Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

U.S. regulators accuse Palantir of bias against Asians

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 415 posts

Re: U.S. regulators accuse Palantir of bias against Asians

#51

Post by dragonwriter »

gnicholas wrote: post #46
dragonwriter wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 c…

From the last line of the article: "The lawsuit seeks relief for impacted individuals, including lost wages." This sounds like remuneration to me. I don't know how the government can identify race of all applicants, since this cannot reliably be done by surname or by any other indirect method. And since applicants cannot be required to provide this information in an application, there is no direct method either (othe…

> From the last line of the article: "The lawsuit seeks relief for impacted individuals, including lost wages." This sounds like remuneration to me.

I missed that in reviewing the actual lawsuit (and thought it was an error in the article), but see it on review. In any case, the point that the government knows who the applicants are remains.

> I don't know how the government can identify race of all applicants

The government can identify all the applicants. If it reaches the stage at which more information from them becomes relevant, the government can reach out to the applicants for additional information. It doesn't need to rely on the applicants initiating the contact.

Though if, as you indicate, you are personally interested and what to proactively contact the government to make sure you don't miss out on any opportunities, contact information for the office responsible for the lawsuit is in the press release [0] announcing it.

[0] https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/ofccp/ofccp20160926

Re: U.S. regulators accuse Palantir of bias against Asians

#52

Post by [deleted] »

kzx0110 wrote: post #43
rb2k_ wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no idea, but just a random guess: If you try to sell a lot of secret spying services to the government (which I think Palantir does?), they probably think it helps if your employees don't look/sound Chinese, seeing as the government might be afraid of China's espionage efforts. I also don't know how much trouble they have getting clearance for someone that grew up in China compared to other countries. (again:…

I would speculate that the majority of 'asians' who applied to Palantir were not from China, but rather from the region sometimes called South Asia.

[deleted]

Re: U.S. regulators accuse Palantir of bias against Asians

#53

Post by thedz »

I think many of the comments are missing a few important points:

1. Yes, 20% Asian hiring rate is pretty decent when you compare to the general Asian population at large. However, the lawsuit specifically alleges that, in one example case, the qualified application pool was 73% Asian. In that case, it's extremely abnormal to hire 17 non-Asians and only 4 Asians.

2. Palantir is involved in government contracting, so there are also very specific regulations for compliance https://www.dol.gov/ofccp/aboutof.html

3. The lawsuit is being brought on by the Department of Labor. IMO, generally government agencies are usually reluctant to initiate lawsuits that they are afraid of losing.

4. It might be malicious, it might not be. But Palantir was given multiple chances to correct their compliance issue: "The Labor Department sent Palantir a notice in October 2015 about its findings, according to the lawsuit. Both before and after that notice, labor regulators attempted to secure Palantir's voluntary compliance, the lawsuit said, but they did not succeed."

Re: U.S. regulators accuse Palantir of bias against Asians

#54

Post by dragonwriter »

Houshalter wrote: post #40
dragonwriter wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who cares? The government, because its a violation of an executive order that applies to all government contracting, and Palantir is a government contractor. (Hence why one of the proposed remedies is cancelling all of Palantir's government contracts and subcontracts, and banning them from future contracting.) > If the Asians are equally qualified as whites then they are only hurting themselves by excluding them. I…

Well obviously the government cares, I'm suggesting that they shouldn't. And yes technically you are correct. But that assumes they are exactly equal. If you exclude a bunch of people for arbitrary reasons then you necessarily get worse results. Some of the best candidates may be excluded.

> Well obviously the government cares, I'm suggesting that they shouldn't.

There may be an argument that the government shouldn't require non-discrimination by government contractors, but I don't think that there is a particularly good argument, that, given the existence of the requirement as a term of every government contract, that the government should not care that a government contractor is just casually disregarding the terms of its contract with the government and expecting to continue to be paid.

> If you exclude a bunch of people for arbitrary reasons then you necessarily get worse results. Some of the best candidates may be excluded.

