EssaySnark

You are here: Home / Archives for ethics

($) You cannot write your own letters of recommendation.

by EssaySnark

Nor, honestly, should you want to do so. Almost every time, what other people write about you (provided that they’ve been appropriately selected for the task) will be oodles more appealing and useful to the adcom – nay, even more POSITIVE and glowing – than what you would come up with about your own bad…

While much of the blahg is available completely for free, the content here is reserved for members with full blahg access only ($9.95/month for six months, cancel anytime). Please login to view this content or purchase a membership.

($) Ethics and your MBA apps – 2018 edition

by EssaySnark

So enough of the philosophical musing about what is ethics and the handwringing about what we should do when faced with massively unethical behavior from a client. Let’s bring this full circle and focus on the practical: In what way will ethics play a part in your MBA applications? Essay Questions First and foremost, we…

While much of the blahg is available completely for free, the content here is reserved for members with full blahg access only ($9.95/month for six months, cancel anytime). Please login to view this content or purchase a membership.

What is ethics?

by EssaySnark 4 Comments

Again related to our recent post about an ethical situation we found ourselves in (you don’t need to start with that post but you can if you wish).

After weeks of pondering, the simplest description of the whole category of ethics for us is, “Can I trust you?”

This came about from reading merely the introduction to the book Skin in the Game* by controversial thinker Nassem Nicholas Taleb. (You can read the intro for free in the online preview, which is worthwhile no matter what.)

We’ve come across so many instances of ethics in the real world since considering this incident (in case you are sick of this discussion and wish we’d talk about something else by now… sorry/not sorry. this is interesting for us and we feel wholly relevant to an individual’s existence in the modern era).

The reason why ethics matters is that it helps you make decisions — for yourself, and also decisions on who you want to involve yourself with.

If a company offered you a job with a salary higher than you’ve ever earned, are you going to accept it regardless?

Or are you going to think about what that company does, and consider the value that it brings into the world?

Here’s one piece of seriously disturbing data from a survey of programmers that the site StackExchange conducted :

Perhaps respondents misread the question or were moving too quickly through the survey to think it through. As phrased, it sounds like the question says, “You have already identified that it’s unethical. What do you do?” If you’ve DECIDED that it’s unethical, then that right there is your decision. Isn’t it? You should not be involved in building software — or contributing to any task at work — if you’ve decided that it’s unethical. Yet 36.6% sounded like they were waffling. That maybe they’d go ahead and build it.

Yes we agree, there are a gazillion grey areas, but in this case it’s saying that you’ve DECIDED what the ethics are. Why is the answer then, “It depends”?

The main angle we can see in those 36.6% is that they are being honest and acknowledging that perhaps they might do it anyway. It’s actually likely that a good chunk of the 58.5% saying they would not build it actually would. In the real world, there are tremendous pressures and influences, and dealing with a hypothetical, it’s very easy to claim moralistic purity. If not building the software out of your convictions would cost you your job, we can totally see why it would be hard to stand up and speak out. There’s also the problem of power dynamics. If you’re just one guy (or gal) on the team, and your boss and all your teammates are going along with this, and you understand it to be greenlit and approved from above, then you’re inclined to assume that others have thought through the ethics and have determined that it’s OK to do it. Most people want to assume that they work with others who also are ethical. If you’re the only one perceiving an ethical problem and everyone else is all gung-ho and excited to blast forward with it, it would be very easy to second-guess your own worries and stay silent.

But those are exactly the situations where being brave and speaking up are so important.
 
 

* * *

 
 
Sometimes there is all this momentum in an organization and nobody stops and takes a step back. Everyone assigns the responsibility for moral policing to the overall group, assuming that everyone else has handled that task — yet it’s possible no one has done it. It’s so easy to get blinders on.

It’s like the H&M hoodie ad that came out in January with a picture of an African American boy in a sweatshirt that was just — no. That was so obviously insensitive that some people even assumed it must have been intentional as a way to generate attention for the brand. Because who could have seen that and not noticed how bad it was?

