Ethics and Paying Rent

Judas Returning the Thirty Silver Pieces (detail) by Rembrandt van Rijn, 1629

Inevitably, when I bring up the topic of designers working ethically, someone will reply with some flavor of “that’s nice, but I have rent to pay.” Feel free to substitute “rent” for student loans, childcare, medical costs and various other very real and very valid concerns. Along with what I’m guessing is a not-insignificant amount of designers who are filling in that blank with lifestyle to which I’ve grown accustomed.

Let’s deal with the first group, since I have close to zero fucks to give for the second group. Either way, this promises to be less than an enjoyable article for both groups. It will neither give you permission to work unethically, nor outline a set of situations where working unethically is acceptable. If you think those reasons exist, you’d be wrong.

The fallacy of success

Where does this idea that you have to be open to tossing your ethics out the window to be successful come from? That’s worth exploring a bit. Certainly, if we look around at the current landscape, we’ll find plenty of examples of people who behaved—or continue to behave—unethically and have done very well for themselves. From Travis Kalanick to Donald Trump, we see people who’ve broken the rules (pardon me — disrupted!), skirted regulation, and have generally behaved abominably towards others, to much success. In fact, it could be reasonably argued that in those particular cases, their success is due to their lack of ethics.

Aim higher

But if we look closely at those same individuals, we also see the price they’ve paid for their unethical success—the lack of trust, the constant vigilance, the scrutiny, and the eventual comeuppance. History won’t remember these people kindly, and for that matter, the present isn’t viewing them very kindly either.

Don’t ask how you’re going to pay your rent working ethically. Ask why you’re open to behaving unethically in the first place.

Are they successful? Yes. For now. And it’s that little for now that you have to add that should give you pause. Their success is a house built on sand. Can you be successful by throwing ethics out the window? Yes you can. You can also eat three burritos in one sitting. But in both situations, that act is coming back up on you and it won’t be pretty.

The fallacy of the road to success being paved by unethical work is just that, a fallacy. It’s not a road. It’s a dead end alley. It may provide a safe haven from the elements for a few minutes, but going from alley to alley to alley, hoping you don’t get stopped, is a horrible way to complete a journey.

The slippery slope

We’ve all been in spots where we’ve done things that were ethically questionable. We’re human beings. We’re messy. For example, I think we can all agree that stealing is wrong. Yet none of us would hesitate to steal the proverbial loaf of bread to keep our families from starving. The problem comes when theft goes from being an emergency method to stave off starvation to the primary means through which you earn your income.

Throughout your career, you’ll find yourself in spots where your only options might be doing a little work for one of the Travis Kalanicks of the world, or starving. By all means, don’t starve! Just be honest with yourself about what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and for how long you’re going to do it. Because once you lose sight of that, the justifications start. (“I’m going to change things from the inside.” ) And realize if you keep making those decisions, they end up defining your career. The idea that you can work unethically, build up a reputation, and then swing that ship around into ethical waters is also a fallacy. By that point, you do indeed have a reputation, but not the one you wanted. You’ll find a bad reputation is the hardest thing in the world to change.

Don’t worry, this worker is changing things from the inside

No one values the shame workers

Think of it from the point of view of the person asking you to do the work. They’re probably not totally unaware they’re asking you to do some shady shit. They’ve probably convinced themselves it’s a stop-gap. A temporary bit of shade to get the company back on track, perhaps. For example, I doubt Uber designed Greyball because they wanted to be evil. My guess is they imagined it was a necessarily small evil that helped them achieve a greater good. (You can justify anything if you try hard enough. Or just want to.) But in the end, everyone associated with that project is covered in shame. And your managers are probably looking at you the same way they looked at their Korean escorts when they were done with them. You were a means to an end they never want to see or think of again.

This is not the path to respect. And it is not the path to a long career. This is a path to a career doing short stints of shame work. (I’ll spare you the happy ending pun.) There are no happy endings. (Sorry, couldn’t do it.)

What the fuck man I just wanna design stuff

I get it. You like to make things. You became a designer because you enjoyed designing. I did too. But there’s more to this job than that. We work within a tight fragile ecosystem where our labor has repercussions. And you are lucky enough to be a designer at a time when design is taken seriously and when design has power. With that power comes responsibility. You are responsible for what you put into the world. And you are responsible for the effect your work has on the world. And right now designers (I define this term broadly, by the way. Perk up your ears developers and engineers.) are creating new inroads in all manner of things. We’re designing software for self-driving cars. We’re designing software that intimately touches peoples lives. We’re designing software that puts people in strangers’ cars. We’re designing databases that track immigrants for eventual deportation. Some of these things needs to be designed with the strictest ethics in mind. Some of these things don’t pass an ethical test and shouldn’t be designed at all!

So I get that you like making things. But making things at the expense of someone else’s freedom is fucked. Not putting what you’re designing through an ethical test is not only just lazy, it’s dangerous. Feigning ignorance that ethics is not part of your job as a designer is no longer valid. Knowing that it’s part of the job and ignoring it is criminal.

The real question

A better question than how you’re going to pay your rent working ethically might be why you are even open to behaving unethically? Look around at the other professionals you interact with on a daily basis. Your doctor. Your grocer. Your mechanic. Your congressperson! How would you react to knowing they’re entertaining doing their job unethically? Think of the ones you’d be appalled by. And the ones you expect it from. And your relationship to the people on both those lists. I don’t want designers on the same list you just put your congressperson on. I’d be honored to be on the same list as your butcher.