Integrity is choosing to behave in the right way, even though you have the option of behaving otherwise.

Therefore, to behave with integrity, you must have formulated your own set of values about what is "the right way" to behave.

Every minute of every day, we all have the option to behave with or without integrity in a whole range of ways.

You earn respect by demonstrating behaviours over time where you have taken the interests of others into consideration, generally people consider someone who behaves like this to have "integrity", especially when they continue to behave that way when no-one is looking.

Saying things like "The ex-admin's bosses probably thought they were the important ones" indicates a childish set of values where there is a power struggle between employers and employees ........ of course the "bosses" are the important ones, they act for the business which is an independent legal entity, upon which many people depend for their lives to work effectively. If, as an employee, you feel poorly treated or otherwise dissatisfied, then the right thing to do is leave in a polite and respectful manner, even if you feel you were not treated in that way. Depending on the circumstances, if you were actually treated really badly, then the right thing to do is pursue your complaint through the appropriate legal channels.

Someone important in my life once said to me "the only thing you have is your reputation". Take that reputation, defend it, enhance it, nurture it and earn the respect to grow it. Don't throw it in the garbage by smashing other people (or their business) in a childish tantrum. I admit this is hard to do - I regret many things I have done in my life, but I try to lead a life consistent with my own sets of values that I think are meaningful and I get rid of people from my life who I think don't have integrity, or whose values are different from mine in critically important ways.

>You earn respect by demonstrating behaviours over time where you have taken the interests of others into consideration

The relationship in most companies is entirely asymmetrical. If times are tough, employees are expected to work unpaid overtime, to sacrifice on pay and perks, to accept layoffs. If times are good, shareholders and executives see all the profit. Employees are expected to show absolute loyalty, but are shown not one shred of loyalty in return. Productivity is soaring across the economy, but wages have been stagnant since the 1970s.

Most employers will never truly respect their employees, ever, under any circumstances. Employees aren't people, they're a "human resource", a cog in the corporate machine as interchangeable as any hardware. More so, in fact - a piece of machinery would be hired on a fixed-term lease, but most employees can be dismissed at will.

I don't endorse vandalism, but I think that it's utterly naive to expect that you can earn the respect or loyalty of corporate America. It doesn't matter how honest you are or how hard you work, you'll still be discarded like an oily rag if you're surplus to requirements. You'll still be lowballed on every pay rise while executives and shareholders make record earnings.

> Most employers will never truly respect their employees, ever, under any circumstances. Employees aren't people, they're a "human resource", a cog in the corporate machine as interchangeable as any hardware. More so, in fact - a piece of machinery would be hired on a fixed-term lease, but most employees can be dismissed at will.

> I don't endorse vandalism, but I think that it's utterly naive to expect that you can earn the respect or loyalty of corporate America. It doesn't matter how honest you are or how hard you work, you'll still be discarded like an oily rag if you're surplus to requirements. You'll still be lowballed on every pay rise while executives and shareholders make record earnings.

You are absolutely correct about corporate America, the executives, and the shareholders. The hard thing is that you can earn the respect and loyalty of the other cogs that you work with, which can be difficult to disentangle from that underlying truth.

You've never had to hire or manage anyone.

This is a highly normative opinion. Your version of integrity requires you to cow to a system that has been built for the purpose of your oppression. Your beliefs in following legal channels, turning the other cheek to abuse, and failing to defend your fellow man against dehumanization are the result of indoctrination by a system designed by the wealthy to keep themselves wealthy at the expense of the many.

I get rid of people from my life who I think don't have integrity, or whose values are different from mine in critically important ways.

On this, however, we agree entirely.

I'm not religious, but one of my ideologies is to do unto other as you would have them do unto you.

I think if everyone treated others the way that they would like to be treated, then the world would be a better place.

"I'm not religious, but one of my ideologies is to do unto other as you would have them do unto you."

That belief was created and pushed by religious, political, and business elites who themselves did not give equally to other people or treat them fairly. They always schemed out more for themselves. Your rule is best modified to do onto others as they would actually do onto you to the best of your knowledge. Otherwise, your rule will result in more evil happening overtime as the good people will work within the schemes created by the bad people. That's already happening.

Illustrated nicely in Hawk-Dove game:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_(game)

http://www.oocities.org/hawkdovegame/simulation.htm

Even includes retaliators which are relevant here.

The platinum rule, of course, is don't do unto others as you wouldn't have them do unto you.

Maybe that is too cynical, but it works well as a rule of thumb.

> But when you attach words like "integrity" and "reputation," it has this "holier than thou" feel to it… The large majority of the population will succumb to "what's normal" vs. "what's for the best" to avoid being casted unfavorably…

Especially when considering the asymmetries involved in interactions between a corporation and an individual, i would even suggest that it is a form a bias people can have which could be considered to be a conformity excuse[0].

[0] http://www.overcomingbias.com/2017/06/conformity-excuses.htm...

Yes and I know a guy who went to prison for a revenge-deletion after leaving the company. He's a really good guy and he made a mistake in anger. While I disagree with the exact outcome in that case, I also think it's wrong to regard it as heroic (as implied by your post).

> The ex-admin's bosses probably thought they were the important ones, and that this worker was a replacable cog, but they found out the hard way that this was not the case.

I don't think this really indicates that at all. Maliciously inflicting damage on the company when you're fired is very different from being irreplaceable. It makes it risky to replace you, but that's not the same thing.

Right. If they were truly irreplaceable, they wouldn't have been fired in the first place since there would be no one to replace them.

A person who can destroy servers is no more indispensable than an employee who can destroy a physical office.

Yeah, a better case would be firing the admin then the site goes down and nobody can fix it.

Why be in a technology business if you can't deal with stuff like that?

Because money. God help my company if I get hit by a bus tomorrow. Until that happens, or they piss me off enough that I go down the road, they are happy to make money off my expertise.

"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing."

I don't think it's realistic to expect this company to now treat their employees less like replaceable cogs than they were previously (to the extent they were at all). What is far more likely is that this company will now just have more red tape in place to ensure that this doesn't happen again.

> The ex-admin's bosses probably thought they were the important ones, and that this worker was a replacable cog, but they found out the hard way that this was not the case.

Sabotaging servers doesn't mean you're unreplacable any more than a terrorist attack means Western culture is depraved.

I'd believe you if the servers simply started falling apart without this person around, but that wasn't the case.

> The view from the pinnacle, people counting the dividends on the checks that they inherited is that they're the job creators, and everyone else is dispensable. This company just found out that is not the case.

The solution to this, should it become a regular occurrence, is to make the folks with the keys to the kingdom replaceable.

It's doable, companies just don't do it because most people don't want to destroy their high paying and relatively comfortable careers committing felonies and getting sent to prison because they had to spend a few weeks or months looking for a new job.

So if the company doesn't have enough revenues to afford all the employees, it's a bad guy for laying some off so it can stay in business and have jobs for the rest of the employees?