Doing the 3 Ps…

Personal, Professional and Politic.

One of the great things about being brought up in a middle-class English family is that you’re taught manners.

For example, “If you can’t say anything nice about someone, then don’t say anything.” 

Or “Don’t tell lies about someone if you can’t prove them.”

And “If someone gives you a present or does you a favour, you should return a present or favour.”

We then grow up a bit, go to university, have new experiences, for better or worse, but those fundemental social rules remain with us.

Throughout the course of our lives, things change. We take jobs, we get upset by people at those jobs, and sometimes we even leave jobs because of it.

And as we grow older, we recognise higher social structures, and rules that come with them.  For example, if you join a professional organisation, such as the IET or IEEE, part of the membership criteria is abiding by their codes of practice.

Of course, joining such an organisation shows you to be someone who is prepared to further that organisation’s cause, and in doing so, you are prepared to follow the by-laws. And as a professional, you stick by them.

Naturally, there are some companies that suffer from a moral malnutrition…   These are companies that like to use the current recession as an excuse to get rid of staff who they couldn’t remove in a more favourable economic climate.  It doesn’t just apply to the technology industry, either; I know of plenty of people with excellent track records who have been forced out from their jobs without their employers following correct procedures.

As one of those people, I’ll just say this: Stay professional, stay focussed, and stay supportive of colleagues in the same situation.

And I’d just like to mention to a certain storage technology company near Oxford, that there’s no need to continually place barbed comments in your job adverts… 

It does you no favours, and just makes you look stupid.