What If I Don’t Believe in My Product?

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It’s great to be at a company where you believe in the product or service. This is one of the draws of working at a non-profit, despite the lower pay. For many people at for-profit companies building, selling, or supporting something they believe in motivates them at work. For others, the job is just a paycheck.

But what if it’s not simply that you don’t get excited about the product or service, but think it’s garbage? Is it ethical to work at such a company?

To answer this, we must be clear about what exactly you think of the offering. Suppose it’s a product that’s poor quality, breaks easily, or is otherwise vastly inferior to others on the market. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that. Some people drive luxury SUVs while others choose a low-end compact car. Filet mignon and Spam® both have their customers. A typical vertical will have multiple offerings which vary based on price point, quality, flexibility, reliability, convenience, feature sets, and more. Lower end products and services are valuable to certain customer segments and providing them access to this vertical makes it a welcome offering.

On the other hand, if your product is being mismarketed, that’s a different issue. If it’s sold as high quality when it’s low quality, or able to meet the needs of the customer when the seller knows that it really won’t, now a line is being crossed. You’ve moved from a valid, even if inferior, offering, to a misrepresented offering.

The line between good marketing and outright misrepresentation is not always clear. You need to decide for yourself where your limits are. Saying it’s a quality product isn’t inherently wrong, even if you think it’s not. Plenty of people think McDonald’s has good quality burgers, even if others would disagree. “Quality” is relative, as are terms like premium, value, and bargain. “Durable” could also fall into this category. To some, a durable product can be driven over by a truck and keep working. To others, surviving a few drops of rain makes it durable. But what if it’s marketed as durable with normal usage but breaks quickly? There’s no hard and fast rule, but you must feel comfortable with it. For me, it’s about whether or not it meets the expectations of a customer set by sales and marketing.

If, to you, the product or service doesn’t seem to make the marketing promise and feels deceptive, first ask yourself if you can change it. Do you have the influence to improve the product? Maybe it’s finding a way to make it better quality. Alternatively, maybe you could figure out how the price can be lowered, or the marketing can be changed to match the products true qualities. When Patrick Doyle became CEO of Domino’s he famously admitted that the pizza was bad and set out to improve it. Even if you’re not the CEO you might be able to foster change.

If you find you can’t change it, and you don’t believe the product is true to its claims, then you need to decide if you can indeed work there. Short of doing something outright illegal, there’s no hard and fast rule about if you should leave; it's your own moral compass that needs to guide you. I will consider staying at a company with such issues as long as I think I can have a reasonable positive impact. Once that goes away, it's time for me to do the same. But that’s my line, not necessarily yours.

It’s great to believe in what your company does. Many people, given a chance, would give up some compensation to work at such an organization. Even if you don’t believe in the product yourself, if you believe it’s useful to your customers, you should feel comfortable working there. But when the product itself is being marketed and sold inappropriately, you should question if it violates your ethical standards, and if it does, then take action.