If you’re sitting in a meeting with thoughts of, “Am I crazy? Is nobody else noticing this THING that is wrong here?” then you NEED TO SPEAK OUT.

And you need to put some thought to big questions like this in advance. So that you are prepared and ready to take action if (when) the time comes for such action.

If the first time you’ve ever thought about these difficult situations is in the moment when you’re faced with one for the first time, then it’s likely you will fail to act, out of self-doubt or nervousness or not wanting to be wrong, and lacking confidence to stand up for your ideas. These things matter.

There was a thing on RadioLab about new types of media editing technology that are a little bit freaky in terms of their potential to do harm — but what was even freakier was the completely laissez faire attitude of one of the developers. Here’s direct access to the RadioLab stream if you are interested in hearing the whole piece:

Here’s a demo of an Adobe voice editing app that definitely raises concerns:

It’s basically PhotoShop but for audio.

But the chilling part in the RadioLab segment was where they talked about this technology:

And they interviewed one of the developers in this field, a CS professor at University of Washington named Ira Kemelmacher-Schlizerman (starts around 11:15). And the interviewer was basically asking, “Aren’t you freaked out about what this technology can do?” and the technologist woman answered with a virtual shrug of her shoulders. She said her job is a technologist. That’s it. She was fully unbothered — or she just had never considered the questions or her part in it before. (this specific exchange is around 20:05)

Ohboy.

Brave Supplicant, please don’t be like that. In any context of your life, anywhere. That just hurts to hear.

Though honestly, her position of “I’m just a technologist” is probably not unethical.

These are the things that the real intellectuals are debating. It’s where Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg clash (the ethics of AI and how much trouble we’re gonna be in if constraints aren’t put into place, but hey Elon, even if they are, there will be people like this technologist who don’t see it as part of their job to worry about such trivial things as, like, how the tech they’re building can do harm.)

 
 

It all just makes the head hurt.

And in the end, we come full circle.

Are all ethical decisions completely personal? Is ethics defined by the individual only?

The technologist with the capacity-to-do-harm software is clearly not bothered. Her ethics say it’s OK.

Granted, there are BIG cultural implications in all of this; what is considered “unethical” varies TREMENDOUSLY based on what part of the world you’re from.

We’re not accusing the technologist of being unethical. We’re looking at stuff.

Any further thoughts coming from all you BSers on these topics? (If not, don’t worry – we’ll be moving along to other things very soon!!!)

 
 
 
*In the first draft of this post, we wrote the title as Sin in the Game which is sort of funny as a Freudian slip. Also: That link has a referral code, if you click it we get like a penny or something if you go on to buy. If you don’t want to make Mr Bezos pay us a penny that way, please just go direct to Amazon and search for the title yourself. You know how it works.

Source material and inputs into our deliberation process on this issue #ethics

by EssaySnark Leave a Comment

You know how when you learn a new word, then all of a sudden, you hear it everywhere?

Yeah, our experience deliberating on what to do in an ethical issue seemed to summon all sorts of relevant information onto the radar screen of experience. All of the below is related to our recent story about being faced with an ethical issue with a BSer. This is a place for us to capture what are essentially footnotes and references to the deliberation process, so you can see what we considered and a few of the ideas that are forming our views. You’re welcome to also post your own relevant or interesting links and articles that might further the conversation or add a new dimension to our thinking!

The items in this post are all separate and the order is not meant to signify relationship nor importance to each other nor to us. It’s just a bunch ‘o stuff.

 
 
 

(That tweet is the final comment in a lengthy tweetstorm from a restaurant critic responding to other critics who say that a chef or restauranteur’s behavior should not be considered as part of a restaurant review; the entire thread is worth reading.)

So as a ‘Snark with a platform, what is our duty or responsibility?

(Still pondering.)
 
