8/22/2015–100 years ahead it won’t matter that I helped my company sell soap.
Replace “soap” with any other company’s major product and the same is likely true. I don’t consider cigarettes as noble a product to sell as smoking cessation classes, but they do compete for the same dollar, and both meet a customer need as proven by their existence in the market. Business exists to meet customer needs, so the only way one product could be inherently better (more noble) to sell is if it’s meeting a more noble need, or maybe meeting the need of a more noble person. In this light, soap does neither, compared to cigarettes. How could it when the target customer could be the same and the needs met by each are not inherently noble, nor un-noble?
I’m very close to feeling that “cleanliness” is not as un-noble as the benefits of smoking (“image”, “relaxation” or “addiction satisfaction”) but I’m not about to label it “noble” by any means. Thus, while I’d never work for a cigarette company because I believe it would be immoral, I don’t claim that all products fall somewhere on a spectrum of morality. Maybe a good thought exercise would be to evaluate if a product/service is on that spectrum, then locate it before accepting a job with the employer. That suggests it wouldn’t matter how ethically the company went about selling, but that may be a smaller concern. In any case, unless a person feels there is no product which is more noble than any other, thought should be put into where one works.
QOTW: “How much does your company pay their HR people?” 1st yr. MBA
?FNW: Is my class schedule manageable? No–dropped two classes
11/25/2017 review–I still feel where I work matters, and that it’s worthwhile to put thought into the product you’re helping to sell before accepting an offer with the company. We aren’t always in positions to be picky with jobs–sometimes we only have one. That makes preparation and maintaining relationships all the more important. But if I have choices in where to work, I’m going to always consider how well the company’s product/service align with what matters to me. While I am not in a sales role, my work contributes to the only result–a sale. If I’m more passionate about improving the lives of other employees than I am about customers, I can do that at any company (ideally one whose product matches my values).
The other aspect of this is private vs public companies. Private companies (99% of US businesses) exist solely to meet the need of society the owners want to meet. But the nature of a public company is to grow external investor ROI while serving society. Once public, this stated goal is much harder to change. This adds extra importance for each employee on aligning the interest of the company with his or her interest. By definition, the company seeks investors to increase its ability to meet the societal need it exists to meet. So any employee in the public company must take a second look at his or her commitment to meeting that need. In a private version of the same company (specifically with few non-employee investors) the owners (and you, a potential employee) could focus more on “how” the need is met than simply maximizing investor ROI. No duty to external investors exists here because the only duty of any business is to its investors, who allow it to exist. In other words, if a private owner wants to reduce the company’s ability to fulfill its mission, or change its mission, he/she/they are free from obligation to not do so–even from customers. The source of funds holds the reigns.
All this is to say, before joining a company, consider whether you’re comfortable committing to the interests of the company’s owners. In a public company, the mission is more certain to stay the same, and knowing it inside and out is more important. In a private company, knowing the owners and their personal interests is much more important than understanding how the work gets done today, since it will evolve to meet the interests of owners.