August 25, 2008 at 3:27 pm
I agree that Googling for answers to coding problems isn't cheating, anymore than buying a reference book for the same purpose would be cheating. More people should look for help when they really don't know what they are doing. It's different for things like the QoTD, if I'm supposedly being tested about my personal knowledge.
However, I'd like to ask this question: If you caught someone cheating in your workplace (lying on their timesheets, taking credit for others' work on a project, making a promise to a customer that you know they can't keep) , what would you do? If you were their boss what would you do? If you were in a different department? Does it make a difference if they are already regarded as a top performer? If they are a friend of yours?
Reading all the posts, I realize that I have tolerated this kind of behaviour almost everywhere I've ever worked. I don't feel good about it, but I'm not sure I would have felt good about getting self-righteous and trying to call them on it either.
__________________________________________________
Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain. -- Friedrich Schiller
Stop, children, what's that sound? Everybody look what's going down. -- Stephen Stills
August 25, 2008 at 3:43 pm
The only reason you are a member on this site because you want to better perform your job. And this does include the research and it does exclude relying on the unreliable answers. Your boss will not be happy with you if you create a stored procedure named GO that will work half of the time and you will not be telling him that yah, I did that because it was the QOD answer.
So let's call things their real names: cheating on the certification test or job interview is cheating. Looking up the answer if the question says "do not test or look up before answering" would be cheating too, but you know what? I even don't answer these questions because the "educated guess" will not do anybody any good, it is as pointless as guessing the lottery ticket numbers. If you don't know, you should learn, not select the random answer.
Regards,Yelena Varsha
August 25, 2008 at 4:01 pm
Hopefully, I'd do the right thing. I have been in such a situation. I was working for a computer manufacturer many yers ago as a computer operator. As I was working on my shift report (wanted to get a head start on it), I received an email refusal from my supervisor regarding an email I had sent him earlier. It was 03:00 and I was wondering what he was doing on the system at that time of the morning. I checked the system, and found where he was logged in to the system. Only problem, the console he was using was in our printer room. Taking a quick glance into the room I saw one of my co-workers.
What would you do?
Here is what I did. First, I called her over to a quiet part of the computer room and confronted her regarding the incident. I explained to her that she had just violated a trust inherent in our position. She had sent our supervisor an email, and decided she didn't want him to read it. I told her what she did was wrong. She should have waited for him to come in that morning, and go to him, tell him she had sent an email to him and that after some serious thought that she'd rather he not read it. I knew our supervisor, and that he'd honor her request, and simply delete it.
She asked me what would happen next. I told her she needed to go to our supervisor and admit to him what she had done this morning. She thought I'd just go and tell him. I explained to her that it would be better for her to admit her error and let the chips fall where the may. I based this on my own personal experience while in the Air Force (which I won't detail here, except to say it worked quite well in my favor -- admit your mistakes).
Well, she waited, and when he was supposed to be in, she went out to his cubicle, and he wasn't in. Our administrative assistant told her that he would not be in until 10:00. She came in and told that, said she wasn't going to wait and left. About 10 minutes later as i was getting ready to leave, our admin assistant came in to the computer room looking for her. Our supervisor had just come in to work. Now I was between a rock and a hard place. I couldn't leave knowing what had happened and that our supervisor was now at work.
I went to him, asked to talk to him privately. In a conference room I told him what had transpired. He was p*****. I had never seen him that red. I told him I had told her to come tell him what she had done, and asked him to give her a chance to come to him herself. He agreed, and I left for the day.
The next day, when he came in, I told her he was in and she looked at me and said he already knew because I had told him. I told her yes, but I asked him to let her come to him and admit what had occurred. Several days later while working, she came up to me and apologized saying that I was right. She had finally talked to our supervisor. What happened during that conversation, I have no idea. As a group leader it wasn't my place to know the details.
It is my hope that I would not change my ways from then to now. So far, I haven't had an incident where this was the case. (Knock on wood).
😎
August 25, 2008 at 6:23 pm
I think it is all summed up in the title of Karl Eller's book, 'Integrity is all you've got'. I met Mr. Eller when I was about 8. My dad always taught me that in life, all a man has is his word. If you cheat, face it, you are lying. In the short term, you might get that promotion, heck you might even get a increase in salary. Keep in mind that every morning when you look at yourself in the mirror, YOU will know that you cheated.
I have no problem giving credit where credit is due. It wasn't so much that I came up with the idea, as much as I was smart enough to know it would fix the problem at hand.
August 26, 2008 at 4:50 am
Very interesting points made 🙂
I think (and I'm only assuming) that almost everyone has at some point gone for the easy option and 'cheated' as such. Woudln't say that's a bad thing as long as your underlying personality and character is one that leads you learn, progress and become better and in our job as DBA this is a must.
