Just curious. Certain jobs appear to require a person to hold their nose from time to time and I’m just wondering what it’s like to work with that lingering doubt.
I’ll try to kick things off, but my job doesn’t really fit this pattern. This is the closest I’ve got:
I work for a company making medical software. Some of the stuff we release are buggy pieces of crap, but I can live with it because:
The bugginess isn’t because of anything we’ve added; it’s usually legacy code that no-one knows how to fix 100%
I’m not sure that there are more stable products in the market
While the bugs are many and varied, they are not dangerous. Any bug that could potentially cause a mistreatment gets very special attention and we notify an external regulator. The software cannot be released until all such bugs are definitely fixed.
I sometimes (rarely) have to advocate on behalf of clients I don’t like very much. I don’t consider that immoral, however, as I don’t advocate for claims that I don’t believe are valid. I suppose I’m lucky to work in a field where I’m prohibited from doing anything I consider unethical.
Require? No. However, it’s generally accepted that I really won’t take a 30 minute lunch break or 15 minute breaks which I’m technically allocated. In general, that’s fine. My job is kinda hard to explain, but I’d much rather be at my desk to put out the small fire before it gets serious. There are some days, if my coworker is working, then I’ll occasionally take a stroll in nice weather and he can text me if something starts to happen that might be an issue. I almost always bring lunch, and there’s not much open near me anyway on the night shift.
Never had a job like that, thankfully. Even when I sold RVs, I kept everything aboveboard and was scrupulously honest about whatever a customer was interested in. There were salesmen there who played fast and loose; I could never figure out why, as their sales numbers were some of the lowest.
Exactly the same situation as the OP. We wouldn’t let software out with any known bugs, our efforts to find bugs could be a little better, but our beta versions of software are in demand from our customers and they’re willing to help find the problem areas. In general, company policies would forbid unethical practices, I can’t imagine being asked to cross any lines. The closest we come is relying on our end user customers to maintain HIPAA compliance. I suspect they’ve allowed access to private patient information at times beyond what is necessary. We have our own in house practices to prevent holding such information or allowing it to be disseminated.
I’m a bit uncomfortable with some of the Personnel reports I generate.
Nothing unethical and certainly not illegal. I just don’t like helping with terminations.
If they want to fire somebody. The first thing they do is audit the employee’s sick leave and vacation time. Look for a pattern of abuse. I get requests from on high to run the audit. Check History details can easily go back several years. Even longer if I use archived data.
Sick leave and unscheduled Vacation leave isn’t normally monitored closely unless the employee runs out and gets LWOP. But, the employee handbook clearly states abuse is cause for termination and an audit will find it.
I turn in the report and try not to think about what happens afterwards.
I work for a small county government. I was asked, sort of through the back door by an elected official to provided data that would likely help one political party over the other. It was IMHO, an innocent request.
I saw the minefield before I stepped into it and brought it up to my boss. He also thought it was inappropriate, and ran it by county attorneys. A solid NO came back.
We will likely put this data on the net in 6 months or so, 'cause it’s kinda a good idea. But EVERYONE needs to know about it and have access to it.
The data is available for free, but you need certain software and knowledge to put it together. When asked if I could recommend a company that could do this, I also had to say no. As a government employee I have to be careful of what ‘inside’ information I have and recommend private companies. Especially when the request comes over our internal email.
Sometimes actuarial assumptions used in valuations (which flow through to the company’s financial reporting) are not as purely scientific as one might like to think, and are influenced by what the client wants them to be. Generally I go along with it, as long as the assumptions are within a reasonable range. Meaning, suppose we think medical trend for next year might be anywhere from 5% to 8%, then the “best guess” highest likelihood estimate if there were no other considerations involved might by to go with 6.5%. But if the client is sensitive to changes and are currently using 5.5%, I’m not likely to push back. But if they wanted an assumption that we considered outside of a reasonable range altogether, e.g. 4.5%, then I generally won’t go along.
This is widely - universally, I believe - practiced in actuarial circles. (Old joke: ask an actuary what’s 1+1, and he says “what do you want it to be?”) But it’s a bit at odds with the pure and high-minded view of the profession and appropriate practices that you get from attending professionalism courses and the like.