 
 

 
 
 

Long – but fascinating, if you’re into minutiae of government and the crazy things people will do to milk the system! – report from the US ethics office on how a staff planner at the Veterans Administration tried to finagle the system to go along with the VA Director’s request to have the government pay for his wife’s travel so they could attend Wimbledon together.

 
 
 

The New York Times has a Q&A section written by an ethicist; a recent column covered a parallel situation:

“Should I tell on my cheating classmates?” In this case, it was a couple of middle school students cheating on an exam when the teacher was out of the room. One of their friends thought it was wrong and debated whether to say something later, such as to the prestigious high school where these students were admitted. The ethicist put a lot of emphasis on the cost to the whistleblower, and on what type of change to the system might come from telling on the cheaters.

What about you?

Have you read anything recently (or ever) that really struck a chord? Anything that’s stuck with you, about how to live a right life?

We’re eager* to know!!
 
 

Update: This conversation on ethics has been continued HERE!
 
 
 
 
*Some people may have said “dying to know” there — but that’s not a phrase we care for! Please don’t be “dying” for anything — not till you have to, of course!!! Life is about living!

($) What would you do? #ethics

by EssaySnark

Boy we’ve been doing a lot of thinking on this! Some of you saw our tweet a few months back: https://twitter.com/EssaySnark/status/955934886040281088 And you saw the post that followed where we shared part of our response to the person in question. And you expressed support, and an interest in knowing what happened: https://twitter.com/MissVivienWu/status/955953433730867201 https://twitter.com/arkanian86/status/956291898200686593 And… We…

While much of the blahg is available completely for free, the content here is reserved for members with full blahg access only ($9.95/month for six months, cancel anytime). Please login to view this content or purchase a membership.

($) Offers and on-campus recruiting

by EssaySnark - Discusses , ,

(Trigger Warning: We’re talking about ETHICS again today. If that just turns your stomach, click away now.) We’ve walked through our stance on ethics and applying in a school’s binding Early Decision round plenty o’ times before on the blahg. (Which isn’t really “our stance.” It’s more like, “This is how a person of honor…

While much of the blahg is available completely for free, the content here is reserved for members with full blahg access only ($9.95/month for six months, cancel anytime). Please login to view this content or purchase a membership.

Is this unethical? Part 2

by EssaySnark 2 Comments

Last week we posed a question on ethics about the freeskiier in the Olympics who did not even attempt any difficult tricks.

Freeskiing. You know, that thing with skis in the halfpipe where they get major air and do all the flips and corkscrews?

Here’s the video if you missed it.

We’ll start by saying THANK YOU! to reader buffalo who offered some comments from first-hand perspective as a long-time skier:

And we totally agree!

This woman has moxie. She’s apparently not a big fan of doing it the way that you’re supposed to do it.

From a Boston Globe article focusing on her time at a Harvard master’s program in RE dev:

“She’s very motivated, and did very well,” [a professor she RA’ed for] said.

“Motivated” could certainly be one word used to describe Swaney. She ran for governor as a 19-year-old; tried out for the Oakland Raiders cheerleading team; and previously mounted a push to reach the Olympics as a skeleton racer for her mother’s native Venezuela. She started skiing just eight years ago, and only became serious about it after the skeleton thing didn’t take.

(Plus, she got into Harvard!)

Mostly the word that comes to mind about the freeskiing thing is “audacity” – this type of thing would not have happened even 5 or 10 years ago, it seems. Our theory is that it’s the Age of the Individual — where self-promotion is the game on social media and selfies have taken over our lives — that has created the fertile ground for this. It’s not that people have not tried to subvert the system before. It just seems like it’s more socially permissible somehow today.

How about if we back up and look at this through a larger lens?

This American woman was successful in getting a spot at the Olympics through her Hungarian ancestry.

And based on that Globe article, she had tried to do so in skeleton as a Venezuelan.

Knowing this information, does it change your perspective on whether she acted ethically to get into the 2018 Olympics?