The more worrying point about Steve's original editorial, I think, is that many young people today do not want to put the effort in, they want it all with the minimum of effort and they want to be paid with the minimum of effort...that's not a good trend. So the young are prepared to cheat more or gain an unfair advantage purely out of laziness.
So why is this, well I think a lot of has to do with the next generation up. We have managed to get good jobs through hard work and our children have benefited by essentially having whatever they want without trying to hard. We live in a culture where the words fail and underachieve are not allowed so our schools are (dare I say it) failing to produce individuals who understand what it is like to fail. So young people today think any amount of work (even very little) warrants a job with good pay. The net effect is that people like me are trying to employ people who supposedly have all the required skills but in reality have either cheated or gone through a system of education that simply will not fail them...so they are getting a false sense of achievement.
Hmmm sorry...sort of ranted a bit 🙂
What is the cure? That's too hugh....probably would include such things as improve our education philosophy/quality... to stop spoiling your kids...but what do I know.
I apologise if I've offended anyone as Ive made a few broad assumptions....they are after all only the opinions of one man 🙂
Take it easy
Graeme
August 26, 2008 at 6:49 am
Graeme,
Nicely put. Being too competitive is as problematic as not enough, but I do agree that this next generation sees a little too much "evenness" across the board.
I know every generation has seen the next work less, that's true, but I think my generation growing up caught the tail end of having to work hard at a young age. At some point in the 80s, at least in the US, we became so prosperous that I think a tipping point was reached. We got more success and enjoyment from life for much, much less work. More conveniences, and we drove into the information age.
Don't know how to fix it, but starting with children is probably a good way to do it.
August 26, 2008 at 9:12 am
These things even out over time. Not everyone in the "younger generation" has it easy growing up, and not everyone who has it easy lacks a work ethic. I see a lot of them putting their hearts, and integrity, into their work. I believe they will mostly rise to the top, because in the real world, you tend to turn to people you trust. This applies to employees, managers, and vendors.
Chaos theory teaches us that little influences can have great effects in complex systems. This applies to organizations and societies as well. The question isn't what society can do; the question is what each of one of us can do to encourage those that we come in contact with.
Great forum topic.
__________________________________________________
Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain. -- Friedrich Schiller
Stop, children, what's that sound? Everybody look what's going down. -- Stephen Stills
August 26, 2008 at 9:15 am
In the discussion about black or white, right or wrong I would like to add one thing, We are all in the shades of gray. We are not all right or all wrong at this time. However we have the choice to seek to become more right or more wrong.
We choose by what we say and do. Evil or good we need only to decide will we make to effort to be better, or worse, or seek only to stay the same.
I have the belief and I read and teach the book. But I also know that I have problems and those are the things I seek to change. I do not cheat as a rule, I do not lie as a rule, I have never murdered and so on. But I seek to do the right thing in all things and ask forgiveness for those things I get wrong, and try to remove the beam from my eye before I look at the speck in others.
Miles...
Not all gray hairs are Dinosaurs!
August 26, 2008 at 9:27 am
Hmmmmm....
Of course you cannot tar an entire generation with the same brush...but I do speak from experience as I used to work in education....and it was quite scary 🙂
Great thread everyone 🙂
Graeme
August 26, 2008 at 9:46 am
"All I want is an honest week's pay for an honest day's work." --Steve Martin
Peter, you mention looking yourself in the mirror. There's far too many people who are amoral. I don't believe that all people are fundamentally evil, I will accept that they are fundamentally apathetic. Our culture, both American and increasingly world-wide, is all about the Almighty $$$, the general attitude seemingly is I'm not winning if I'm not making more money every year, forget about the little guy, and preferably at the cost of my enemies/competitors.
A lot rolls downhill from the top. We've been taught that the government is the paragon of all things good, then we have congresscritters who overstate their military service, cheat on their spouses when said spouse is dying of cancer, we have an author of a book on morality who has a gambling habit, drive drunk and get away with it when they get caught, etcetera, etcetera.
People are not inherently perfect, but they can try to be. But when people who put on the image of perfection and take the higher moral ground are found to have feet of clay (and legs and torsos and brains of clay), it's all the more disappointing. We've developed a nanny attitude that we don't have to take responsibility for raising our kids, heck, we don't have to be personally responsible! Someone else will be! So we end up with people who won't work as much as we'd like them to, take credit for things that they weren't responsible, and who don't have a problem with lying, cheating, and stealing.
Looking in the mirror is not a problem for people without a conscience.
I have a conscience, and I've quit jobs over it.
As a society, we've abdicated responsibility for teaching ethics and morality, regardless of a religious context, and we're seeing the results. I'm not saying everyone should run off to church, religion isn't for everyone. But I think everyone should be taught ethics and morality from an early age, maybe eventually things can change for the better and we can have a reasonably honest society, if we ever had one to begin with.
