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U.S. regulators accuse Palantir of bias against Asians

reuters.com

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

#121

Post by sib »

barkbro wrote: post #66
nicolashahn wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Isn't this correct though? That the probability of picking only four asians (if you chose at random) is just over one in a hundred million

Yes - but the objection is that no one in his/her right mind should be making hiring decisions at random. So, comparing it to choosing at random in rather obtuse (and clearly intended only to score cheap points by the person who filed the lawsuit.)

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

#122

Post by swampthing »

Houshalter wrote: post #57
colmvp wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

I don't think you can judge whether someone is oppressed based on how successful they are. If they're successful, it might mean they weren't oppressed, or it could just mean they overcame the oppression.

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

#123

Post by sib »

dragonwriter wrote: post #33
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.

> 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…

Even if they are only equally qualified, Palantir would be hurting themselves, because, if they had more candidates (larger supply) to choose from, they could make more offers at lower compensation, live with lower acceptance rates, still fill all their open positions, and increase profit margins.

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

#124

Post by hiram112 »

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 worked in India and also went through several CS training programs there.

Indians cheat. A lot. It is just a different culture. Students in three different groups would turn in the exact same solution to a coding assignment, and they'd all get the same grade. I was baffled at first, then furious, and finally just learned to laugh about it, while understanding that they were only screwing themselves by not learning the material.

However, it did mean that the training programs would push out a ton of students that did not know a thing about programming, and definitely should not be in the industry. But it is understandable in a place like India where a software engineer can make a lot more money and earn far more respect than many of the alternatives.

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

#125

Post by sib »

But yet, it is ok when various US state government entities (e.g., universities, yes, I'm talking about you, California) adopt policies and procedures which are specifically intended to admit Asian students in lower numbers than the qualified applicant pool. Hmm, interesting.

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

#126

Post by khuey »

sib wrote: post #125

But yet, it is ok when various US state government entities (e.g., universities, yes, I'm talking about you, California) adopt policies and procedures which are specifically intended to admit Asian students in lower numbers than the qualified applicant pool. Hmm, interesting.

Proposition 209 banned consideration of race and ethnicity for admissions to public universities in the State of California in 1996. Either you've been in a coma for the last twenty years or you are in fact not talking about California.

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

#127

Post by dabockster »

api wrote: post #100
throwaway8976 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ?

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

Recent undergraduate grad here. A lot of the algorithms I've seen on technical interviews were only covered once or twice in the curriculum. Basically, one such algorithm would come up in either the data structures or algorithms class, we would then work on it for the given assignment/exam, and finally we would move on from it. Subsequent course work would barely reference it.

These things are best learned through repetition. Unfortunately, with all of the other CS coursework topics that I was being educated on, it seemed like there was little room for the repetition to take place. (At least, not in the stereotypical four year timespan assuming that the given student enters a CS program with no prior programming knowledge.)

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

#128

Post by chaosphere2112 »

Devthrowaway80 wrote: post #85
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 have had a similar problem - interviewed dozens of people with exactly that pattern and they were universally clueless. No idea how seemingly-good Masters programs bring in so many people with zero basic CS knowledge.

My alma mater has a great undergrad program, but an absolutely awful masters. I've been told that they don't have the resources to teach it, and that the college keeps sending recruiters throughout Asia to pick up as many foreign students as possible for the extra tuition money, though that might have just been a bitter professor.

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

#129

Post by Devthrowaway81 »

Devthrowaway80 wrote: post #85
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 have had a similar problem - interviewed dozens of people with exactly that pattern and they were universally clueless. No idea how seemingly-good Masters programs bring in so many people with zero basic CS knowledge.

Simple - it's no different than a seemingly good white American programming teacher pursing masters degree, yet screaming "JavaScript" is not a prog language in front of the whole class.

33% of all American, Asian, or Southeast Asian programmers suck (hard). Since China or India has 3 times the population of US. The absolute number turns out to be higher.

Don't act surprise. I could easily challenge you on a simple algorithm and mathematics problems, and see your American ass turn yellow. Get it.

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

#130

Post by pqhwan »

derefr wrote: post #98
onmatest wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'd say that in this case, providing job opportunities to diverse groups of people is part of the ROI (to a certain extent)
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