Have you ever turned-down morally questionable or unethical web work?

Question

i'm just wondering if you guys have ever had a situation where you were offered a web development project which you turned down because you felt it was unethical or morally questionable.

i've only had this once. i was offered a contract to develop a website for a meat abattoir (i.e. slaughterhouse). what's the problem you may ask? i'm vegetarian. i know, it's not an egregious dilemma, but it just didn't seem right to me.

i have a female graphic designer friend who declined to work on a sex toys website where she was working at the time. funny thing is, it wouldn't bother me to work on a porn site (as long as it wasn't anything shifty - e.g. dwarfs + donkeys, that sort of thing).

anyone else ever had a similar experience?

Answer 1

I have no qualms about "morally questionable", but I do not do work that crosses my non-moral principles. That is, I have rejected potential work for domain squatters and a debt collection company. I would not accept any work, web-related or not, from sources such as those.

Answer 2

Yes, I've turned down morally questionable jobs.

I can't see myself sleeping at night after designing one of these scam "government grant" or "work from home" sites.

Answer 3

This is a valid question, however, a tad too opinionated and subjective. For one, you refuse to create a website that sells animal flesh, but you are completely indifferent with regard to making one that sells human flesh.

Scary.

Answer 4

Web work, no. Games work, yes.

I was instructed to write up a particle effect for a wrestling game that would trigger when one player struck the other. At the end of each particle trail, the blood droplet was to color the canvas red. I didn't stick around the company for very long, and I have always made it a point to leave a company when the work or the situation didn't agree with me in some way.

Let me put it a different way. If the guy at the company's front desk has been ordered to lie to you, who is to blame for the ethics of the action? The company, certainly. But I (and the Nuremburg jury) figure that he is at least as responsible for the action because by providing the means to carry out an unethical action, he made it possible for the unethical decision to be made.

There are ethics that are concrete (Nuremburg) and there are ethics that are less concrete - vegetarians might claim that their ethics are every bit as universal, but there are choices in ethics that people make differently. Our choice of how to behave and what to do at work fits into that category quite often. If you wouldn't personally custom a slaughterhouse, you probably shouldn't serve one professionally... just as you probably shouldn't work in politics if you have a problem with political spin.

Answer 5

While checking out eLance (yeah..I know) a few years ago I saw a lot of sleazy stuff I refused to have any part of. I was never actually offered any of the work, but I refused to bid on any of it.

MSN id harvester, spam emailers, cloning a website, that kind of thing.

Answer 6

"For every epsilon there exists a delta"...

Barring any illegal activity of any kind, we all know that if anybody pays us enough, we'll do any development job we are offered.

Answer 7

I can think of lots of work I would turn down on ethical grounds:

• Writing viruses or adware.
• Writing deceptive sites that extract money from people under misleading premises.
• Websites engaging in illegal activities.
• Porn. (My personal objections here.)

My personal feeling is that if a company is being deceptive or dishonest with its customers, I want no part of working for them. How could you trust an employer / client that deceives its customers?

Edit to move beyond the hypothetical: I was once approached to sell my company to some stock brokers who wanted it as a shell corporation that they could take public. They weren't particularly interested in the company or its products. They just wanted an established company. The deal stunk and I quickly declined.

Answer 8

The problem with Ethics is that from person to person they seem to be remarkably, shall we say, flexible.

It is absolutely okay, even comendable, to refuse to do something you personally have an ethical issue with (this extends beyond just web work).

Please don't expect others to have the same ethics.

The question of whether there should be an overarching ethics body for devepoment or IT in general is another topic. And the ethics there should be on the actions of the developer rather than the subject matter of the development I would assume.

Answer 9

I interviewed with someone (an Asian Pacific business man) who offered a LOT OF MONEY to help him build a web site trafficking humans. I kid not. I declined, and never went to that part of town again!

Answer 10

Theres a difference between "morally questionable" work and "does not agree with my principles" work.

For example, I would not turn down a porn website (something that many people I know find objectionable) but I would turn down a religious website or an adware website since I do not agree with those things.

Even that depends on what you define as your morals and what you define as your principles.

Answer 11

I have turned down opportunities to work where I felt morally questionable about the job on which I'd be working.

At the end of the day, you live with yourself, and no amount of money or perks is worth feeling guilty or bad about you as a person.

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I've even taken it beyond that -

I used to work at a large company where the company goal didn't really fit into my personal philosophy. I wasn't asked to write anything objectionable, and I actually even felt that most tasks I worked on where interesting and challenging.

However, after a couple of years, I started to realize that I was feeling fairly unfulfilled - the goals of the company didn't fit with my personal philosophy. Doing better in my job, in my mind, didn't make me feel like I was doing something valuable for the world at large, and I realized that was important to me. I don't pretend that it is important for the world at large, or any of my peers, but it was personally important to me. I ended up changing jobs, where I moved into a position with a lower pay, but a much more personally satisfying role.

I now realize this was a very smart move for me. Working in a position where I was happier actually made me work harder, and as a result, I managed to improve my career at a pace that I believe is much faster than it would have been without the move. The small step backwards put me on a much better long term path - mostly because it put me into a position where I was excited and motivated to strive forward.

I feel that it's difficult, sometimes, to turn away the money - but in the long run, for me personally, whenever I've been presented an opportunity where I've asked the question of myself, I realize I'm much better off moving onto the next thing.

Answer 12

I made a conscious decision a long time ago to stay away from work related to the military-industrial complex. I just wouldn't be able to bring myself to work on systems whose primary aim is to kill people -- no matter what other upsides there might be (protecting one's country, working on "cool" stuff, etc).

Answer 13

I've had a couple of experiences

1) A certain owner of a large store in Knightsbridge refused to let men wear ear rings, that rankled on a number of levels, not least the pettyness - didn't take the job.

2) A contract to work on a 'Custody Suite' application, that's a prison to you and me, didn't take the job, but later I did work for the Police, and one of the applications was Custody - that felt OK somehow - hmm how the mind is a fickle thing.

Answer 14

Turned down working on porn sites, I have no problem with porn but would have a hard time explaining to my mom where I was making my money.

Turned down work for some options traders - the ones I have met we're scum bags ripping people off - karma is a bitch and I try not to generate bad karma if I can help it. BTW one guy ended up getting his legs broken by a client he ripped off - glad I was no where near that one!

Answer 15

I've never been offered anything unethical. But, as an iPhone developer, I've of course seen the success of the likes of iFart and been tempted to try my hand at that kind of product. I ultimately decided that I wouldn't feel right charging any amount of money for something of that sort and I'm still plugging away at products that, while less successful, are ones I don't have to grin sheepishly while showing to people.

Answer 16

From a purely pragmatic point of view, I suspect that I would not be able to do my best work if I had a strong philosophical disagreement with the goals of my client. If I were to take on such work, I'm pretty sure both the client and I would be unhappy with the results. So it's better for all parties for me to decline such cases.

Answer 17

isn't the question more have you ever done anything that you found morally objectionable and what was the incentive/reason you broke with your moral?

i'd imagine most people that do things that you find morally objectionable don't find that activity morally objectionable themselves (or have an explenation/reason/delusion that makes it "ok" in their mind).

so in some ways it is actually easy to turn down things you find morally objectionable, it might be interesting to see if anyone has broken with their morals and what the reason and results were.