could easily have done), but we did put google to good use, and at one point we did packet sniff where he was browsing. Was I proud of that? Well, actually yes. If he HAD been looking at kiddie porn, if he HAD been a sexual predator, being a father how could I stand back and not try to do something? It turned out he wasn't a diddler, just... Really really really really creepy. It is a very fine line between "ethical" and "non-ethical", it can be very hard to judge which is which, and everyone will have their own opinions. But in the end you have to live with yourself, and certainly I'm not qualified to decide right and wrong, nor pass judgment. If I had my way, anyone who sold a poorly made curry would be strung up and boiled in oil.
Because there are already professional certifications available for IT people. Speaking from personal experience they currently make bugger all difference to fees or salaries. If you were to require such certifications then the reduction in supply of IT personnel would cause the salaries of the certified to rocket... As it has for lawyers, doctors, accountants etc.
No? Not willing to pay up? Oh well then, you can't really complain.
Deleted
I follow your logic, but I still disagree.
Privacy is a rather "slippery" thing. The U.S. Constitution never specifically guarantees anyone a "right" to privacy. Neither to any of the Constitutional amendments. It's more of an "implied" individual right, subject to interpretation. (Just being defined as a "figure in the public eye" can drastically change your ability to sue someone for publishing photos taken of you without your permission, for example.)
Ultimately, I think people only retain the amount of privacy they're willing to fight to maintain.
So yes, in the workplace it's understood that legally, when push comes to shove, the employer will prevail in the courts if they decide to snoop around on the computer assigned to you. That doesn't mean the I.T. staff should go around disrespecting people's privacy on a regular basis, just because "the law lets me do it".
The law says it's ok for me to sit on our mail server and start opening up people's mailboxes, reading the contents of all their email too. As an employee, would you really be ok with that, knowing I was doing that all the time at your business?
I know, as an I.T. admin myself, I'm constantly trying to do my job, while still respecting people's privacy (whether it's legally protected or not). To me, it absolutely comes down to "ethics". I understand that despite what the *law* says, people still feel like the company property assigned to them for their use during the workday is *generally* not subject to snooping. That's why we have logins with passwords on them, and email isn't just collectively sent out under a heading of the company's name. (The Internet connection and mail servers might be owned by your employer, but they don't really own your thoughts, put into writing, in individual emails, right?)
That would weed out all those unethical assholes in IT.
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but I can read your email...
- Asian women, men in porn
- Asian children in porn
Or, does it mean;
- generic Asian porn
- generic pictures of kids in NON porn situations like one might run across if one were looking into culture of the far east.
You can like Asian women and seek out that sort of porn without liking Asian children in porn.
There is a HUGE difference between porn at work (a common thing) and KIDDIE porn at work. One is just something you can get fired for. The other is a felony.
The phrasing in the summary seems to imply the latter is what is going on, in which case you need to check your morals at the door and adopt whatever the company says is OK. (And that seems to be that a bit o-boobies searching is fine since the HR department didn't do anything about it.)
Just because YOU don't like porn of adults, doesn't mean you need to be bugging the FBI about it. If it was real child porn YOU ALREADY COMMITTED A CRIME and acted immorally by not going to the cops with the information.
Except of course that you're wrong. Courts have upheld the right to use company phones for occasional personal use. Recently, they have ruled simillary for the web or email (I can't remember which). I also don't ever recall a court allowing a company to spy on telephone call, even though they owned the equipment.
You don't lose your rights when you enter a workplace.
Yes, there is no personal privacy for junk on corporate computers. The more interesting issue is when IT accesses machines that are limited-access. For example, take the Personnel Dept (I refuse to use the insulting term HR) and its database of employees' salaries, home addresses, background checks, etc. That info clearly is not for view by IT members, regardless of their root privs. The difference here is that an employee gives info to Personnel with the understanding that it is not for general dissemination, as opposed to the company's right to look at anything that is on the employee's desktop machine.
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"Bryan, the IT director for the U.S. division of German company, discovered an employee using a company computer to view pornography of Asian women and of children."
And how did he know this, if he wasn't LOOKING at the damned stuff himself?
1. Someone looking at adult porn is not an "ethical problem", unless you got your ethics from the bible belt.
2. Someone looking at kiddie porn isn't an "ethical problem" either - its a legal problem! Like in "against the law".
3. Not reporting it because you would have to admit you were snooping on other people - priceless AND retarded.
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"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
Come off it ... 70% of ALL porn-viewing is during working hours.
