SMARTER STRATEGIES

Class of 2009: Preventing 'Workers Gone Wild'

Joe Maglitta | Date: 06-16-09 | Comments

Many new grads have strong tech skills but fuzzy ethics. Here�s how to help the next wave navigate today�s murky workplace (and strengthen your own backbone in the process).

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Class of 2009: Preventing 'Workers Gone Wild'

It's mid-June, and the last of this year�s graduates have flown Harvard Square like so many crimson and black-robed pigeons. I have two immediate thoughts: 1) Maybe now it will be easier to find a parking space near Bartley�s Burger Cottage. 2) Will this next generation of smart technology creators and users become �Workers Gone Wild�?

Thanks to excellent curriculums at Harvard University, nearby MIT and other leading institutions across the country and the globe, Class of 2009 computer and business grads are well-bred and, technologically speaking, already soaring.

But I worry about the new work force�s ability to navigate (should they actually find a job) a private and public sector landscape that is, ethically speaking, pretty badly spattered. (Insert your favorite tale of organizational misbehavior here.)

Questions at Commencement
- Are today�s tech-savvy grads like strong beautiful young birds, flying fast and high in ways that could hurt themselves, their employers, maybe even their society and planet?
- Will new grads decide to emulate the Google guys and vow to do no evil?
- Or, perhaps pushed by choking economy, will they choose to fly with darker technological and business angels? Will they look the other way, or simply not wonder, as millions have, about how and what they and their employers are really doing? (Hello Wall Street and NSA.)
- If things got really bad, could talented but jobless tech grads get sucked into lucrative roles helping spammers, scammers, money launderers, and international organized crime, drug lords and corrupt officials? Far-fetched? It�s already happened in Brazil, Russia, Colombia and elsewhere, according to British journalist Misha Glenny in McMafia, his eye-opening new book on global crime.
- More mundanely, do these young workers have the sense not to circumvent corporate security policy or unthinkingly post sensitive information on the Web?
Wanted: Moral IT Rookies

I�m not the only one concerned. The Society for Information Management (SIM) last year asked more than 300 members about the top workplace skills they wanted in candidates for entry-level and midlevel IT jobs. Ethics and morals topped the list, beating communication skills, business acumen and other hot traits.

"It's hot on everyone's minds," said Jerry Luftman, a professor at Stevens Institute of Technology and SIM's vice president of academic affairs. Reports of college cheating scandals and workers' willingness to circumvent security, among others, fueled concern. �This whole issue of ethics and morals is becoming paramount to IT executives," he said.

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