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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

#271

Post by osmala »

mikeryan wrote: post #216
TallGuyShort wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same complaint is the basis of sexism in the tech industry. I haven't seen many resumes from women cross my desk. So it's not that I'M being sexist, but clearly there's a problem somewhere. And it could be the way I'm soliciting those resumes in the first place.

The same complaint is the basis of sexism in the tech industry No it's not. It's in fact the opposite. Sexism is systemic to the point where you're lucky to have 5% of your applicants be female.

Actually, its not that its a personal choice question. There are real differences in what different sexes value. What you choose to spend your free time on? How much you value stability? What you enjoy doing? How risk averse you are? How much you value having more free time? What hobbies you have?

There are real differences there between sexes, and those preferences affect what career is the best for you. You don't pick whats average for you, you pick your best career with all things considered, and small differences in preferences can skew the outcomes heavily. Also I like to point out there is bunch of careers where there is heavy shortage of MEN choosing it for same reasons.

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

#272

Post by eruditely »

yesthereis wrote: post #224

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, extracur…

by the way, it's not dutch, or germans that are the problem, it's just anglo-saxons.

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

#273

Post by morgante »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #193
ng12 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does personal bias factor in to FizzBuzz? It's literally what I'm hiring you for -- I should be able to describe some process to you, and you should be able to write it out in code. Communication is a huge part of software engineering, and I don't understand why anyone would be expected to hire employees they cannot communicate with.

In addition to vidarh's excellent response, FizzBuzz is a great example that personal bias should not interfere. So if you did data analysis of your candidates and everyone you hired could do FizzBuzz and everyone you didn't hire could not do FizzBuzz then you could objectively state that failure to do FizzBuzz disqualified the candidates and it was blind to personal bias or discrimination factors. However if you hir…

> However if you hire whites who couldn't do FizzBuzz in the interview and you didn't hire asians who could, then you can't really say that "not being able to do fizzbuzz is a disqualifier" because it only disqualified some candidates.

This is a great point and it's why I always include FizzBuzz in any interview—no matter how they were referred, how impressive their resume is, or their confidence level.

Having consistent benchmarks helps give you legal cover, but it's also essential to running a solid interview process. If you're not applying the same tests to all candidates, it's impossible to detect problems in your filters and you can easily end up making biased decisions or hiring the wrong people.

Yes, I understand that it can be annoying to have to solve such a basic problem in an interview, but it only takes a few minutes—just get it over with, it's not meant as an insult.

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

#274

Post by morgante »

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 ?

A lot of people are pushing back on you, but I've seen the exact same thing. I think everyone who hasn't interviewed developers would be surprised by the general incompetence, but everyone who runs an interview process realizes that 80+% of "developers" are terrible.

For the record, I'm absolutely not talking about algorithms questions. I'm talking about literal FizzBuzz. A majority of candidates cannot solve it in 15 minutes.

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

It's through a combination of:

1. Tests being based on memorization, not actual knowledge or programming. If you manage to stuff enough keywords into answers, it's possible to pass.

2. Lots of group work. The 20% of students who actually know how to program finish the project while everyone else slacks off and asks for help "with this one thing."

3. Outright cheating. There's a thriving market in recycled homework and exam answers.

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

#275

Post by morgante »

sheeshkebab wrote: post #210
vidarh wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is if the questions asked are really "FizzBuzz level" questions, or algorithm questions that are easy to consider of similar complexity when you know the expected algorithms. When I studied CS, data structures and algorithms was the second CS course we were expected to take, right after "introduction to programming". It would usually be taken in the second semester. That's the last time we were tested on…

^^ - this. same here - almost 20 years of dev, last time I needed to implement basic cs algorithms were in college and grad school classes (and some idiotic corporate interviews where preferred way of coding is apparently using a white board). basic knowledge of fizbuzz, dfs, bfs, quicksort, and similar things of course is needed - however asking developers actually implement them in front of you is pointless, at lea…

> basic knowledge of fizbuzz, dfs, bfs, quicksort, and similar things of course is needed

FizzBuzz is not some arcane algorithm. You don't need to study it.

It's literally writing a loop, testing equality, and printing some output. I don't know how you could program professionally and not be able to solve FizzBuzz.

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

#276

Post by linkregister »

hiram112 wrote: post #131
munchbunny wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm just naive, but I have trouble believing that one group of US citizens as a whole has more "loyalty" issues than another. Is it a concern about spies? Racially biased hiring practices seems like an overly broad way of trying to address focused espionage. If it's about hiring non-citizens, then I think there's a legitimate procedural issue around employees needing clearance levels, but I'd find it hard to be…

You are naive. Who would be more likely to be compromised by last year's OPM database hack by the Chinese (supposedly) which contained info on most of the cleared government and contract workers in the US? * A guy of European ancestry from Anywhere, USA who has no family, friends, or relations to China, and never stepped foot there. * A naturalized US citizen from China whose friends, family, and associates still liv…

Your argument exists only in the theoretical. Indeed the naturalized citizen with extensive ties to a high espionage risk foreign power has a higher risk of denial of clearance. But your example is practically a straw man. The typical Asian applicant profile does not match the example you gave.

The U.S. government decides who gets clearances. Contracting companies submit prospective employees for contractor positions based off of their qualifications. This is done by a worksheet considering the essential skills for the position and points for education, previous experience, etc. Contracting companies have no business pre-screening based off of anything more than U.S. citizenship.

Chinese espionage actions have not been about coersion; they've been about incentives and appeals to heritage. The only notable Chinese-linked espionage cases in recent history have been first-generation immigrants, with nationalism and loyalty appeals, not threats against family members.

I haven't seen any denials of clearances in the Industrial Security Clearance Decisions [1] based off of simple national origin claims.

1. http://www.dod.mil/dodgc/doha/industrial/2016.html

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

#277

Post by EJTH »

jonnybgood wrote: post #242
yesthereis wrote: post #224

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, extracur…

> then got scholarships because of only ethnicity. Are you absolutely certain of that? How did you know?

I am not American. But don't you guys have that "affirmative action" thing, especially for the african american demographic?

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

#278

Post by nolok »

noobermin wrote: post #132
Devthrowaway80 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As someone who might apply once I get my PhD, what does basic CS knowledge mean for you? Like what a tree is or fizzbuzz? Hopefully it isn't that terrible...how someone can make it through any amount of CS related schooling and not know the basics? Somewhat related anecdote, I do computational physics. I once attended "training seminar[0]" put on by the funders for using DOD supercomputers, and there was this soon-to…

> Like what a tree is or fizzbuzz? Hopefully it isn't that terrible...how someone can make it through any amount of CS related schooling and not know the basics?

Ah! You're in for some surprise down the line. Fizzbuzz almost always clear out large amount of applicants.

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

#279

Post by spacehome »

bitter-pill wrote: post #230
vietdung2910 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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....

Which continent is India in, again?

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

#280

Post by danieltillett »

shostack wrote: post #269
danieltillett wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Masters programs are run as a cash cows for many universities to be filled will anyone who can fog a mirror. As a former academic I can tell you that there are literally different marking criteria for overseas masters students than local undergraduates.

Is that knowledge transparently available to students? How does it impact the curve? I imagine quite many would be upset if they found out they were not being held to equal standards, and would probably point to foreign students paying more as the reason.

>Is that knowledge transparently available to students? How does it impact the curve?

Of course not. You find out when the head of school tells you that it is your fault that all the masters students failed the subject and that you need to fix the situation. If you are dumb enough to ignore the hint the head of school gets someone else to re-mark the exams - either way the cash keeps flowing.

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