Er... what? Wouldn't the time before a project be the absolute best time for you to quit from the perspective of your employer?

>However, a potential large and troublesome project (it requires me to rewrite an system embedded in an access database file to Java) is coming up and I seem to be the person who could get it done.

Read: I'm the only poor sap they could convince to offer up valuable skills for low pay.

Ethics is one of those things employees consider but companies rarely do.

I might be a bad person but beyond my job contract and my reputation I try to avoid considering my ethical obligations to a legal entity (the same way I avoid considering my ethical obligations to a rock).

A group of people working together is not a "rock" and cannot be dismissed as a legal entity.

I believe the point is that this group of people working together will easily consider him, an employee, to be a legal entity and a commodity and will not take ethics into account when dealing with him. Why should the employee treat the company any differently?

This is beside the point anyway. If you are considering leaving a company, then often ethics is the last thing on either entity's mind. Things are already wrong and it's time to move on.

Of course it is unethical. Regardless of anything your contract might state and regardless of your other options, if your employer needs you, you are bound by duty to stay. You have an ethical obligation to make things as easy as possible for your colleagues, no matter what hardships or long-term commitments this requires that you take on. Having collaborated on a project with others gives the collaboraters an unlimited moral claim on your future time and energy.

He was being sarcastic (I hope).

Yeah, I was. Since I'm getting quite a few down votes I'll just add that I felt the sarcasm was warranted because I don't understand why this question even needs to be asked. What would ever make someone think that they had some sort of ethical obligation to start some project just because their employer asked them to? And even if the thought did occur to you, the implications are obviously absurd.

I think some of the downvotes you got are from people who just didn't read the whole comment. After your first sentence, I wanted to downvote you too. It wasn't until the last line that I was sure you were being sarcastic, so I can understand other peoples confusion.

A company will have no qualms about firing you right before you made a large purchase, or a wedding if it were in their best interests to get rid of you.

Why should an employee have any qualms about leaving a company they are not happy with, or even a company they are happy with?

The alternative would be to wait until you weren't doing anything important, and had nothing important on the horizon - which is when your employer will be thinking of you as a dead weight. If you're a valuable employee, then you'll always be working on something that your employer values. It's far better to move on when you're the star performer and they're sorry to see you go, than when you're the slacker that they can't wait to boot out.

Things look a bit different from the other side of the table, anyway; the original questioner's project is a tricky one but it doesn't sound like it's absolutely critical to the company. If he's not around then they can probably make do with somebody else (maybe a new hire), or just live with the old system. People come and go for all sorts of reasons, and it's the responsibility of management to cope with that. As long as he gives reasonable notice and cooperates with the process then there should be no grounds for hard feelings.

I left an employer after designing a large project. I might have put them in a time crunch on that one.

But I didn't feel bad about that, because they had just had me work mandatory overtime and weekends throughout the summer to finish a project that slipped anyway.

Projects at that company lasted over a year. I wasn't waiting for the next one.

The guy I was working with on that project seemed a little bitter when I left. I hope he realized that there's more than one way for your partner to be hit by a bus. I didn't throw him under it. If he was understaffed he should look to management, not to me.

Of course it's ethical.

Companies don't even blink about firing you (or umm, "laying you off") just after you bought a house, found out you need to put your remaining parent in an assisted living facility, or about your child's expensive learning disability, etc, ad nauseam. Even after they just lured you to quit your previously stable, if perhaps not entirely creatively rewarding position to come join their pipe dream / lemmings march. And guess what, most of the time you don't even get an explanation beyond "it's just not a fit" or "sorry man, turns out we had less money than we thought."

So by all means -- yeah, it's ok to spend a few minutes thinking about their needs versus yours -- but at the end of the day, you have to do what's right for you, and for the people who depend on you (or who may depend on you in the future). Because it's virtually guaranteed that your employer won't grant you anywhere near the same level of thought and consideration in making the decisions they will inevitably make about your fate.

If you ask my boss, yes. I don't think so. Here I'm with UnoriginalGuy, if it doesn't harm you quitting isn't unethical. How could it be? Every contract can be desolved within a certain time frame. If this time frame is to short for the employer, well there are a lot cases where shorter tim frame highly favour employers.

