Questions:
Ethics in IT
1. List at least three benefits and three negative effects brought about by workplace automation.
2. A multinational corporation transfers a foreign employee to the United States on an L-1 visa. The foreign employee is a computer programmer, working alongside an American computer programmer doing the same work. Both programmers joined the company five years ago, after graduating college. Their training, skills, and experience are virtually identical. Discuss the pros and cons of the following proposition: "The salaries and benefits of the two computer programmers should be roughly equivalent."
3. You lead a group of five software engineers involved in the testing of a new product. Your manager tells you that because of a company-wide layoff, you will need to give notice to one member of your team. From your interactions with the team members, you can easily identify the two members who are least productive, but you are not sure which of them you should lay off. You know that the company keeps track of all Internet traffic to each person's computer, although you have never shared this information with your team. You could use this information to determine how much time, if any, these two employees are spending surfing the Web. Is it wrong to access these records? Do some research on workplace privacy laws to justify your answer.