How does the Department of Labor determine the applicants' qualifications?
U.S. regulators accuse Palantir of bias against Asians
11–20 of 415 posts
Re: U.S. regulators accuse Palantir of bias against Asians
#12Here's the actual government complaint, the allegations are listed in sections 10 and 11, https://www.dol.gov/sites/default/files/newsroom/newsrelease...
My concerns,
1) why is the qualified candidate pool, whatever that is, so overwhelmingly Asian, 73-85%? Isn't the candidate selection process biased towards Asians?
2) The complaint is concerned about the use of employee referrals. Studies have shown that building teams from referrals can be a big productivity boost because it enhances team cohesion. While employee referrals can lead to a monoculture it doesn't seem that the federal government should prohibit it.
Re: U.S. regulators accuse Palantir of bias against Asians
#13Does anyone know how affected applicants are supposed to participate in this lawsuit? That is, the remedies include remuneration for these applicants, but it doesn't look like there's a clear way for people to indicate that they think they were affected by this bias.
(Note that this is a government lawsuit, so it's not like a class-action where additional parties "join" the suit or are included in a class. It's just the government versus the company, with remedies (apparently) to be paid to other individuals.)
Re: U.S. regulators accuse Palantir of bias against Asians
#14The key question, it seems to me, is what the evidence is that this allegation is true: "The lawsuit alleges Palantir routinely eliminated Asian applicants in the resume screening and telephone interview phases, even when they were as qualified as white applicants".
Re: U.S. regulators accuse Palantir of bias against Asians
#15"The likelihood that this result occurred according to chance is approximately one in a billion," said the lawsuit, which was filed with the department's Office of Administrative Law Judges. What in the world does that alleged statistic mean?
It's an elementary statistics calculation (which I'm not saying was done right; but that's the direction it was most likely coming from).
Left unstated was what
P(portion of Asian applications being >= 74%)
Re: U.S. regulators accuse Palantir of bias against Asians
#16I'm wondering, how do they define equally qualified? Suppose for instance that a company has an anonymous interviewing procedure (e.g. maths puzzles, supposing it is relevant for the job) that somehow discriminates against a minority, would that be an issue?
Re: U.S. regulators accuse Palantir of bias against Asians
#17It would be really nice if some of these reporters at least clarified if among those rejected were US Citizens. In the kind of work Palantir is involved in it is quite possible that they are trying to staff a US Citizen only shop to meet government requirements. Just look at the ITAR regs for example and the 'nonpermanent resident' gets waved about quite a lot.
I thought the same thing, having worked in defense. If these engineers need TS/SCI clearance that's gonna trump a lot of technical considerations.
They'll deny someone for all kinds of reasons, and you really don't want to find this out after a hire. In DC being pre-cleared basically guarantees employment.
Re: U.S. regulators accuse Palantir of bias against Asians
#18Very interesting line in the complaint that other companies should take note of:
> "In addition, the majority of Palantir's hires into these positions came from an employee referral system that disproportionately excluded Asians."
Also, the complaint says they tried twice to get Palantir in compliance (starting in late '15) and are only now filing this complaint.
Re: U.S. regulators accuse Palantir of bias against Asians
#19In one example cited by the Labor Department, Palantir reviewed a pool of more than 130 qualified applicants for an engineering intern position, about 73 percent of whom were Asian. The lawsuit, which covers Palantir's conduct between January 2010 and the present, said the company hired 17 non-Asian applicants and four Asians. "The likelihood that this result occurred according to chance is approximately one in a bil…
This is 100% a political move. The number of people hired matches the national average, which is what is usually used to determine "diversity". Honestly, there is no reason this lawsuit should be pressed. As you pointed out I'm sure there were visa's required for some applicants, and 20% Asian is still good by percentage.
And if ratio hired matched ratio applied, then 73% of those hired would have been Asian and they could be accused of discrimination the other way.
Re: U.S. regulators accuse Palantir of bias against Asians
#20I'm wondering, how do they define equally qualified? Suppose for instance that a company has an anonymous interviewing procedure (e.g. maths puzzles, supposing it is relevant for the job) that somehow discriminates against a minority, would that be an issue?
How would you have a process that is both anonymous and discriminatory?