Thursday, November 13, 2008

Do we need ETHICS?

Last evening when we reached home after work, my wife was furious about something. I waited for her to start the discussion rather than provoking (you know how woman are...). She started, I cant believe how companies like Infosys bill/estimate. Its absolutely ludicrous and unethical. I started laughing(my usual sarcasm). She said I know that's one of the reasons why you don't want to work for such companies. I said, one of the best services company in bangalore I worked for, did not have billing ethics, forget about Infosys/Sathyam/TCS etc. None of them have ethics in their company message. None of the services companies do business ethically. I know I am making a very broad and bold statement, but that's what it is. If they are ethical they will not survive. Competition in prostitution business is cut throat. I remember one of the VP at Thomson Financials(TF) was fired as he took soft kickbacks from a Indian IT services company to make them the preferred pimp of TF (of-course VP was an Indian).

    I started thinking, why is ethics so important for some people? I guess when you don't have kids, you don't have time to think about these things and care about them. Once you have kid(s) (you wanted to have one), then things change. The way you think and look at things change. For example, lots of my single friends where complaining about 11PM pub closing rule in bangalore. I used to think, what's wrong with that. I am sure if I was single, I would be complaining too. The problem I face is, if I am not ethical then its hard for me to teach my kid to be honest and ethical. I try my best to lead by example. I am not claiming that I have accomplished six sigma in it, but I try. Its beyond my comprehension, how these people who work at such places go back home and teach their kids to be honest. Its like you smoking in front of the kid and then later when she is an adult advising her not to smoke. I am sure if you die a brutal death and the doctor says that smoking caused it, no sensible kid will ever touch cigarette in his/her life. I understand that kids don't come to your work place and see how dishonest/unethical you are, but wouldn't it prick when you ask them to be honest/ethical?
 
     The other side of the coin is, the guy who is paying should be smart. If he is not then why shouldn't we take him for a ride. I think if you work in services industry as a prostitute, you can only have ethics as an individual prostitute. If you start thinking at the pimp level, you are in for some pain (only if you have ethics). Long live the PIMP.

    After i wrote this post, i met phani for one last mountain goat before he heads to pleasure island (Bangalore, India). We started discussing on the same thing as he is one cool prostitute (i mean works in IT services, not a Jigalow) and we talked about how everything is relative these days. For example... say we are in a big restaurant and the guy charges less than what he is suppose to, how many of us go back and say that you have charged less. Very few of us will do that. My justification would be, bastard charges us so much, it is ok for me to be dishonest. I remembered my dad, as he always used to say "If you steal mustard you are a thief, if you steal an elephant you are still a thief". I guess that is not true any more. Today if you steal mustard and compare yourself with some one who has stolen an elephant, you are a lesser thief.
    Question is, should our kids be honest? If the answer to that is yes then, whom will they learn from?

K

1 comment:

Ganesh said...

Being ethical sucks! However we should be ethical sometimes also. Say it "constructive ethics". I changed 5 jobs in 5 years and company HRs said I am not ethical. The people who stayed "ethically" will be laid off soon. So, which is profitable being ethical or not ethical? after all, IT job is a bubble.

So, I teach ethics to my kid constructively. Being ethical works as long as we are in comfort zone, once we are out of it, it sucks!


Nice post.

- Ganesh.