Since Palantir is a government contractor, the argument that they would be hurting the quality of work they do (which is valid, just not supported by mere equality of qualifications) is another reason the government should be concerned. Remember, this isn't an enforcement action under general anti-discrimination law, its an enforcement action under the specific rules that apply to government contractors.

Re: U.S. regulators accuse Palantir of bias against Asians

#55

Post by vthallam »

ones_and_zeros wrote: post #49

Palantir gets some of my sympathy. My organization has a large internship program and I've been first contact for many applicants. I found that a similar number of applicants had to be dropped either due to communication skills or an overall technical skills gap and they tended to be asian/southeast asian. Interestingly most of them fit the same profile of a bachelor's from India, 1 or 2 years at a consulting firm in…

Wow! I kind of fit into your sterotype, except i graduated from a large private university. Isn't it stupid that you are putting a billion people in the same pool(Indian bachelors+ consulting firm exp+US State school = suckers)?

Re: U.S. regulators accuse Palantir of bias against Asians

#56

Post by BuckRogers »

Some great points here about citizenship/security clearance being part of the issue.

But I'd also ask the government regulators to define "asians". Including East Indians? I'm not sure how the government breaks down their racial statistics but certainly East Indians are Asians. They might not be East Asians but they're Asians.

Not only that but Native Americans and most Latin Americans are to some degree of Asiatic origin as well. So they'd have to define recent, or historical Asian origin?

Further, we'd need clarification on whites vs Europeans. Europeans presently live in Eurasia, which technically is the same landmass as Asia. Beyond that, all Europeans and their white descendants alive today share the same ancestors as the Native Americans[0], which are of clear Asiatic origins. That also begs the question about my Saudi friends from college: they were adamant that they were Asians as they were indeed from the same continent.

So, which "asians" are we talking about here? I think this whole type of thing is a mess and so anti-scientific that it's entirely political. The government and their racial censuses are awfully convoluted. Which should be abolished, as Mexico has been our leader here and already abolished racial censuses long ago- if the US government is truly against racism. Change should always start at the top, leading by good example!

In sum, there's only 5 heavily-populated major landmasses in the world and 4 of those 5 are occupied by a majority with folks of wholly Asian or at minimum, mixed-Asian descent. With Africa being the only real exception. So our government need to get its act together and if they're going to use racial terminology and policy, to do it in a little bit more scientific manner.

[0]http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-29213892

Re: U.S. regulators accuse Palantir of bias against Asians

#57

Post by Houshalter »

colmvp wrote: post #44
Houshalter wrote: post #26

Who 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.

Replace "Asians" with "Blacks" or "Women" in that sentence and see how much support you'll get with that statement.

It's not equivalent, because those are traditionally oppressed groups. Whereas Asians are not oppressed and are fantastically successful relative to their tiny portion of the general population. Based on the report above, they were hiring between 20%-40% asians, which is 5-9 times their rate in the general population! You could make an equally strong case that they are disparately impacting whites!

Re: U.S. regulators accuse Palantir of bias against Asians

#58

Post by dragonwriter »

wrong_variable wrote: post #22

The 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.

> The interesting question to me is how does discriminating against asians help palantir's bottom line ?

It quite possibly doesn't; discrimination is often done (even when it is done deliberately and overtly) because it serves non-financial interests of the people choosing to do it, not because it is an efficient means of maximizing profits.

Re: U.S. regulators accuse Palantir of bias against Asians

#59

Post by rb2k_ »

kzx0110 wrote: post #43
rb2k_ wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no idea, but just a random guess: If you try to sell a lot of secret spying services to the government (which I think Palantir does?), they probably think it helps if your employees don't look/sound Chinese, seeing as the government might be afraid of China's espionage efforts. I also don't know how much trouble they have getting clearance for someone that grew up in China compared to other countries. (again:…

I would speculate that the majority of 'asians' who applied to Palantir were not from China, but rather from the region sometimes called South Asia.

To save the lazy people a google search:

"The current territories of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal, India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka form the countries of South Asia."

Post reply on HN