Really surprised that they would see an 85% rate for Asian applicants. Is that normal in SV?
U.S. regulators accuse Palantir of bias against Asians
21–30 of 415 posts
Re: U.S. regulators accuse Palantir of bias against Asians
#22The interesting question to me is how does discriminating against asians help palantir's bottom line ?
Has this something to do with culture, or the fact that Palantir think that even american asians are leaking information to countries like china, india, etc.
Re: U.S. regulators accuse Palantir of bias against Asians
#23It 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.
Surely, if the position requires the ability to get a clearance, and a person incapable of getting that clearance applies, they are not a 'qualified applicant'?
Re: U.S. regulators accuse Palantir of bias against Asians
#24I bet it's more subtle than overt (not an excuse if it's happening, of course, merely a possible explanation)... probably managers hiring unaware they're hiring people whom look like them, rather than hiring the most skilled and capable people whom fit with the company culture. I've seen this at a number of universities and enterprise shops when there's not a conscious effort to minimize useless bias.
Re: U.S. regulators accuse Palantir of bias against Asians
#25I'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?
Probably use GPA, SAT scores or some other metric.
Re: U.S. regulators accuse Palantir of bias against Asians
#26Who cares? If the Asians are equally qualified as whites then they are only hurting themselves by excluding them. And they aren't really excluding them. They still hire vastly more Asians than expected by the proportion of general population.
Re: U.S. regulators accuse Palantir of bias against Asians
#27The part that doesn't make sense to me is... what does Palantir have to gain by discriminating?
The other way this happens is by cultural biases causing discrimination, but not intentionally with some specific goal in mind.
I'm operating only on anecdotes, but in the tech industry, discriminating against Asians at the intern/ground level seems to be a non-issue. Maybe different story when you get to management, and maybe different story when you bring gender into the mix, but I didn't think Asians as a whole had issues with employment discrimination at the ground level. I could just be wrong on the aggregate statistics though.
Re: U.S. regulators accuse Palantir of bias against Asians
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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.
If the ratio of those hired matches the ratio of applicants how does anyone make a complaint of discrimination?
Re: U.S. regulators accuse Palantir of bias against Asians
#29Does 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…
> Does anyone know how affected applicants are supposed to participate in this lawsuit?
They aren't.
> 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.
Hiring, not remuneration, of some from the "affected class list", is one of the remedies sought. Since the government has through the compliance audits which identified these issues all the hiring records for the positions at issue, including the information on the unsuccessful applicants, they don't really need people to reach out to them to identify that they think they were affected. If there is an remedy issued that would require identifying affected individuals, they already know who is involved.
Re: U.S. regulators accuse Palantir of bias against Asians
#30"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?
Without actually doing the math, I believe it means that the odds that, if 21 names were pulled out of a hat with 130 names of "qualified applicants," and 73% were Asian, the probability that only 4 names (or less, I assume) are Asian is 1:1,000,000,000.