Again, comments are open! We would love to know what you think!!

Is this unethical?

by EssaySnark 2 Comments

If you’ve been as obsessed with the Olympics as we have, then you probably already heard about the American skiier who represented Hungary and failed to qualify — not only did she fail to qualify, but she seemed to only attempt tricks that any weekend winter sports enthusiast could make.

So let’s talk about it.

What’s your take on what this competitor did?

Is it wrong? Unethical?

Please state your position on this and explain why.

The comments are open!

Just a reminder…

by EssaySnark Leave a Comment

Here’s what we said to someone recently in working through a distressing ethical issue:

A tenet of the Essay Snark business model is to help others. We had understood that to be your interest as well, based on your work history and interest in social venture with organizations such as [redacted]. We have a strong concern for ethics and especially in this crazy mixed up world, we really care about doing right, setting a role model for behavior, and very important, being careful to focus on the positive and to empower those who have the same values of ethics and shooting straight. We even have language in our site terms and conditions about the situations under which we can contact schools about our clients, which you’re welcome to check out if you’re interested. We really care about this stuff and feel like it’s one of the best ways we can hope for a better world in the future, is to support positive behaviors today.

This is also very valid:

Question: What do you do when someone is blatantly lying to you to your face?

You don’t need to lie.

by EssaySnark 2 Comments

Despite the ridiculousness coming out of the American political establishment these days and the atrocious excuse for a role model1 that that makes: YOU DO NOT NEED TO LIE ON YOUR MBA APPLICATIONS.

Here’s a story from Air Force vet turned product marketer turned entrepreneur turned professor Steve Blank about how he was told to lie on his resume by a recruiter in the early days of his tech career.

You already know how EssaySnark feels about ethics, as in, applying to Columbia during their binding Early Decision option while simultaneously applying to Harvard (and conveniently not mentioning it to us — great way to make us remember you negatively forever): If you are planning to apply to Harvard, then you cannot apply to Columbia during Early Decision. Full stop, end of story, your application strategy is now decided. Columbia will be Regular Decision for you. This is not a question of strategy, it’s a question of ETHICS. Same deal with writing your own letters of recommendation. It may seem like the easy way to go, but it is completely inappropriate (aka unethical) and a massively bad idea.

Lying is in the same category. Besides the fact that it’s wrong2, it’s simply not necessary.

If you think lying on your apps is a trivial matter that does not affect anyone — especially when you see people in power lying blatantly on a daily basis with apparently no repercussions for it — we have to ask you to think again.

Lying degrades your moral core.

Lying works against the only system of trust and decency that we have as individuals interacting in this vast universe of uncertainty. It corrodes relationships.

Lying is disrespectful to the person you are lying to.

Lying is arrogant.

Lying is desperate.

Lying is cheating.

Lying is fooling one person only, and that person is you.

Maybe you’ll lie on your apps and you’ll get in. And then you have to go through life knowing that you lied, that you did not get in on your own honest merits.

If you’re a liar, then we can guarantee that it’s because you do not think highly of yourself. You most likely feel very poorly about yourself indeed. Do you think lying to cover up some perceived flaw will make that flaw go away?

No, it compounds the flaw. Now you have a known defect, and you have layered a lie on top of it.

You know you did it, and man that’s a lousy feeling to have. Plus, what if someone finds out?

You may think that lying is a victimless crime. No harm, no foul, right?

No. The victim is you. It affects who you are and makes you less honorable each time you do it.

What more do you have to carry through this life than your honor? What else is there if not self-respect and decency?

It doesn’t matter if you know someone who lied and got in. We’re talking about YOU.

We are up on a soap box because we care about such things, and we believe strongly that in order for the world to become a better place, that ALL OF US need to make a contribution to that, individually, in our everyday lives and the actions we take. Doesn’t matter where you fall on the political spectrum, it’s up to us as individuals to change the world.