If the alternative is to good to be passed, don't. Some opportunities simply don't wait.

Go to your employer and ask for $LARGE_AMOUNT per year pay. Make $LARGE_AMOUNT be something in the range of 2x what you think someone doing your current job is worth.

But, when you ask for $LARGE_AMOUNT, you do it by asking, "What can I do for you that's worth $LARGE_AMOUNT per year to you?"

If your employer says, "Nothing." Well, then time to find someone else to ask that question to. If they counter with money but don't tell you what they want in return, that could be a good thing (you'll get paid more to do the same thing). Hopefully, a good employer will think about it and counter with some things you could do that would make you worth values near your $LARGE_VALUE and that would provide you with learning / skills / whatever that improves your career.

It's never a _bad_ time to ask. And if they don't give a good answer, it's never a _bad_ time to leave. Ethics doesn't play here, employment contracts do and most say "at will."

I'm having trouble seeing how quitting could ever be unethical.

When you have the 747 on final approach it's considered a little rude to just say to the first officer - "here you are" - and leave your seat.

You know, quitting doesn't mean washing your hands of the whole matter and walking off. You can do that, but that is not its intrinsic meaning.

In your example even the quitting is not the issue, it's how it would have been done that would be the ethical issue.

If a company has decided to put all their eggs in one basket - you, that was poor management. There is nothing unethical about the side effects of you living your life.

No idea how it could be unethical. He can offer to complete the project as a freelance consultant if they're desperate enough.

That's possibly a little more unethical.

You're about to ship some big project, a key person says; I'm leaving, there are no docs and I'm not training a replacement - call me if you want any help at 10x my salary.

That could be regarded as a little bit naughty

Well if there were no docs or other knowledge about the project then that's a complete failing on the part of whoever ran the project.

Short answer, No.

If you don't have a contract in place, they wouldn't hesitate to lay you off just before a project because the company saw a good opportunity to be sold or pivot, why should you be any different?

That said, if you are only 'stuck' because of the salary then you should have that conversation with your manager. They might ask you leave, so you should be prepared for that, but it would 'unstick' you :-).

When it comes to salaries, promotions, and job offers-business is a game. Except in extreme situations, it's not possible for something to be ethical or unethical.

You don't owe your company anything that you didn't explicitly promise. Similarly, they don't owe you anything. If you're bored, underpaid, unhappy, or have a better offer-move on. No need to be so serious about it.

This is one of the places where younger folks seem to really be at a disadvantage--you've got to be comfortable moving on.

The conventional wisdom in a lot of industries is that you put in your time with the company, get the watch, get the raises, and all's well. This doesn't really seem to be the case anymore, especially given the way that the economy has been the past few years. Blame what you will--globalization, Wall Street, whatever seems most harmful--but seemingly gone are the days of most companies really taking care of their employees (if they ever existed in the first place) beyond what is legally required.

The worst thing is, minor perks like office coffee or food, or health care, or nice workstations, are easily interpreted by employees as signs that their employer cares about them--employers actually care (or should care, at least) about maximizing employee productivity.

If I have to spend $3,000 dollars up front--say, chair, good workstation, etc.--on an employee who runs me something like $100,000 a year in salary, insurance, and taxes (and that may be pretty low depending on the area), I am not really going to notice the difference, especially if it means that they get more work done. If I spend $5,000/yr in catered lunches, but can guarantee that I get more work out of my employees due to increased communication or loyalty, it pays for itself. Especially if I can bring up the "perks" around the time they might expect raises.

If your company does these sorts of things, don't interpret it as anything other than maximizing an investment. And if your company doesn't, well... that's a thing, isn't it?

The other issue is that younger folks may be insufficiently mercenary and experienced to know when they're being taken for a ride. Hanging in there when you can't get significantly better pay, when you can't fix a broken project, and when you can't improve the working environment is not some sort of badge of honor--it's just plain poor decision-making!

It's also worth remembering that replacing a technical employee costs something like 40-100% of a years salary. If you use an agency their fee will be 33%, then you have the lost time while they get upto speed.

Managers know this and are prepared to spend a few $ on friday afternoon beers or pissa to get people to stay

Bingo.

No, it's the best time.