More evidence of decline...

[RJM62]

Hi there. I've been busy working on a new site the past few days (one of my own, this time, long-delayed due to other work), so I haven't had the time to be on POA much. But an email I received this morning simply screamed out for sharing.

This email was from a competitor of one of my clients. She wants me to help her rebuild her site -- and uses the job I'm doing managing her competitor's site as her reason for contacting me. Furthermore, she doesn't seem to even consider that, for ethical reasons, I might not be willing to do this. She just assumes that I will and wants to know the price.

To me, this email is emblematic of a slow, but steady decline in morals and ethics in our nation. I attribute this to several factors, one of which is an increasing hostility to anything that hints of "religion" or "old-fashioned" values. I believe that when people stop believing that there is some power greater than themselves, they are at risk of becoming their own "gods," with no obligation to nor concern with anything except their own best interests.

They then project this schema onto others, even to the extent of not even considering that there may be others who neither share nor endorse their self-centered world view. I never received a response to my reply to the sender (quoted further down in this post) expressing my ethical problems with her request. I suspect that the sender is as baffled by my refusal as I am by her request.

Here's the sender's email, with identifying information redacted.

This is a Contact Form response to RJM Web Design regarding:

Name: Gina [REDACTED]
Site: [REDACTED]
Phone: [REDACTED]
Cell Phone: [REDACTED]
Email Address: [REDACTED]

Message: Hi, I am interested in finding someone who can overhaul my website. I noticed that you are currently managing the website for one of our biggest competitors ([REDACTED]) and it looks like you are doing a great job. I am having trouble getting people to call once they arrive at the site. The formatting is off and I know a lot of the pages need some work. I would like to discuss what exactly you can provide and how much it would cost. Please contact me at your earliest convenience.

Thank you,

Gina

And here's my reply:

Hello Gina,

Thanks for contacting me regarding your Web site.

For ethical reasons, I do not provide my services to companies competing in the same markets. My goal is always to make my clients Number One in their respective markets, and that's impossible to do when managing the sites of competing companies.

Thanks again for your email, however, and for your kind words. I wish you success in finding someone to help you overhaul your site.

-Richard

I wanted to write something a bit more strongly-worded, but I decided that would serve no purpose. In any event, Gina never replied.

I also debated putting this in SZ, and I suspect that that's where it will wind up...

-Rich

 

[Jim Logajan]

They then project this schema onto others, even to the extent of not even considering that there may be others who neither share nor endorse their self-centered world view.

You have created an ethical rule that runs counter to the operation of a free economy and plain common sense. You then commit the very projection you complain about with a strange schema of your own onto the rest of the world - and find it wanting in "morality" and consider your view non-self-centered.(!)

Let's try out your ethical rule on just two common situations (I can easily write more if you need more confounding examples):

If John Deere sells a tractor to farmer X growing Y, by your ethic, it should not sell tractors to any other farmers growing Y since they compete.

If employee X with has acquired industry specific skill Y that allows them to be employed at good wages in that industry, by your ethic they would be acting immorally if they ever left the first firm that employed them and went to a competing company.

Perhaps you should add some qualifiers to your ethical rule to work around these cases - assuming you agree that they lead to results you didn't expect. Or better yet (in my humble opinion) you should drop that ethical rule in the trash where it belongs.

Lastly, if that all bothers you, why not bind yourself to that one firm with a contractual non-compete clause? Then you can respond to the other firm that you can't do their web site due to contractual restrictions.

 

[Jim Logajan]

Well, there are a lot of reasons; but the main ones are:

1. Part of the job is to try to keep the company's site ranking first on Google and other search engines. You can't do that for two clients in the same area.

2. Another part of the job is monitoring traffic and conversion, which means having a certain amount of access to privileged sales information.

3. Properly managing a company's Web presence requires knowing about upcoming sales and promotions in advance, and also having some confidential knowledge about the company's future plans in general.

-Rich

If you had articulated those specific reasons to the woman when you declined to accept her business then you wouldn't have needed to start this thread. None of those reasons would have occurred to me without a bit of thought, and likely not to her, either. And I've been programming since 1973. But I have no experience in web development and marketing.

I find "Ethics" to be a useless word because I never know what people mean when they use it when they are deciding how to act or react to any given situation. When pressed, as you have been, you eventually articulated the rationale by identifying an objective set of harms that would or might occur if you followed through with accepting her business. An appeal to religion was not needed.

Lastly, if I made the claim that more people are acting "ethically" than ever before - rather than declining - you'd expect me to explain my definition of the term and provide plenty of supporting facts and not a single anecdote, right?