On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 1:57 PM, ss <[email protected]> wrote: > Something is bound to give, sooner or later.
This doesn't work very well for the industry either. When people are forced into doing something, they begin to hate their unjust lives, and in the process lose their capacity to act ethically because they increasingly view the world through a harsh lens of real politik. I find it very common in India, and to a slightly lesser degree in the US, but not so much in Europe that people choose to work in IT mostly because of the money, and thus develop a mercenary attitude. They are bright individuals, but they don't attempt to act ethically, or advance the state of the art - they are merely going about making more money, in any way possible. This leads to a very vicious promotion chasing culture where people don't really care about doing the right thing. I've known IIT educated programmers who should know better who deliberately introduced bugs into code or performed other unethical acts so that they may pretend to fix it and can claim false success. This isn't very different from the love that middle class Indians had for the medical profession in the '80s when it paid better than any other qualification. The result: a number of clinics that seem more interested in robbing the patient of his money than in performing the cure. Under this system it become hard to do good work even if personally one isn't ethically challenged. Ironically, acting unethically is a major source of stress for many, since it forces them to live in an atmosphere of fear or guilt. Ultimately when the bulk of their life has been traded for cash money many Indians and Asians seem to find that they don't know what to do with the money. They have no hobbies outside of work; or a creative soul to nourish. The cliche that money is a means to an end, and not an end in itself needs reminding.