And just to be clear, let's make sure we're clear on terms as morals and ethics are similar but not the same thing:
eth·ics –plural noun
1.(used with a singular or plural verb) a system of moral principles: the ethics of a culture.
2.the rules of conduct recognized in respect to a particular class of human actions or a particular group, culture, etc.: medical ethics; Christian ethics.
3.moral principles, as of an individual: His ethics forbade betrayal of a confidence.
4.(usually used with a singular verb) that branch of philosophy dealing with values relating to human conduct, with respect to the rightness and wrongness of certain actions and to the goodness and badness of the motives and ends of such actions.
mor·al –adjective
1.of, pertaining to, or concerned with the principles or rules of right conduct or the distinction between right and wrong; ethical: moral attitudes.
2.expressing or conveying truths or counsel as to right conduct, as a speaker or a literary work; moralizing: a moral novel.
3.founded on the fundamental principles of right conduct rather than on legalities, enactment, or custom: moral obligations.
4.capable of conforming to the rules of right conduct: a moral being.
5.conforming to the rules of right conduct (opposed to immoral): a moral man.
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[font="Arial"]Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves or we know where we can find information upon it. --Samuel Johnson[/font]
August 26, 2008 at 10:44 am
Hey Graeme 🙂 My wife is still in U.S. education (PreKindergarten-1st Grade) and it keeps getting scarier. Teachers are now expected not only to teach ABCs, but to turn children into well-behaved and social individuals with values that their parents do not teach. More than one child between the age of 4 and 6 has said "F__ you." to my wife.
Despite that, I still see young people coming into the workplace who are quite willing to work for a living. Yes, some more than others, but as you said we can't tar everyone with the same brush. My father was a child of the depression and WWII and it is unquestionable that some of these "kids" (and I) had a much easier time growing up than his generation. I'm just saying that not everyone of my generation had it as easy as I did. Some had it tougher than my dad. Even growing up today there are haves and have nots.
Lets also keep in mind that modern companies may demand more hours per week than were the norm from the decades when he was in the workforce. When I was growing up, all the businesses in my town were closed on Sunday. How many DBAs now have to be on call 24-7?
__________________________________________________
Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain. -- Friedrich Schiller
Stop, children, what's that sound? Everybody look what's going down. -- Stephen Stills
August 26, 2008 at 11:40 am
I have been in the work force for 30 years. I have observed family, friends, fellow employees, business contacts, and personal contacts in the work force for 30 years. It's my impression that people are working *less* these days, not *more* as they often claim. Further, there's more distraction at work than ever before. How many personal email messages are sent during the work day? How much personal web browsing is done during the work day? How many personal cell phone calls happen during the work day? I think people are spending less time physically at work, and even less time mentally at work.
August 26, 2008 at 11:45 am
bhovious (8/26/2008)
Hey Graeme 🙂 My wife is still in U.S. education (PreKindergarten-1st Grade) and it keeps getting scarier. Teachers are now expected not only to teach ABCs, but to turn children into well-behaved and social individuals with values that their parents do not teach. More than one child between the age of 4 and 6 has said "F__ you." to my wife.Despite that, I still see young people coming into the workplace who are quite willing to work for a living. Yes, some more than others, but as you said we can't tar everyone with the same brush. My father was a child of the depression and WWII and it is unquestionable that some of these "kids" (and I) had a much easier time growing up than his generation. I'm just saying that not everyone of my generation had it as easy as I did. Some had it tougher than my dad. Even growing up today there are haves and have nots.
Lets also keep in mind that modern companies may demand more hours per week than were the norm from the decades when he was in the workforce. When I was growing up, all the businesses in my town were closed on Sunday. How many DBAs now have to be on call 24-7?
Yes, we work in a global economy now. Being on call nights and weekends is now part of the job. I think what makes a differnece is how the company works with those of us on call. Do we get compensated for the extra hours when called upon, or are we still expected to put in our normal 40 as well, even if it means we are working 70 hours in a week due to issues/problems during the off hours.
Luckily, at the moment, I also work in education and our IT group isn't on call 24 x 7. But I came from an environment where I was, and toward the end, there wasn't much in compensation for the extra work.
😎
September 11, 2008 at 11:11 am
Man this hits close to home... interviewed a developer/DBA a few months back who didn't know how to do a backup.
Makes me wonder why people lie on their resumes?
Some unsuspecting company might hire this dude and stake thier company's future on his guidance.... :unsure:
September 11, 2008 at 11:18 am
Mark,
The problem is that this guy might have been "successful" as a DBA at his last job. Perhaps another group ran backups using Tivoli or something like that and he never had to do it.
Andy Warren and I had this debate when he was amazed a few years ago at hiring DBAs. He found that some of the poorer candidates, like the one you had, were actually successful for years as DBAs because they didn't have to do much and they didn't have any big failures.
Course he could just be lying as well.
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