Ethics Case Study: Shanghai office Romances

Ethics Case Study: Shanghai Office Romances

Mark Li may not have been the obvious hire for Yellowtech solutions, an international software engineering firm. For one, he looked more like a film star than a software engineer. He was competent for sure but Yellowtech had a reputation for hiring extraordinarily gifted programmers and engineers. If you’d seen the file notes made by HR during his recruitment process you would have seen a note that he “objectively [did] not measure up to the same standards of extraordinary as many other previously successful and almost successful candidates”. Despite this, Mark has excelled and overtaken many of his peers who had joined the Shanghai Office around the same time that he did.

Mark claims that he owes his success to his department head, Jacqui, who was both a mentor and a sponsor. She supported his ideas, gave him a lot of autonomy, tolerated mistakes and helped him build bridges with key senior people within the organisation. Jacqui herself was a superstar within the firm. She was particularly gifted and reached a level within the organisation 8 years ahead of the average person of her pay grade. Not only that, but her colleagues generally considered her to be more attractive and fashionable than the typical Yellowtech employee. Although there was not much criticism about her due to her and her department continually smashing targets every year, some of the subtler comments about her revolved around the idea that she was young, impulsive, driven more by heart than head, and did not always make sound decisions with transparent reasons.

Many of the junior hires in the company, especially those who had been hired around the same time as Mark, had long suspected her of favouritism. Mark himself even wondered whether Jacqui may have been extra lenient and supportive of him due to non-professional motives. Of course, nothing has ever happened between them, but it was not impossible that their relationship could become more intimate, he had to admit. However, Mark came to accept that Jacqui saw the world differently, so he felt that there was little point to second guessing her rationale and instead just thanked his lucky stars for her continued support.

Mid-autumn, about 2 months before his second year at Yellowtech was coming to an end, Mark meets the girl of his dreams, Scarlett. “Could life get any sweeter?” he thought. He was due for a big bonus, and everyone in the office was hinting that Jacqui had put him up for promotion again, a big one this time.

Jackson Yu was one of Mark’s best friends at Yellowtech, they had graduated from the same class and they were the only 2 hires Yellowtech made from their University. Jackson had helped Mark through a lot of homework and assignments at University as he was much more academically inclined. Mark respected him a lot for his generosity back then and he was the person Mark trusted most. Jackson had also been quite successful at Yellowtech but Mark was a little further along in terms of career progression and compensation. They were the 2 hot shot young guns of Yellowtech and it seemed like there was a friendly little competition between them because they were best friends and had history.

1 week into his new relationship Mark could not resist sharing the news with Jackson over their regular weekend beers. After all, they were very close and open with each other about their personal lives. Mark would often say that he and Jackson knew all each other’s dirty secrets from University days and that’s why they could trust each other with anything. After telling Jackson about his new girlfriend, Mark recalled that there were some opinions that Jacqui had a crush on him, making him a benefactor of her favouritism. He did not believe the rumours at all but with less than 2 months to a potentially career making promotion, he did not want to risk anything. Erring on the side of caution, he asked Jackson to keep it a secret from the office for now. He explained “Look there’s no way Jacqui could be into me. She’s way too focussed on her career to have these silly thoughts. Everyone knows that Jacqui’s been single since the day she joined Yellowtail over 5 years ago. I’m asking you to keep it hush just as a precaution, because I trust you and I know I can always rely on you to keep a secret.” Jackson just laughed and shook his head like he would always do when he heard Mark say something ridiculous.

Things were going well, and all the signals looked like he was on track to his big promotion. But then with only 3 weeks to go until his performance review, Jane, another colleague in Jackson’s team approached him one day with a cheeky smile, asking “so who’s the girl?”. Mark was surprised and assumed that Jackson must somehow have let it slip. Throughout the week a few other people approached to him to chat about the same topic. Around this time Jacqui had been unusually absent and unresponsive. He could have really used her in one argument he had with an integration manager in another department. Leading up to his performance review, Mark noticed she seemed generally troubled or in a bad mood.

A week later Jane notices Mark come out of HR’s office after a long meeting with a serious poker face. Jane asks him “So? Did you get it?”. Mark calmly responds, “No I didn’t.” In truth Mark was shattered, during his performance review he received significant criticism from the HR manager on all the mistakes he had made that Jacqui had previously written off. This was very different from his experience during his last performance review, even though a lot of those issues could have been brought up back then. He also had his bonus cut in half as a penalty of sorts. He was now even fearing his employment security! The rumours he had previously dismissed started to seem like a plausible explanation for today’s turn of events he thought. Concerned, Marks turned to Jane to ask, “by the way, how did you find out that I started seeing someone?”