What Would It Take To Make You Cave In On Your Positions, Moral Or Not?
Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Mar 30, 2012
Other than the Trayvon Martin tragedy, the big story this past week has been about potential employers trying to force applicants into giving up their Facebook passwords or friending them, if you will, so that they could go through a candidates page to see if they were worthy of working at their company.
While I totally agree with this as being an invasion of privacy, it seems there was a subset of people who said that they'd do whatever they needed to do in order to get a job, even risking giving up their passwords, which is a violation of Facebook terms, or taking a chance on allowing some stranger into their Facebook page, or anything else they wanted to look at, to get a job. One person even wrote me directly on a LinkedIn group page saying that if it comes down to getting a job, nothing's off limits.
Oh really? I have often wondered what it is with people who are ready to allow someone to say things they're not allowed to say, ask questions they're not allowed to ask, or do things that are intrusive and in some cases borderline illegal (they're not illegal but they should be) just to get a job. I always wonder why anyone would want to work for someone who up front already shows you that their own morals are lacking, because people and companies don't get better than how they act while you're being interviewed. You're either seeing the best they have to offer up front or you see just how bad things are going to be; that's just the way it is.
Is the lack of money really worth giving up your morality, or your ethics, no matter what's asked of you? Isn't this the same moral dilemma that's posed to people who steal from others because they say they need to feel their family? I mean, just because one is considered criminal and the other isn't, did anything really change if the goal is the same?
There was some movie I was barely watching the other night while writing. It was a story of a woman who found out her friend had been working at a strip club to get her bills paid and was making a lot of money from doing it. She said she'd never do it, but she was also in financial distress so she decided to give it a try. She got the job and started making money, but she learned that there were other things she could do to make even more money. As the money grew her boundaries started to fall, and she got to a point of almost no return until finally being able to pull herself out of it and try to go back to her original dreams.
This isn't a rant against stripping by the way. It's a tale on how once you decide that you're going to take a step that's against your moral or ethical beliefs, it's hard to get back to them. It's the tale of Star Wars and the power of the force versus the dark side. Darth Vader had to die to find his way back to the force. Is that the kind of risk you're willing to take?
By the way, it might seem like I'm saying words I'd never stick behind. As an independent consultant, I've been asked for some things I'm just not giving up. I've been asked to take a drug test; not happening. I've been told that I have to allow someone to look at my credit report; nope, I'm going the other way. There are invasions of my privacy that I'm not allowing. I asked one guy if I could get a drug test from him or check his credit report, since I wasn't sure if he'd pay me or not; that ended the discussion.
This isn't a question of what's right or what's wrong. It's a question or at what point you feel justified in going against your convictions for whatever the reason might be. This isn't about the fear of trying something new; it's about what you're made of when the going gets tough and you decide that your beliefs, whatever they are, need to be lowered for the almighty dollar, or for food, or for love, or anything else.
Are you willing to answer this question: What would it take to make you cave in on your ethics or morals?
Probably the hottest topic in the last few months – privacy. Honestly I will never look for a job when I can’t separate personal from professional, I think this is violating the first unwritten law of business. Other than that, my pride is privacy are most important, that’s what I have been told by my parents and grandparents. For more than a decade I have always been at position to choose people that i want to work with or work for, as well my career as at a stage where I can choose my customers. May be the world is rotating in wrong direction and I think this is complete disrespect for both parties – people that give and people that take this information.
It’s definitely a strange time, Carl. It’s been known that employers were employing all sorts of tactics in finding out more about the people they want to hire, but there has to be a line drawn in the sand, and it needs to come from people themselves. I do understand the need for money and employment, but sometimes those end up being deals made with the devil.
Finding more about employees can be done through team building exercise or dinner, or at least I do it this way. Well, there was one particular case when I was nearly 100% sure that information is going out of company and company email account was used for personal purpose, so I forward copy of emails to me and I was right, but there was a good reason to do it. Being realistic to know what employees are doing on Facebook for example just need to send them friend request and see what they are sharing on their wall.
Hi Carl! This is indeed a great idea.. I guess i would love to try this trick. I hope the senior management in the company doesnt read this post otherwise they will also try to send the friend requests, and it is going to hard for us to ‘not to accept their requests’ 🙂
Carl, the thing is that one doesn’t have to do team building things to learn things about each other. Goodness, people who work in traditional businesses spend more time during the week with the people they work with than they do with the people at home, and there’s just no way one can’t learn something about another person. Still, that’s not really what this post was about. The question is if you were employed how much would you allow to go on that your ethical base felt wasn’t right?
Sure, Mitch but I doubt the people in traditional businesses or manufacturing have Facebook account. You are right again, no need to make team building exercise to learn for each other, but again depends on the scale of the company.
Back to the point, I will never share personal information with company, most likely I will contact some authorities if I am asked to do that.