Now this borders on ingenious and unethical and takes the concern for employee engagement to a whole new level. I was stunned to read last week about a software developer who literally outsourced his own job to China! That’s right, he gave what I would imagine to be about a quarter or third of his pay and outsourced all of his work to China. Instead of doing the actual work he would spend the day surfing the web.
What is so remarkable about it is that his performance reviews seemed to be stellar and it was even reported that he was the best in the building at ‘his’ job. The question is, should he be rewarded or fired? He has certainly shown the company how it can save lots of dollars while maintaining good quality work. On the other hand, since he did not reveal his activity to the company, he is lying about his work and as creative as he is I am sure that his work ethic and values do not reflect those of his company. My decision is that he should be terminated on that basis alone. However, a management system that could allow this behavior to occur without detection is equally culpable.
My last thought is that this behavior indicates that the management of this company needs some help in how to bring out the best in people.
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January 22, 2013 at 9:17 pm
Having seen this story posted several times, I have pondered whether this was ethical behaviour on the part of the employee. I have struggled with this and have concluded that it really depends on the terms of his employment. If he was given this job as a fixed term private contractor, this would be perfectly acceptable.
It is the fact that he was an employee that made the difference as you so astutely point out. What though is his responsibility to the company? To get the job done or to show the company how to get the job done as cheaply as possible? If it was the former surely he fulfilled his responsibilities to the company. If the latter, then perhaps he was remiss in his actions. I would be very interested what the legality of this situation is as I’m pretty sure that this should shed some light.
Thanks again for your post. It really crystallized my thoughts on the matter!
Darragh