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

91–100 of 415 posts

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

#91

Post by tropo »

lettergram wrote: post #7
kafkaesq wrote: post #2

In 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.

I was thinking not, but then: the place was founded by Peter Thiel, who spoke at the Republican National Convention.

It does smell like revenge, especially given that the numbers are so unusual and the company is probably dealing with security clearance issues. The fact that the numbers are so strange in the supposed pool should raise lots of red flags about one particular country too: were these people with family connections to China? That is normally disqualifying. Is the company expected to hire people who are certain to fail the clearance process, and then get stuck firing them for that failure?

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

#92

Post by jpeg_hero »

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…

> and now doing a master's at a large state university

ahh, Georgia Tech

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

#93

Post by hackuser »

munchbunny wrote: post #27

The 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 m…

> The part that doesn't make sense to me is... what does Palantir have to gain by discriminating?

A very good question: What does any company, or any person, have to gain by discriminating?

Yet, many do.

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

#94

Post by Twirrim »

danso wrote: post #63
thedz wrote: post #53

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…

Has any other major tech company released numbers on what their hiring demographics look like compared to their qualified application pool? I've seen the demographics for employees in diversity reports, but not qualified-applicant pool numbers. Because, sure, perhaps many of the Asian applicants are poor enough at English that it outweighs whatever got them into the qualified-pool. But I would guess that would be a p…

Relying on referrals sure does punt the ball down the park to the employees from the employers. I wonder how much it allows the company to say "It's not our fault!"

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

#95

Post by smallnamespace »

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #88
smallnamespace wrote: post #82

This is a case of damned if you do, damned if you don't. If their employee racial ratios matched the US population, then they will get bashed like this. If their employee racial ratios match the 'qualified candidate pool', then they'll get bashed for not hiring enough women and black people. We haven't as a society agreed on the right way to deal with race, but there's certainly plenty of loud and angry people suppor…

You didn't read the article. They're being sued due to their final hiring being grossly out of step vs the qualified candidate pool. You also appear to be assuming that there's no way the qualified candidate pool could have as many women and black americans as the broader US population. That assumption is, and continues to be, the problem.

I did read the article.

Here is one specific context where they are facing potential penalties because employee racial distribution != candidate pool racial distribution.

On the other hand, in a different context, tech companies as a whole are taking a lot of flak because employee racial distribution != population racial distribution.

> You also appear to be assuming that there's no way the qualified candidate pool could have as many women and black americans as the broader US population

How is this even up for debate? Women and blacks are both underrepresented in majors like computer science compared to the population average. That flows directly into the candidate pool that tech companies need to hire from.

And this article cites one specific example where the 'qualified candidate pool' looks nothing at all like the American population average.

You're saying if that candidate pool only had 15% women, we'd want Palantir to hire just 15% women?

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

#96

Post by throwaway8976 »

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…

I worked at Palantir in the covered period and did a ton of interviews, 5-10 a week. I experienced exactly this dynamic - very large numbers of applicants who had a bachelor's degree from a South or East Asian university, a year or two of work experience, and a Masters from a mid-tier US University. The large majority washed out on the FizzBuzz-level technical questions on phone screens (or asked in person at job fairs).

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

#98

Post by derefr »

onmatest wrote: post #78
guelo wrote: post #12

Here'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 t…

I would guess for the second part that the government prohibits it because it could result in unequal opportunities for job seekers based on race. While referrals are more acceptable in non-government-sponsored companies, government-sponsored companies are held to higher standards because that is where taxpayer dollars are directly headed. If the applicant pool was overwhelming black and Palantir hired more white peo…

The general form of this question is: do we care more about government departments in their role as equal-opportunity jobs projects, or do we care more about the government being "effective", doing the most it can with each tax dollar?

In this case, I can see how "increased cohesion"—although decreasing the "jobs project" value—would be extremely helpful for increasing tax-dollar ROI.

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

#99

Post by tomp »

Spooky23 wrote: post #62
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…

There's alot of cheating and other shady nonsense. Bodyshop contractors will do anything. I've seen cases where those companies send shill candidates to interview, claim that candidates have more experience in reality (in one case a 22 year old with a decade of Oracle Financials experience) and submitting fake resumes.

I agree woth this. I and my friends always wondered how so many Asians get accepted to top UK universities (with very high English-language requirements), when they can barely speak a word of intelligible English.

Now I have a close friend from China, and the mistery is solved: others are doing their exams/essays/assignments for them.

Keep in mind though, this is likely a huge generalisation (not all Chinese cheat and other nationalities cheat as well), and I put more than half of the blame on the universities themselves (they earn a lot of money accepting these kinds of students), but long-term, it really dilutes the value of this education in my eyes.

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

#100

Post by api »

throwaway8976 wrote: post #96
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…

I worked at Palantir in the covered period and did a ton of interviews, 5-10 a week. I experienced exactly this dynamic - very large numbers of applicants who had a bachelor's degree from a South or East Asian university, a year or two of work experience, and a Masters from a mid-tier US University. The large majority washed out on the FizzBuzz-level technical questions on phone screens (or asked in person at job fai…

I've seen American university CS grads wash out on FizzBuzz level questions at alarming levels as well so this is not exclusively a phenomenon with these backgrounds.

How in the world are people making it through schools (with a MS!) without actually.... uhh.... you know.... knowing the subject at all?

Post reply on HN