Dear OTFers,
I have an ethical conundrum for you. Please let me know what you think. I think I know what the right answer is in this situation from a professional point of view, and I think I know what the right answer is in this situation from a human point of view. I think these points of view are in direct conflict with each other. So let me know what you think.
A while ago, my department at my university had an open position for a PhD student. In my country, PhD students are fully funded for four years of research, so successful applicants are considered employees of the university (with associated salaries and benefits) instead of students. These positions are desired, so we had >100 applicants, and we could hire precisely one person for this job; hiring zero, or more than one, was not an option. The most promising ~10 of those >100 applicants were invited to come over and present their research and interview with both the supervising professor and some of the fellow PhD students.
One of the invited candidates, who had impressed with her written materials, came flying in from Pakistan for her presentation and interview day (on our dime, obviously; all top candidates are invited to physically come over and we will reimburse them for their troubles). From the start of the day, things didn't go excellently: she gave a reasonable overview of her MSc thesis, but in reaction to any question connecting her research to that of others, she seemed to be either unable or unwilling to connect. An inability to look over the borders of your own work, is the primary red flag by which we filter candidates at this stage.
Just before lunch, this candidate dropped the bombshell that she was really eager to get a PhD position in the Western world, because her parents were putting enormous pressure on her: the choice was to either get a PhD position in either Europe or the USA, or get married and become a housewife in Pakistan.
At this point, I feel that I have an ethical problem to solve. This candidate is nowhere near the best candidate for the job; from a professional point of view, I should vote to give the PhD position to a specific other candidate. If I were to go against this instinct, I would hurt two people:
1) the Italian dude who was the best candidate for the job, and who would get the spot if I wouldn't interfere;
2) the prospective supervisor of this PhD position, who would have to supervise a student with fewer skills than available, which may lead to this supervisor wasting more time on fixing the suboptimal work of a worse PhD student than the supervisor might have otherwise and hence setting back the supervisor's research time further than strictly necessary.
But if I play the counterfactual, this is what I end up with:
1) the Italian dude is skilled enough, so he'll find a great job someplace anyway; rejection would not devastate his life anywhere near as devastated as the Pakistani woman's life would be;
2) while the supervisor may need to spend more time supervising this student, and this might unnecessarily consume some of the finite time of life of the supervisor, this is still preferable w.r.t. the waste of potential that derives from condemning this PhD candidate to a life of a housewife (there is nothing wrong with that per se, but this woman clearly could contribute to science, and hindering that would be a waste).
I think that from a professional point of view, I should not vote to give her the job. I think that from a human point of view, I should vote to give her the job. This contradiction has been eating me alive. There are some complicating factors:
a) I don't know whether the candidate is speaking the truth here; her parents may be more progressive than she might suggest, or the timeline for finding an alternative might be much less pressing than she might suggest;
b) I don't know whether the candidate managed/manages to find a PhD spot elsewhere; maybe she has offers from other universities already;
c) I find it fundamentally wrong to let my hiring decisions be influenced by the social mores of a faraway society such as rural Pakistan. I do appreciate that in a globalized society, I cannot assume my decisions to be independent of such mores, but still this feels wrong. I have no voting rights in Pakistan, so why would I be responsible for their society?
d) it feels game-theoretically wrong that she gave out this information. For all I know, the Italian dude may come from a situation that leads him to urgently seek a PhD position in another country too, but he didn't put this burden on me. So rewarding volunteering this information seems fundamentally unfair in the hiring process.
I strongly feel that, as a fellow human being, I failed this person. At the same time, I strongly feel that, as a coworker, I voted the right way to make our collective workfloor better. We ended up not offering this Pakistani lady a job. Still, she sometimes haunts my dreams.
Am I the asshole?
I have an ethical conundrum for you. Please let me know what you think. I think I know what the right answer is in this situation from a professional point of view, and I think I know what the right answer is in this situation from a human point of view. I think these points of view are in direct conflict with each other. So let me know what you think.
A while ago, my department at my university had an open position for a PhD student. In my country, PhD students are fully funded for four years of research, so successful applicants are considered employees of the university (with associated salaries and benefits) instead of students. These positions are desired, so we had >100 applicants, and we could hire precisely one person for this job; hiring zero, or more than one, was not an option. The most promising ~10 of those >100 applicants were invited to come over and present their research and interview with both the supervising professor and some of the fellow PhD students.
One of the invited candidates, who had impressed with her written materials, came flying in from Pakistan for her presentation and interview day (on our dime, obviously; all top candidates are invited to physically come over and we will reimburse them for their troubles). From the start of the day, things didn't go excellently: she gave a reasonable overview of her MSc thesis, but in reaction to any question connecting her research to that of others, she seemed to be either unable or unwilling to connect. An inability to look over the borders of your own work, is the primary red flag by which we filter candidates at this stage.
Just before lunch, this candidate dropped the bombshell that she was really eager to get a PhD position in the Western world, because her parents were putting enormous pressure on her: the choice was to either get a PhD position in either Europe or the USA, or get married and become a housewife in Pakistan.
At this point, I feel that I have an ethical problem to solve. This candidate is nowhere near the best candidate for the job; from a professional point of view, I should vote to give the PhD position to a specific other candidate. If I were to go against this instinct, I would hurt two people:
1) the Italian dude who was the best candidate for the job, and who would get the spot if I wouldn't interfere;
2) the prospective supervisor of this PhD position, who would have to supervise a student with fewer skills than available, which may lead to this supervisor wasting more time on fixing the suboptimal work of a worse PhD student than the supervisor might have otherwise and hence setting back the supervisor's research time further than strictly necessary.
But if I play the counterfactual, this is what I end up with:
1) the Italian dude is skilled enough, so he'll find a great job someplace anyway; rejection would not devastate his life anywhere near as devastated as the Pakistani woman's life would be;
2) while the supervisor may need to spend more time supervising this student, and this might unnecessarily consume some of the finite time of life of the supervisor, this is still preferable w.r.t. the waste of potential that derives from condemning this PhD candidate to a life of a housewife (there is nothing wrong with that per se, but this woman clearly could contribute to science, and hindering that would be a waste).
I think that from a professional point of view, I should not vote to give her the job. I think that from a human point of view, I should vote to give her the job. This contradiction has been eating me alive. There are some complicating factors:
a) I don't know whether the candidate is speaking the truth here; her parents may be more progressive than she might suggest, or the timeline for finding an alternative might be much less pressing than she might suggest;
b) I don't know whether the candidate managed/manages to find a PhD spot elsewhere; maybe she has offers from other universities already;
c) I find it fundamentally wrong to let my hiring decisions be influenced by the social mores of a faraway society such as rural Pakistan. I do appreciate that in a globalized society, I cannot assume my decisions to be independent of such mores, but still this feels wrong. I have no voting rights in Pakistan, so why would I be responsible for their society?
d) it feels game-theoretically wrong that she gave out this information. For all I know, the Italian dude may come from a situation that leads him to urgently seek a PhD position in another country too, but he didn't put this burden on me. So rewarding volunteering this information seems fundamentally unfair in the hiring process.
I strongly feel that, as a fellow human being, I failed this person. At the same time, I strongly feel that, as a coworker, I voted the right way to make our collective workfloor better. We ended up not offering this Pakistani lady a job. Still, she sometimes haunts my dreams.
Am I the asshole?
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