Your boss does it. Your coworkers do it. Get over it.
As long as you get your work done, who gives a shit? Better they look at pr0n than some site that advocates that "Jebus is comiong soon" and they start putting bible tracts on your keyboard ... THAT is a real invasion of a person's "space".
Kevin Smith on Prince
What you are confusing is the Adam Smith style capitalism with the Monopolist practices of modern upper managment.
Capitalism isn't war, it's more like a race. Even though you are trying to win, there must be other competetors for there to be a race. Imagine Lance Armstrong tried to have a bike race where he was the only entrant. What would be the point?
That said, reading Sun Tzu would help you play the game of "Risk", but no-one would confuse a game with a real war.
We don't live in a Democracy, but we realize that Democracy is a good idea. (I'm talking about the US's Federalism) We don't live in a truely Capitalist system, but we realize Capitalism is a good idea.
As far as dropping out, go for it. Read Don Lancaster's "Incredible Secret Money Machine" for a method of dropping out while staying in the system, read old issues of "The Mother Earth News" for descriptions of people who have truely gone off grid and "dropped out".
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
"Thus, based on legal advice, my employees are instructed to notify law enforcement *before* notifying management"
And who wants to fuss with that. My advice would be to (a) never look at anything that would cause you to be forced to report anything (b) if you do, make sure no one else knows and pretend it never happened (c) if caught in a dilemma, tell your boss anyway and say you weren't sure if this applied and you need his/her guidance.
That's the only sensible thing to do, but I realize you can't give that as official advice.
You aren't expected to allow work to invade your personal time. You have allowed it to do so by not saying no. It's not hard to turn off the pager/cell phone, whatever, when you leave the office. There are literally hundreds of thousands of "salaried software engineers" who aren't on call 24/7.
That's not to say I disagree with you that a reasonable amount of personal activity on company time should be tolerated, just that your excuse sucks.
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
Apparently he did report it but his superiors decided to shelve it. Not too terribly surprising given the fact that most of these "internet usage" policies are pretty much just paper with no teeth (at least in my experience).
I count myself to be fortunate in a job where I don't have to slog 60-80 hours a week. But many people are not that lucky. "Take another job". Very easy to say. Do you even realize that almost everywhere in the software field the engineers are "expected" to put in 60 hours or more a week. In some good companies, at the end of the project you are allowed to take couple of weeks paid vacation, but its rare. Not everybody has the luxury to walk out, and money does not grow on trees. People don't like to be exploited, its just that sometimes there is not much choice. You always have a choice, but sometimes its the devil or the deep sea, or Out of the frying pan into the fire.
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Because it:
That's why. Whenever you don't understand a corporate decision, just ask yourself, "Who benefits from this?", and soon the reason will become obvious. It's not that corporations make non-sensical decisions; rather, that corporate decisions are often motivated more by internal politics and the need to maintain a semblance of professionalism than anything else.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Well reporting it to upper management is possibly one of the worst things you can do. In the example he said he knew about the kiddy porn and report it to upper managment. Well, that was your first mistake. First thing you did was single yourself out as a trouble maker and a snitch. People don't like snitches, even if it is for a good reason.
Well he reported the shit and nothing happened. Well possibly nobody believed him so he outed himself for no good reason. Then most upper management blokes tend to run in packs. So odds are he outed his mark to a friend of his mark. The person he outed and the person he outed to could have booth been trading kiddy porn or the person he outed just simply said he wasn't to his frined. Who would you believe? So the only thing he did was paint a fat ass target on his ass.
I would have anonymously figure out a way to rig his computer to send all his kiddy porn to a "public" printer. The biggest fucking color printer in the place. Maybe one of those big ass HP with paper rolls on it. For extra kick I would have set it to go off when the office prude or church lady was standing next to it. Then I would fire the bitch off and stand back and watch the fun.
Mr Kiddy porn gets what's coming to him. I'm not on anyone elses shit list and I have a good laugh at someone elses expense. Of course the whole fuckign thing can backfire. I might not be as good as I think I am and the whole barking mess could fall right back in to my lap with a fat ass thund follwed by a clang.
but I'm that good.. so no worries...
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
who wants to enter to field to compete with whoever's excessively paid.
If they were able to negotiate that salary from the corporate management, then they aren't excessively paid. Companies pay people according to their perceived worth. If you are willing to do the same job at the same quality level for less money, then not only are you being foolish in the personal financial realm, but you are devaluing the IT skill set for everyone else as well. Part of what a professional licensing organization would do is seek to maintain or raise the market value of the IT skill sets.
