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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

#311

Post by CJefferson »

ap22213 wrote: post #258
noobermin wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In the last two weeks I interviewed three candidates with masters of science C.S. None of the three knew the memory size in bytes of a double precision floating point variable. None of the three could explain scenarios in which they would use an array over a linked list.

The floating point I think comes from C bias.

In C you kind of have to know the size of a double -- you'll call "sizeof(double)" fairly often, you'll notice the number in your code.

In most languages, you don't have a way of knowing the size of a double -- and furthermore the size a double takes in your code won't be sizeof(double) anyway, it will be much more.

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

#312

Post by berntb »

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #299
skybrian wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, for example, I have an interview question where it's not just about knowing what a stack or a tree is, but rather realizing that a stack or a tree might be useful to solve a particular problem. (You could use either one.) And then writing out code to do it. So, no esoteric data structures, but you really do have to know how to use the standard ones. It tends to trip up people who might have some book knowledge…

It could also be that you only ever have to do this between 0 and 0.00001% of the time in the real world, and many people who could do it just fine if they are given space to think about it or refresh their memory, which usually results in freezing up during a stressful interview. They probably haven't exercised that knowledge because they have been too busy building real things.

On one hand -- sure, I've sadly forgotten most of the math I ever learned.

But on the other hand, no. I can bounce around modelling with basic data structures (hashes, arrays, structs/objects etc) in my head like a good juggler can treat 3 balls.

I think that is normal for quite a large subset of developer work. I assume there will be some jobs that won't need those data structures, but can't think of any. (Graphics and game developers would remember more math, of course.)

The description in the GP sounds more like the (probably false) stories about the Japanese English education: People with a vocabulary of 40K words that are unable to order coffee or talk about the weather.

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

#313

Post by kozak »

coredog64 wrote: post #189
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.

Three times I have been in the situation where the interview candidate was not the one answering questions. Twice we hired someone based on the phone interview and it was someone else who showed up. The third time it was someone reading interview answers off a chat client window. I'm mostly annoyed because it reduces the value of the phone screen and requires more face to face interviews.

How about a video call then?

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

#314

Post by ardacinar »

porpoisemonkey wrote: post #103
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…

Does Palantir make US citizenship a requirement for most of its job positions? My understanding is that this is common place for most US military contractors but I was wondering if this applies to government contractors at large.

US citizenship is a requirement if you are going to do something related to the US government. I've worked for them in a position not related to the US government(not a US citizen myself) and the number of technical people who also happened to be US citizens were quite low.

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

#315

Post by dqv »

savvyraccoon wrote: post #90

1,160 qualified people? How do the Labor Department define qualified? Did Palantir interview all of them? reply

>the individual's expression of interest indicated that the individual possesses the basic qualification for the position [1]

The issue for this case will be proving whether or not the applicants actually met the basic qualifications. Interestingly, the language implies that someone must simply indicate that they possess the basic qualifications. It doesn't go into detail on verifying the actual possession of those qualifications.

I'd like to see what exactly is done to verify the applicants actually met the basic qualifications.

[1] https://www.dol.gov/ofccp/regs/compliance/faqs/iappfaqs.htm#...

[2] https://www.dol.gov/sites/default/files/newsroom/newsrelease...

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

#316

Post by Retric »

skybrian wrote: post #232
noobermin wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Well, for example, I have an interview question where it's not just about knowing what a stack or a tree is, but rather realizing that a stack or a tree might be useful to solve a particular problem. (You could use either one.) And then writing out code to do it. So, no esoteric data structures, but you really do have to know how to use the standard ones. It tends to trip up people who might have some book knowledge…

I have had many people with 3-5 years of 'experience' developing not know how to find the smallest element in an array. Initially I was thinking it would be a quick check to see if people thought about null values, but apparently this is a hard problem...

Now they might have been useful for something, but I suspect they are just playing the numbers game and showing up to a lot of interviews until they get in. So even if say 5% of coders are useless that 5% is vastly over inflated in the interview process.

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

#317

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

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?

Generally, under affirmative action programmes and the like, nobody gets anything “just because of their ethnicity”. Rather, they may be given slightly reduced entry requirements, for example, to compensate for their background potentially disadvantaging them.

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

#318

Post by WhitneyLand »

barry-cotter wrote: post #246
WhitneyLand wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>this is likely a huge generalisation... Ya think? Sorry man I wouldn't be profiled as a cheater like that due to race or citizenship.

I live in China. I have not made any effort to learn about plagiarism or impersonating people at exams in the four years I've been here. I know one Chinese person who sat an English language proficiency exam for her cousin, another whose Bachelor's thesis was almost entirely plagiarised. I met a Canadian guy who did a Master's degree in econometrics at Tsinghua (top 3 university in China). Apparently plagiarism was r…

That's interesting - I'm surprised to hear so many first hand accounts.

If it is widespread it's especially unfortunate considering there's already some controversy around the high numbers of asian applicants.

Btw, I only mention race because it is a central topic of the article.

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

#319

Post by dqv »

KanyeBest wrote: post #11

How does the Department of Labor determine the applicants' qualifications?

My understanding is that they were Internet Applicants [1]. The wording the DOL used makes it appear that someone just needs to say they meet the basic qualifications (defined in another section on the same page).

What should be concerning is it applies to these 3 jobs specifically. Palantir is offering a lot more jobs than what is indicated in the lawsuit [2] [3]. As another poster has said, could it be a poisoned recruiter? I wonder if that will be considered and if it will affect the AI (adversity impact).

[1] https://www.dol.gov/ofccp/regs/compliance/faqs/iappfaqs.htm#...

[2] https://www.dol.gov/sites/default/files/newsroom/newsrelease...

[3] https://www.palantir.com/careers/

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

#320

Post by dqv »

morgante wrote: post #283
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…

> However, the lawsuit specifically alleges that, in one example case, the qualified application pool was 73% Asian. My question is how the government is determining the "qualified applicant pool." Not everyone with a CS degree is qualified to develop software. In my experience, only a minority of CS graduates are qualified to program. I'm guessing there is some confounding variable here which predicts both ethnicity…

    An “Internet Applicant” is an individual who satisfies all four of the following criteria:

    * The individual submitted an expression of interest in employment through the Internet or related electronic data technologies;
    * The contractor considered the individual for employment in a particular position;
    * The individual’s expression of interest indicated that the individual possesses the basic qualifications for the position; and
    * The individual, at no point in the contractor’s selection process prior to receiving an offer of employment from the contractor, removed himself or herself from further consideration or otherwise indicated that he/she was no longer interested in the position.

    The “basic qualifications” which an applicant must possess means qualifications that the contractor advertised to potential applicants or criteria which the contractor established in advance. In addition, the qualifications must be:

    * Noncomparative features of a job seeker (e.g. three years’ experience in a particular position, rather than a comparative requirements such as being one of the top five among the candidates in years of experience);
    * Objective (e.g., a Bachelor’s degree in accounting, but not a technical degree from a good school); and
    * Relevant to performance of the particular position.
https://www.dol.gov/ofccp/regs/compliance/faqs/iappfaqs.htm#...
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