Ethical Dilema

I am having an ethical dilema here. I have worked at my present job for about 11 months. I was told on Friday that they are eliminating my position to free up cash for some whoopty-ti-do Doctor. My dilema lies in this: I have developed a database along with the interface that is accessable to our employees via network access. I have worked very hard and long to work out the bugs and tweak the performance giving them a pretty dam powerful application. Now they want me to try and teach someone else(who they will pay peanuts) how to do my job who isnt qualified and barley know his way around XP not to mention 0 programming skills. I understand that i should fulfill my contract obligations but is it unethical of me to refuse to try and train this said person. These doctors have no clue as to how things are done. They think my job was as simple as learning how to use Microsoft word. I find thier lack of respect and ignorance to be retarded. Now I know why medical schooling takes so long. J/K. Should I refuse to do this and if i do refuse is it unethical?

Easy.

Go ahead and train the peanut guy....if it is as complicated as you say, he won't cut the mustard. Nor will he remember enough to pass on to another.

Then offer your consulting services. Of course your consulting services bill at a MUCH higher rate than you presently receive. Ideally, you will work less and make almost as much.

I feel your pain with the medical people. My team supports a county public health department full of medical professionals who swear they know more than us because of all those letters after their names. I've had to go get certifications, just so I can get comparable quantities of letters. It is so silly at best...

I feel a shift in this thread.

Shift happens.

Schwanson posted exactly what I was thinking as I read about your situation. You should really emphasize that while you're happy to train the replacement and explain ahead of time that you dont' think he or she will be able to handle the nuts and bolts of changes to the system, but you'd be happy to work consulation for them.

best of luck!

Thank you all for the replies. Very good advice. Taco that pic is hilarious.

And so true.

Check out the website, despair.com. They're classic!

My favorite: Meetings: None of us is as dumb as all of us.

Or this one, with a pic of an Aztec temple. Sacrifice: All we ask here is that you give us your heart.



But to answer your questions: Yes, you should train the guy. But note, I didn't say how well or how much effort you should put into it

As I read it you've developed a robust application for them. Does IP play into this at all, or does your contract preclude something like that ? I would provide instant obsolecsent training and go the consulting route. Especially if this app is proprietary to you.

In my old company they not only outsourced the entire DB admin, networking and Unix teams, they did it right before Christmas (like, er, now) but with no exact stop date, and they told them to train their replacements. That sounded like the the best recipe for sabotage imaginable. Somebody in that group is going to be pissed off enough to do something really evil, and they'll have the technical skills to do it, too.

Anyway, I'd spend my whole time writing up confusing "training documentation" (and not do anything else - "sorry, I'm training, I can't fix problem X, it's one or the other". A huge collection of hyperlinked Word and Powerpoint docs that look terrific but mean absolutely nothing. Oh, and as many process flowcharts as you can make up. It's a creative challenge, that.

I completely agree with this. It's ethical and it tends to work this way, hands down. Also, the people you are leaving generally tend to be too cheap and too stupid to pay you for good documentation. So train the guy, in good faith. Leave with a clear conscience. Stick them with a really big follow up consulting fee, they deserve it.

.

and maybe a roundhouse kick.

Us computer guys rule the world, you people just don't know it yet. lol

Yet another vote for what Schwanson said. You will hear from your ex-employers again.

It might be entertaining to lay odds on how long it will take before you get the call, though.

Jess

Yes, but you have to make sure there is a way they can call you for contract work while saving face. For some people, its so impossible for them to even give the appearance of making a mistake, or changing their minds, or retracting a position, that they will go out and hire someone else to reverse engineer what has already been done before they will call back the original programmer.

Sad but true ... never under-estimate how stubborn mid-level managers can be, once they select a course.

So, sometimes it calls for careful groundwork to pull something like this off.

Good luck!

* Putting on my professional hat as a career sysadmin and programmer... *

Under most employment agreements, the work you did on company time to develop that database belongs to the company. So they are within their rights to insist that you at least leave them with adequate documentation to allow them to keep using that database.

They are rather reprehensible to let you go at this time of year and to demand you train a replacement. That they have done so is something I would document in writing, for reference when speaking to future employers. But take the high ground, and don't sabotage the system. Their inadequate staffing will do that for you, and your hands remain clean.

As a professional, you are much better off to take the higher ground. Do what you can to train the poor schlep that will attempt to take your place. Ensure that he, as well as any of your former co-workers who has a clue as to the value of your work, knows how to contact you after your last day, for consulting services. And make it very clear to your employer that you do not believe the replacement has the experience and skills to maintain the system, and that after your last day, you will only be available to them as a paid consultant.

Let them hang themselves, and get on with your own life. You, and your future employers, will know that you fulfilled your part of your employment contract honestly, and you can walk out of there with your head held high. And future employers will respect that.

In the unlikely event that they do come crawling back to you, about four times your earlier hourly wage is a good low-end starting point for consulting fees, with a minimum of a day of fees for any instance that they call you in. If they balk at that, point out that as an independant consultant, you must cover your own medical insurance and retirement benefits, and the like.

Teach the guy, then take your powerful application, along with your talent and skills to a company that will appreciate you.