We are all just people.
Oh, but they were *Asian*. And then he moved to *China*. He might start interacting with Asian women there. The horror! The horror! The horror!
Seriously -- why even bring up the Asian aspect at all, as though that's somehow relevant? I can understand being worried about children, but worried about Asian women? Give me a break.
Then the winter came, and the Grasshopper died. And the Octopus ate all his acorns. Also, he got a racecar.
Perhaps you know different IT folks than I do. Most of the IT guys I know would do very poorly in both of these roles.
I think the point of a "Professional Association" is that it would raise the risk of unethical behavior. Right now you get caught with your fingers in the cookie jar & lose your job, you'll have a new one in a few months, and the old job will likely only "confirm employment" because of HR policy. If there was a professional society companies could refer to, they might able to inflict a more serious punishment. Of course, given the lack of success with similar professional organizations in Law & Medicine in policing their memberships, my confidence level is low.
You are in a maze of twisted little posts, all alike.
A lot of the IT professionals I've encountered that had certifications, it seemed to me, went through the motions to earn them, to prove that they knew something -- almost as if to compensate for their lack of instinct and knowledge, because they weren't very good. They didn't have that "computer intuition" that separates good IT professionals from the average-to-shitty.
Most of the good IT professionals I know don't have certifications, they let their work and references speak for themselves.
evil adrian
I would have anonymously figure out a way to rig his computer to send all his kiddy porn to a "public" printer. The biggest fucking color printer in the place. Maybe one of those big ass HP with paper rolls on it. For extra kick I would have set it to go off when the office prude or church lady was standing next to it. Then I would fire the bitch off and stand back and watch the fun.
Yes, please do vigilante justice. It's not like you'd ruin anyones life if you were wrong.
-- MrMud
You expect a corporation to have any ethics whatsoever? Read your own post.
employees are expected to do whatever is perceived to be profitable for them in money and power, especially in the short term
This is exactly what corporations are designed to do. Make a profit, no matter the cost. Break the law? It's not a question of if it's legal. It's a question of how much the punishment will cost, and if that cost is greater than the profit of committing the act. In fact, if a publicly held company sees a way to make more money by bending (or sometimes breaking) the law, then does not do it because it may be illegal, the board can be liable to shareholder lawsuits! What a wonderful system we live under, eh?
Depends. Am I hiring someone to program, or to chase shiny certificates? Degrees and certs are great, but if you have other ways of proving you have the necessary knowledge and expertise, that's good too.
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
Competition for labor drives down the wages of those paid above what is required to get someone to do it, and pushes up the wages where there are labor shortages.
I agree with you that it is how it should work. I hope you don't think that's how upper management pay scale works in the real world. Given that the people in charge of the large organizations don't play by those rules, it makes little sense for the people that work for the large organizations to play by those rules.
From my own personal experience: I'm a stagehand, I used to work Off-Broadway on for-profit commercial shows (multi-million dollars budgets). Most of the stagehands that work in those venues have college degrees in stagecraft. The pay scale works out to a lower lower middle class lifestyle in NYC. $20 an hour doesn't go far in NYC. Forget raising a family on that here. Forget health insurance. There was a high attrition rate, but there was always a new batch of college grads that would fill the ranks. Then I moved on to Broadway. Broadway stagehands are union. The job is really the same, but we make twice as much money as Off-Broadway. The attrition rate is pretty low. People have insurance and can afford to have kids. The tickets cost twice as much for the consumer. Yet strangely, Broadway is thriving, while the Commercial Off-Broadway scene is slowly vanishing, so your theoretical "blight on consumers" doesn't seem to be happening. Granted there are unions out there who don't honestly factor in profits (or lack there of) when they are making demands in a contract negotiation. Not only do those unions give other unions a bad name, but they destroy their own industry. However, there is plenty of room between "destroying the industry" and "the minimum that someone will accept for the job" It's that difference that keeps the attrition rate low and allows for stagehands with decades of high level experience, those experienced stagehands are well worth the price of two or three fresh from college employees. In the non-union Off-Broadway scene those experienced workers never emerge because of attrition, but there is always someone willing to do the job. Now be it a union or a professional licensing organization, keeping the labor cost/value above the bare minimum, but within what the industry will bear, results a healthier more sustainable work culture. As for end-consumer costs, those are always as high as the market will bear, the only difference is the internal distribution of the cash flow. By doing any job for less than the guy who was doing the job yesterday, are you really going to save the consumer money or are you just increasing the year-end bonus for someone already in the highest tax bracket? You seem to have some sort of pride in your willingness to do-more-for-less, as though that will somehow make life better for the common man or will earn you the love and respect of the company you work for. From my perspective: you are the common man, make life better for yourself by attaching a (carefully considered) high price to your labor. A paycheck that supports a high standard of living is how companies show respect.
