My ethical stance
IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: Iām writing this post as a personal reminder, not to tell anyone what they should do, convince anybody of anything, impart moral lessons or grant any kind of ālicensesā. Life is hard and I have enough on my plate with setting my own moral compass š
Iām currently in a ārelaxedā search of new professional challenges. By ārelaxedā I mean that I have not openly published it and Iām not intensively searching: for the moment, I just knocked a couple of doors (from people/companies I feel a high level of alignment) and entered a few processes with people who directly approached me (Iām such a privileged person and I feel SO LUCKY š).
Still, this is a moment when Iām asking myself questions such as:
- What kind of industries do I feel specially motivated to join?
- What kind of industries or business models or organizational behaviour I donāt want to join?
- What are my āethical red linesā? How big is the āgrey areaā to me?
This is not the first time that I pose myself this kind of questions. I remembered that Edu Ferro (a reference to me in so many ways) has his own āethical stanceā published here, so I thought it would be a perfect moment to write down mine. And I want to be so specific as possible; otherwise it would be useless for myself.
For different reasons (i.e. there are higher and lower levels of ācriticalityā in this list) and with no particular order and whithout this being an exhaustive list, I prefer not to work in:
- Fast fashion (and anything directly related)
- Traditional banks (especially those with proven record of abuses and illegalities)
- āBuy now, pay laterā or any kind of āfast creditā business models
- Porn industry
- Military industry
- Casinos, gambling and bets (ābeen there, done thatā)
- Any green-washing, or generally speaking, āethical-washingā activity
- Crypto businesses and alike
- Activities where people can quickly lose a lot of money
- Delivery riders business models that often exploit riders, typically misclassified as āindependent contractorsā
- Business models whose main goal is encouraging wild consumerism of any kind
- Highly polluting activities
- Anything where there is no full transparency about the business model and how they earn money
- Any activity without āfull honestyā: lying, cheating, hiding relevant information or ātrickingā their users, providers, employees, etc.
And I write these words being fully conscious about my own incoherences: with the current complexity of the world and society, I donāt think that itās possible to live on it being āfully coherentā. Sometimes I would even say that it isnāt āhealthyā. Long life to the cognitive dissonances! š
Despite my efforts to minimize it, Iām acutely aware of being part of a global community that continuously exploits other regions and people. Shame on me. Shame on us.
Regarding some topics, my views have evolved in the past, and I hope they will continue to do so in the future. Still, Iām not always in peace with that, which I think is good š
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