TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
Loyalty has always been a two-way street: you are loyal to your employer for
as long as they look out for your welfare, and once they stop doing so or
begin doing things you can no longer ethically support, you seriously
consider moving your loyalty elsewhere. That doesn't mean you immediately
start looking for ways to sabotage your employer, which would be neither
wise nor ethical. Nor does it mean that you stop being loyal while you
remain employed.
Think of it this way: Nobody has any qualms about athletes playing hard for
a new team, even when they're playing against their former team. That's
because once you've switched your allegiance to a new employer, you owe
_them_ your loyalty. The ethical aspect arises, in part, from how you switch
allegiance: if it's above-board, and both parties agree (or reluctantly
accept) that you're ending one allegiance and taking up another, there's no
problem. Everyone agrees that once the old employer lets you go, they
release you from your loyalty to them. This doesn't mean that you must be
disloyal to them in the sense of actively striving to undermine them.
The issue grows considerably more complicated if the new employer hires you
specifically to use you against the old employer (e.g., as if you spent your
term of employment spying on the old employer for the benefit of the new
employer). Even if you never signed a nondisclosure agreement that legally
and ethically prohibits you from using proprietary knowledge at your new
job, it's ethically questionable whether you should be using this knowledge.
There's such a thing as divided loyalty, in which you have responsibilities
to two or more entities at the same time; for instance, I'm loyal both to my
province (Quebec) and my country (Canada), even when the two come into
conflict... which is often, and involves some careful juggling of
responsibilities.
Darwinian capitalists would say that you should use every trick in the book
to defeat your former employer for the benefit of your new employer. (That's
generally true only for as long as they're not the ones suffering; then,
they immediately start crying foul.) Me? I'd suggest that there are enough
unique situations that I hesitate to proclaim a universal rule. But just as
in sports, I don't see any ethical reason why working hard and ethically for
a new employer constitutes disloyalty to the old employer.
--Geoff Hart, geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
Forest Engineering Research Institute of Canada
580 boul. St-Jean
Pointe-Claire, Que., H9R 3J9 Canada
"Wisdom is one of the few things that look bigger the further away it
is."--Terry Pratchett
---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as:
archive -at- raycomm -dot- com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
Send administrative questions to ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com -dot- Visit http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.
