@enderland - I know you've already answered, to expand on your comment, but the black-and-whiteness of the comment here has me surprised. I think a large part of this is the company's own making. I would love to hear more of your thoughts in chat. — NickC3 hours ago
I guess to me it's really obvious to be unprofessional to do that
is it unfortunate and difficult, but never professional
I think people are answering based on how bad it "feels" for that guy in that situation
rather than pure profesisonalism
Those circumstances are things you would never WANT someone interviewing you to know about (appy for jobs, accept one while hoping for others, start working, quit after a week) because it's not profesisonal
From my experience, many of the bigger corporations have plenty of cash flow and financial wealth to fall back on, whereas as someone whose been broke and looking for a job, sometimes you have to just go for it.
Granted, I don't think the response should be "screw you", but if one is forced to accept a job offer, and then another comes along that's better, then I wouldn't feel it was wrong to move forward.
I guess it's easy to me. I just think - "would I want others to know about how I acted in this situation?" and when the answer is blatantly "no" then it's not professional
I can see and understand your point, but I'm curious, if an employer said yes to hiring me, knowing that I wasn't the best qualified, and then a month later their star applicant comes back and says, "Okay, now I need a job"
Let's say I tell company A: I'm sorry, I can't accept. I'm waiting for an offer from Company B because of X reasons.
Then a month later, Company B, C, and D tell me that they went with someone else.
Meanwhile, I have a Chase bill, rent, an electric bill, and a baby on the way.... and I'm out of luck, and company A no longer has an open position.
Whereas, had I accepted company A's offer and left, there's a strong possibility the impact on them wouldn't be the same as someone who might end up getting evicted from his home.
I know what you mean, and maybe the answer is that we should be more financially responsible so that we don't have to do things that others may feel is unprofessional.
@enderland I love where this conversation went. I love Dave Ramsey! Unfortunately I am too far away from fitting his ideal mold in my behavior yet, but I'm hoping to get there.
@jmort253 As far as your example on the company side goes, I actually do think that would be unprofessional (maybe even worse) than the employee. But the reason why I think that is exactly what you are explaining -- I believe most reasonable people (who care about other people) see a person being left out in the lurch as worse than a company losing an employee.
@enderland I get what you are saying about people saying they are siding with the employee as different than deciding "did he act professionally?"
@enderland However, one reason why you are suggesting it is unprofessional is because it is behavior you wouldn't want someone to know about. I kind of see a middle ground here. You don't want people to know about this because it's too hard to explain the situation quickly. It's easy for the other side to make all sorts of terrible assumptions about you and why you did it.
But that doesn't make it entirely unprofessional, to me. If it's unprofessional, then (mostly) no one would agree with you even if they did know the whole story.
If most reasonable people think you acted reasonably, then I think it's a risky move and a potential red flag you have to be careful about. But not all red flags mean what they seem like they mean on the surface.
(how's that for a novel in chat)
In this case, I think the employee made a reasonable decision based on the company taking an unreasonable position -- not giving an extension as a pressure tactic. I don't think the employee took the job to screw the company, it sounds to me like it was taken in good faith. New, better jobs come along for people every day, that doesn't mean they unfairly played their former company (though, a pattern of this behavior would mean that).
@NickC so it's ok to be unprofessional back to a company which is unprofessional? I'm not asking whether it was reasonable (nor did the question). the question was "is this professional and ethical?"
The question wasn't, "how would potential new employers react to this situation" then I think you have a case - people probably would be somewhat sympathetic towards the question asker
but the question was not this. It was, "is this profesisonal?"
@NickC the only reason I say this is because to me this is blatantly obviously not professional and I cannot seem to present my argument from a more Kantian perspective (I suspect this is where the core disagreement lies)
Updated trending stats for workplace beta, day 270. Standard disclaimer applies - they're just numbers, don't go crazy over them. :) karmanebula.com/wpc-blog/2012/8/9/…
@enderland I guess I'm not understanding your objective definition of professionalism then. Because to me professionalism has an inherently subjective component -- a utilitarian component, I guess -- choosing the best result considering the effects on all parties involved.
Normally in professional setting, personal decisions don't weigh too strongly on decisions (as you've correctly pointed out, they shouldn't). But in this case, as we've seen from the reactions of people (and after reading Joel's article), it's pretty shady what the company did, and the best result from decisions the employee could make were A) take the job to be safe and then B) see what happens
unfortunately for the company that hired him, option (B) involved him getting another offer. Too bad for them, I say, and as a result, I don't see what's unprofessional about the employee taking those actions.
No, it's not unreasonable to ask. You're getting less take home pay for the same amount of work. However, it's also not unreasonable for the employer to refuse. After all, a majority of their employees voted for the people who increased the taxes. There's also the small matter that you didn't...
@enderland: The bottom line is - We walk a very fine line by allowing "Is it professional to do 'X'?" questions because they imply that it's perfectly acceptable to ask a "Is it professional to do 'Y'?" and a "Is it professional to do 'Z'?" question. Some of these might generate interesting discussion but they're not a good fit for Stackexchange. Feel free to check out the FAQ if you have any further questions.
@enderland Sorry, just starting another discussion. :) I didn't want to do that in the comments. :)
For some reason, I forgot to paste in what I was going to say about this, which is:
You could also make the argument that there's a lot of corporate lobbying that goes on, so depending on who you work for, your employer could have had a huge impact on who gets voted in, especially since many of the political ads funded by donations is propaganda.
I encourage you to read Lawrence Lessig's 'Republic Lost'.
As a general rule, the reason why American laws are so convoluted is because lobbyists write them and pack them with pork. It's a bonafide fact: Most (or perhaps all) members of Congress never actually read the bills in their entirety be...
No, it's not unreasonable to ask. You're getting less take home pay for the same amount of work. However, it's also not unreasonable for the employer to refuse. After all, a majority of their employees voted for the people who increased the taxes. There's also the small matter that you didn't...
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