[It also gets abused to a greater degree than described above, and I believe will eventually become a huge societal issue when pension debts become to great for society to pay and actual liabilities turn out to be much higher than pension actuaries have been valuing them as. But that’s another issue - and I’m not a pension actuary. :)]
No, I have not been required to do anything unethical, but I am aware that management has made a decision that a regulatory agency would disapprove of. The issue will not cause harm to anyone, but I am still very uncomfortable.
I used to work in Software Asset Management - on the corporate side. I quit because the company I was working for was more interested in not paying for software, and then blaming me if the audit went South, than paying for software. I was held responsible for the results of audits, without the ability to influence the outcome in any way other than falsifying the reporting. When I pointed this out to my boss, she said “yes.” When I said I could report them to the BSA, she said I wouldn’t be that unprofessional. And then they were shocked when I quit - and more shocked when the audits started rolling in.
I worked for a company that wasn’t provided contracted services to the clients that it billed for - I quit that one as well.
Before I retired I worked for a printing wholesaler. We used to make lots of Nazi rubber stamps for those nice fellows up in northern Idaho. I don’t know what they used them for. Inter office memorandum, I suppose. Always made my upper lip curl up a bit.
My company is a distributor of music and movies. That would include pornography. So that no one is forced to sell or handle pornography, they keep that department seperate and no one is ever asked to work there if they don’t want to. However, we have had a couple of Christians start working for us and leave because they couldn’t be part of a company that sold immoral content.
At my last firm, the method of getting rid of an unwanted employee who had given the firm no particular reason to fire that employee, and who was a member of a protected class, was to “promote” that employee to a job he or she did not have the experience or the technical knowledge to do. The ensuing bad reviews would give the firm solid ground to terminate the employee.
On a couple of occasions the unwanted employee was “promoted” to my department.
I managed to dodge reviewing those employees. And then the financial crisis hit, and we all got laid off anyway.
Back in the 90’s I worked for would sell used equipment as new. I wasn’t in sales, but I didn’t stay there long.
Then in the late 90’s I worked for a small software company that had about 20 customers with Novell installed and we only had 5 licenses. That was useful when we parted company and they tried to screw me out of my outstanding PTO. They only lasted about another year after that before they were in receivership because the owner/director was embezzling.
Why couldn’t you have recommended someone? I don’t see a conflict unless there was some way you would profit from the recommendation.
I imagine it’s the “government employee” bit. Gouvernement procurement has traditionally been a major source for patronage and corruption, so there are strict rules for tendering contracts.
Back when I was doing graphic design and typography, my company got the account of Pat Robertson’s 1988 presidential campaign. I was the most qualified graphics person, so I was assigned the campaign. I flat-out refused, and said I’d rather quit than lift a finger for Pat Robertson. I could see the owners sweating over this; they never had anyone refuse a job for any reason, but didn’t want to lose me. In the end, they re-assigned it to someone else, and I kept my job.
I once reported a problem to an engineer.
Engineer gets pissed and sends out an email to all the managers (Like I knew he would).
Manger comes to me and asks why I didn’t talk to them first. I did, but I guess they missed it. Translation: They saw the email but couldn’t be bothered to do anything about it.
Manager insists that I keep the engineer out of things like this in the future.
I politely informed my manager that engineers’ performance reviews are based on how well their processes are run. If I keep him out of the loop, and don’t let him know operators are not running the process according to his spec, he could get a bad review through no fault of his own.
Manager: “Uh, yeah, well uh, just deal with me directly.”
The real estate stories I could tell you. We had visits from various government agencies, including the DEA and Homeland Security. (who do you think rents $5,000/month apartments?)
As a store cashier not so much. I don’t appreciate the men who ask for a male cashier, but it’s legal.
I work for a company whose product is billed monthly to a credit card or checking account. Some of our customers have forgotten that they have the product, but it keeps billing.
I can rationalize this somewhat. I look at my accounts every week at least, usually every day, and it’s difficult for me to imagine a $20 charge passing every month without the customer noticing it for years. Never the less, it’s somewhat obvious that this is what does happen, perhaps with a majority of our customers, and I’m not real happy about it.