We are all just people.
2. Someone looking at kiddie porn isn't an "ethical problem" either - its a legal problem! Like in "against the law". Yes, indeed.
3. Not reporting it because you would have to admit you were snooping on other people - priceless AND retarded. He did report it. It says so in the summary that you quoted.
And there are no crooked accountants? Haven't the very largest accounting firms in the USA, regulated and certified, been responsible for most of the recent multi-billion dollar corporate scandals? They just found ways to work around the "ethical rules" imposed on them.
It's about culture. Most IT guys are "techies" not money-grubbing bastards (aka business executives, accountants, etc.) Most IT professionals have a sense of integrity, understand their power within the organization, and act reasonably responsibly. Some do not. Lots download stuff they shouldn't at work and read the HR department's email. Annoying, but not a big deal. What they don't do is copy the records from the accounting department and sell them to brokerage firms. They don't create bogus POs for themselves. The don't sell proprietary information to competitors.
I guess I'm saying that their are DEGREES of corruption, and in the grand scheme of things IT workers aren't anywhere near the realm of "the money people" when it comes to corruption.
What I wanna know is: "Who's this Pokemon institute?"
So this professional association might be "Professional Information Technologists Association"? PITA, right?
Re #1: Its only an ethical problem if you think its an ethical problem. Most of it is pretty harmless/lame/stupid, so why not let people spend a few minutes once in a while looking at something they find easy on the eyes. Better than looking at this.
Re #3: He didn't report the kiddie porn to the police ... they're the ones who you report kiddie porn to, not your boss.
I can understand his frustration to a certain extent. Ever try to report child abuse? You'd better have a squeeky-clean past, because you can be sure that whoever you report is going to try to smear you. Its the same with accusing someone of holding kiddie porn. "Invasion of privacy" "You planted it - that's how come you knew where to look" etc.
Kevin Smith on Prince
I once worked at an institution who had an asshole as a sysadmin, who was also incompetent - great combination. I was also very sure that he read my emails, which was illegal. So one day when I was really pissed off I send a mail to my friend in which I constantly insulted said admin, at the end I even mentioned that I thought he'd read this but that he couldn't do anything as he couldn't legally read the mail in the first place. Sure enough, the next time I saw him he didn't greet, looked mad and flipped me the bird (while covering it with his other hand so no one else would see it). It was pathetic, but it made clear that he did read the mail, and that I was right, that he couldn't do anything. Every time I read about an asshole sysadmin I think back to this and feel good for coming up with a way to use their tools against them. Btw., not recommend for someone who actually depends on that guy (I was only there for an internship).
Diebold will release the ethics poll results tonight at 20:05 when the polls close on the west coast. You don't need to vote, Diebold has already totaled your ballot.
This all involves the same company. As an employee, what can I conclude about my company's ethical standards? What should I do if I discover something 'unethical'?
Have gnu, will travel.
Sure it's an ethical problem! That's why it's against the law.
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I'm sorry, but that is exactly what I am saying. I am replacing a guy who lost his position because he was an unethical boob without an education. Each one of the managers in my division that have lost their job or have been forced into retirement in the last 10 years just happen to have an associates only or no degree. By the end of the year, we will have only one manager without a bachelors and they are sweating bullets right now. It has become so endemic within my organization, a hospital, that we starting to require a bachelors for any supervisory position. Most nurse manager positions in the market require a minimum amount of business education in addition to a nursing degree. Director or above require an MBA or MHA plus a nursing degree.
I am sorry that it seems unfair, but I spend the last seven years in school while working in a salaried position. I work 60+ hours a week normally and am taking a full load of graduate classes. I have gotten some significant payraised, but it has been hard. One point, I was making the federally minimum salary for exempt, 23k. If you can't swing a night class or two while working, maybe you need to look at your lifestyle/career mix. My wife and I didn't go out and eat for two years so I could go back to school.
In God we trust, all others require data.