Re: Ethics of Dealing with Evil

[eol]

I personally think you need to ask yourself can you afford to lose your immediate client, rather than wondering if you are ethically wrong. Will get to that in a moment.

Ethically I personally believe you are abstained from all wrongdoing's if the specific technologies weren't hard coded in the contract and you have been honest with your immediate client. My belief is based on:

1. Lets say I hired you to create solution A. I would expect you to build solution A to the best of your abilities using the best technology. Now my marketing department tells the world I have the best product for anything but I know otherwise. When you deliver me a solution based on my own technology that I know to be substandard, I would be upset. If I am not specifying the exact technology, I expect you to use some initiative and design in the best technology for the job.

2. Lets go on the above stated belief that you should use common sense and if building a product for vendor M, you should use vendor M technology. Well what exactly does this mean? Vendor M makes mice and keyboards; do you have to use these technologies to type your program? Vendor M has a huge partnership with hardware maker I, does this mean you have to use I’s CPU’s? Where does this stop? Unless the technology is specified in the initial contract, this is not your issue. Ethically you are doing the RIGHT thing by giving them the BEST product for their money using the BEST technology for the job.

Now as for my first statement, need to remember the “Shit rolls down hill” principle. No matter how much you document your correspondence and work, your immediate client is under no obligation to contract you for FUTURE work. If they get in a jam with GRWBSC it’s going to roll down to you. Sure you can deny it’s your fault (and prove it with documentation) and you can be sure they will not hire you anymore. Even if they fire your contracting officer, he has friends and they are not going to look kindly upon you. Nobody likes a turncoat (as they will look at it). The contract with GRWBSC is probably worth your contract many times over. Just because it isn’t your fault, doesn’t mean you aren’t going to get burned. That being said, if my livelihood depending upon my immediate client who is doing work for GRWBSC and I knew GRWBSC was a technology only nazi like Vendor M is, I would have bit the bullet and used their technology. If my livelihood didn’t depend on my immediate client, no big deal then. You did what you were contracted to do to the best of your ability with vague contract obligations. They don’t like it, move on.

Lesson to learn from this: When doing business as a contractor or an employee with a project, ALWAYS GET SPECIFIC REQUIRMENTS IN WRITING. You may not believe they will mistreat you and they may promise they won’t, but when shit hits the fan, their job is more important then yours.