Lying matters, because it’s your own individual stance. Are you choosing to operate with the truth as the foundation of your life? If not, what are you trading it for?

It’s kind of like John McCain’s3 speech to the Senate this week where he said this :

“I hope we can again rely on humility, on our need to cooperate, on our dependence on each other to learn how to trust each other again and by so doing better serve the people who elected us. Stop listening to the bombastic loudmouths on the radio and television and the Internet. To hell with them. They don’t want anything done for the public good. Our incapacity is their livelihood.” [emphasis added]

He was addressing his fellow lawmakers, but boy oh boy does EssaySnark appreciate the sentiment. To hell with them. Can we learn how to trust each other again?

Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do

After the election last November, we came across this on Medium, The Minister of Magic Gets a Briefing on Donald Trump :

If we believe in any sense of morality, and if we believe that freedom and a good life should belong to more than just the people like us, then we must go to their defense on principle.

In the ‘Snark’s small corner of the world, the currency is truth and honor and decency, and how you present yourself, and what integrity you hold. Those are our principles. What are yours?

 

While we’re stirring a random soup of ethics and politics today:

Darden professor Bobby Parmar published this (also on Medium): How to Disobey Immoral Orders where he analyzed a famous experiment from the ’60s where study participants were asked to inflict electric shock on people who gave the wrong answer on a test. Professor Parmar says,

“‘All of us are embedded in environments where we get conflicting orders, and often it’s not obvious what the right thing to do is,’ Parmar notes, citing recent scandals like that at Wells Fargo, where employees opened bank accounts and credit lines under customers’ names without their consent. ‘A lot of us are on autopilot.’ When you factor in a paycheck or status within a group, it can be easy to put on blinders.”

Don’t be on autopilot with your apps. Don’t be so freaked out by the hype around competitiveness in admissions, and so fixated on the prize of getting in to a great school, that you get into a mindset of the ends justifying the means. You don’t need to lie to get ahead in life. Lying is the opposite of authenticity.

We know that very few BSers would go into the process intending to lie. We’re also not talking about making honest mistakes, like messing up the dates of employment when you’re filling out your app forms.

Instead, lying often happens unintentionally, or you fiddle with a fact here, and then fiddle with a fact there on a story, and it ends up morphing to fit the feedback that you were given instead of being an accurate representation of what happened.

Don’t get so strung out by the stress of this experience that you rationalize or justify. Lying is a slippery slope. It’s like heroin. Once you start, where will you stop? Better not to start at all.

 

 

We try to keep this blahg neutral to politics. But every now and then, our truth seeps out. We feel strongly that the constant drumbeat of political ridiculousness happening today is dangerous because it desensitizes all of us to what is right.

We must always take sides (Elie Wiesel)

Elie Wiesel4

 

What is your truth? Where can you stand up for it in your life? Will you adhere to it and honor yourself in your apps?


1 Sorry but WTF?!? was this Boy Scouts thing this week??? OMFG have you no sense of protocol or tradition or appropriateness at all.
2 And oh yeah, the schools do background checks.
3 In case you are unfamiliar with U.S. politics, John McCain is a long-serving Republican Senator (same party as the President) who is often called a maverick for speaking out and staying true to his conscience, even when it’s not politically expedient for him to do so; last week he had surgery on his eye and was diagnosed with brain cancer, and he returned to the Senate for this speech and a vote on the health care legislation that his party is trying to get passed.
4 Holocaust survivor; for full info please see Elie Wisel Wikipedia page

 
 
 

ETA: This came across our twitterfeed today after this was posted and is so unbelievably perfect…

 
 
 
Update 7/31/17: This showed up referenced in the Tuck Dean’s weekly newsletter, the Slaughter & Rees Report , where they spoke of the importance of restoring trust to the White House. Link is to the book they mentioned. If you’re accustomed to lying about things, then you’re already actively contributing to a dysfunctional culture around you.

Five Dysfunctions of a Team