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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

#221

Post by hackuser »

munchbunny wrote: post #143
hackuser wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Well, yes, which was why I thought of unintentional "culture fit" bias as the reason, because that's certainly the case in many other situations. But for a company Palantir's size, I would expect the law of large numbers to push hiring preferences towards being more or less representative of the industry, after controlling for things like security clearances and other domain specific issues. The missing piece of info…

My point is that, while I agree with you that it's self-destructive, it is so prevalent that clearly many people don't agree with us and believe they can accurately judge people by their race.

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

#222

Post by zaroth »

Wow this is flimsy;

  In one example cited by the Labor Department, Palantir reviewed a pool of
  more than 130 qualified applicants for the role of engineering intern.
  About 73 percent of applicants 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 billion," said the lawsuit, which was filed
   with the department's Office of Administrative Law Judges.
I'm sorry, assuming what distribution? And hiring is not chance anyway. That statistic is mind-numbing. Perhaps it is true that... the likelihood that this result occurred according to chance, assuming applicants were selected randomly, is approximately one in a billion. But the applicants are far from randomly selected from a uniform distribution... The odds of choosing 4 Asians out of 21 interns baring racial discrimination do not sound that long to me considering actual educational dynamics and the population that is applying to US software intern jobs.

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

#223

Post by jalayir »

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…

Different organizations have different strategies. Looks like yours has a policy of "throwing plaster at the wall, and seeing what sticks".

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

#224

Post by yesthereis »

This is a symptom of quota system that many schools and companies use to achieve diversity. Unfortunately, as Asian American, I have experienced it firsthand. Asian Americans are some of highest achieving minority, but due to their smaller number there is not enough quotas allocated to them.

Many of my friends could not get into their first choice colleges or didn't get scholarships even with perfect grades, extracurricular activities, etc but some of my friends from other larger minority groups got full scholarships even with average GPAs. They laughed at us for working so hard, called us geeks, and then got scholarships because of only ethnicity.

I know this is controversial topic, hence, throwaway account. But this is open secret in Asian communities. Hopefully, this lawsuit will change this ridiculous discriminatory quota system.

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

#226

Post by DontGiveTwoFlux »

sheeshkebab wrote: post #203
ng12 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, given an acyclic graph print out each node's value. Passing candidates generally got it in five minutes.

was writing DFS from scratch ever needed to perform dev job or was it a thing that stumped 95% of applicants (and let you read some hacker news/email on your phone/laptop in the mean time)?

Eh, I had to write a DFS the other day at work.

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

#227

Post by bitter-pill »

tomp wrote: post #99
Spooky23 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 an…

Wow a tad racist eh? How about this, I wonder how whites get in to top schools as they have lower GPAs, lower SAT, lower activities, etc. than their asian counterparts. I put more than half the blame on the universities and their "DIVERSITY" BS.... Long term it really dilutes the value of education in my eyes...

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

#228

Post by NoPiece »

dabockster wrote: post #127
api wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 assign…

If you know even some basic programming and logic, you should be able to come up with a reasonable fizz buzz solution. You don't need to have studies the fizz buzz algorithm in college, or have practiced a solution.

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

#229

Post by jacalata »

threepipeproblm wrote: post #202
cromwellian wrote: post #116

This doesn't surprise me, Palantir was funded by the CIA (yay libertarianism eh Thiel?), and as such, is probably suspicious of asian minorities. Remember Wen Ho Lee?

Wait, you think libertarians are pro-CIA?

I would have guessed not but Theil is certainly classed as libertarian whenever I've heard it discussed, and he is Palantirs major shareholder, and Palantir is a CIA shop. Connection seems pretty clear in this context.

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

#230

Post by bitter-pill »

vietdung2910 wrote: post #192
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…

Wait. Based on my knowledge, India is not in southeast Asia. Source: I'm from southeast Asia.

Indians all want to say they are asian....
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