utter nonsense

Friday, June 23, 2006

Ethical Occupational dilemma...

I had a phone interview yesterday (while I was at work...awkward!) for a GIS forester position with a large timber company. Specifically, I spoke with some good folks in Florida who were cool and funny and are doing some really cool GIS work. The thing is they are a...TIMBER COMPANY! Their soul purpose is to make some cold hard cash waking down trees. I am not sure how comfortable I am with this. I wouldn't be concerned if the interview hadn't gone so well. You may be wondering why I applied for this job knowing that I may have an ethical dilemma with the business practices of this company and that would be an excellent question. I really don't know how to answer it either. To be 100% honest, I did not really look at the company website until after the guy called me to set up this first interview. The thing is, the work would be cool and I have a feeling that the money would be pretty good (another dilemma in and of itself....choose money or happiness or both). Glancing at the benefits package, it is comparable to the one I have with the government including paying for me to take classes, encouraging continued career development, retirement plan, insurance, yada yada yada. But I can't help but stress out a bit over what could be an impending ethical crisis. I believe myself to be a bit of an environmentalist and I don't know that I could wrestle the idea of working for one of the worlds largest timber companies. Could I be enthusiastic about my work if I knew that the end result could be timber harvesting practices I didn't think were environmentally sound? Am I over thinking all of this?

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