What projects do some web developers not accept and why?
The subject of morals and ethics in business can be complicated since it is very subjective. For most people, there is an obvious group of projects that a ten-foot barge pole wouldn’t touch (ie, the ones that are clearly illegal). It does get interesting, however, once you start delving into the gray areas, where things go from glaringly unethical to just plain morally questionable.
Before we begin, a brief definition of some key terms is required:
Ethics: the discipline that deals with what is good and bad and with duty and moral obligation.
Morality: Conformity to the ideals of correct human conduct.
Principles – guiding sense of the requirements and obligations of correct conduct.
(Source: merriam-webster and dictionary.com).
They all look the same, don’t they, especially ethics and morality? It could be said that morality and ethics are more universal or general systems applicable to society in general. Principles seem to be something more personal, and this is often where the ‘gray area’ exists.
Why will some web developers accept a project and others won’t? Let’s explore this question by taking a look at some real world examples, or ‘mini-case studies’ if you will. Some of these cases are drawn from my own personal experience, while others have been passed down to me from colleagues.
The vegetarian and the slaughterhouse – this is something that happened to me a couple of years ago. I was offered a contract to produce a website for a meat slaughterhouse (ie slaughterhouse). What is the problem you may ask? I am vegetarian. This is not much of a dilemma, however, I politely declined the contract and referred the client to someone equally capable. This is clearly a case of my own personal principles in action; most carnivorous developers would have no problem accepting the project.
The Designer and Sex Toys: This happened to a graphic designer I know. The company he was working for at the time was hired to develop an e-commerce website for a sex toy retailer. He asked to be excluded from the project because he felt it was unclear if the products being sold on the website in any way supported the exploitation of women.
Debt collectors and domain squatters: I know of a case where a developer refused to take a project from a debt collection agency and another contract from a “domain squatter” (i.e. a person who buys a web address with the intention of rescuing it to its rightful owner). Rejecting a debt collector is interesting considering that it is a legitimate business. His reasoning was that some debt collectors have a reputation for using nefarious means to achieve their ends.
Blood and Fight: This story is about a game programmer. Part of his job was to code particle effects in a wrestling game. When a fighter’s avatar was hit, drops of blood spurted out and stained the canvas floor where he fell. Shortly after working on the game, he left the company. He took this experience as a sign of things to come.
To the Enterprising Slave Trader: A developer was offered $15,000 USD to create a website for the purpose of human trafficking. Needless to say, he turned down the project and never dealt with that particular ‘businessman’ again.
Many other projects of a questionable nature were mentioned during the course of my research for this article, including; work-from-home schemes, spam, government grant scams, MSN ID harvesters, website clones, viruses, adware, stock option trading systems, religious websites, etc.
The fact that there is so much questionable software means that there are developers who have no problem producing it. In their mind, there’s probably an acceptable reason for undertaking the job, or maybe they just don’t care.
There is also this argument: “for enough money, you would do it”. This basically says that barring any illegal activity, a person would take a project for the right price. This argument is spurious at best, since a situation would never arise where it could actually come true. Why? Because there will always be someone willing to do it for less than the exorbitant fee required to bypass a person’s “ethical barriers.”
There is some irony and even hypocrisy in some of these stories. For example, I rejected a website that sold animal meat, but I didn’t have the qualifications to create a site that uses “human meat” as a marketing tool (ie an online store for a sex toy retailer). Personally, I don’t see a problem as long as no one has been harmed, cheated, or taken advantage of as part of the production or sale of the product. I suppose this shows that what is morally abhorrent to one person is logically justifiable to another.