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Is Setting Up an Offshore IT Help Desk Ethical?

Posted by Soulskill on from the food-on-the-table dept.

theodp writes "Except for a few odd jobs,' wrote an advice seeker to The Ethicist (NYT, reg. may be required), 'I had been out of work for nine months when I was offered a job setting up an [IT] offshore help desk. Would it be ethical to accept the offer?' Randy Cohen, who pens The Ethicist column for the Times, not only advised the job seeker that it was indeed okay to help co-workers lose their jobs, but also seemed to suggest that it would be unethical for him not to offshore the jobs, saying: 'Some people feel we have a greater ethical duty to those closest to us — our neighbors — but in an era of global trade and travel, that is a recipe for tribalism and its attendant ills.' The job seeker, who noted his father's auto-industry job was outsourced, chose to ignore Cohen's ethics advice — as well as his own wife's — and declined the job out of principle. He continues to seek work. Comments?"

3 of 826 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Any time you need to ask the question... by CapOblivious2010 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Any time you ask Randy Cohen, the answer is questionable.

    He's a total sleaze who will use lofty-sounding logic to support his whatever position he happens to prefer today, even if it completely contradicts the position he took yesterday.

    If you're talking about doing something illegal that he favors (say, hiring an illegal immigrant as a maid), he'll take the "higher calling" route, and tell you that you have a moral duty to ignore bad laws. Just like the nazis should have ignored their laws.

    But if it happens to be something he's opposed to, he'll tell you that following the law is the foundation of ethics. You can try to change the law, of course, but if everyone were to simply ignore laws they don't like, the result would be total anarchy and the collapse of society - so of course any action leading in that direction would be completely unethical.

  2. It is ethical by mangu · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If he's doing a better job than somebody else for the same or less pay, then it is ethical.

    What is NOT ethical is what the current worldwide corporate managers do. They get paid more than anybody else in the company to produce absolutely nothing. What they call "leadership" is worth nothing, do they think it requires any talent to say "hey, you! make this thing work!"

    I believe in Leadership as it was in the old days, the leaders were the people who had worked in the factory floor and had showed their talent there. They understood the processes, the technical details that made the company create the products people would buy.

    Today, the MBAs know nothing about that, all they do is bullshit.

    1. Re:It is ethical by BenEnglishAtHome · · Score: 5, Interesting

      ...in the old days, the leaders were the people who had worked in the factory floor and had showed their talent there. They understood the processes,...

      I remember a time, about 10 years ago, when it dawned on me that for the first time in my very large, very old organization, the guy at the top was from the outside. And everyone that reported to him had been hired from the outside. And everyone that reported to them. For the first time in our history, the head guy and the next two levels of executives on the org chart had all come from outside the organization. Not one of them had worked their way up from the inside. Not one of them had lived the processes by which our mission is accomplished. Not one truly understood what we did.

      At about that time, all sorts of plans started flowing from the top down about how the organization should be changed to make it more efficient. Those of us who had been around for 20 years saw potential problems in some of the proposals but, for the most part, we were willing to try to make the organization better.

      A decade later, one of the best organizations to work for has become a hell-hole where flashy fast-talkers routinely make decisions that shock the hell out of those of us who understand the mission of the organization. Us oldsters look back on the time when working your way up through the ranks changed from a badge of honor to the mark of someone who didn't understand how to leverage an advanced degree and some strategic ass-kissing to get ahead.

      Is there a top-level executive in the U.S. today, working for a sizable company (say, 100k or more employees), who worked their way up through the ranks of that organization?