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.<p>Interestingly most of them fit the same profile of a bachelor's from India, 1 or 2 years at a consulting firm in India doing something that could be argued is software development and now doing a master's at a large state university. To be honest I'm not sure how they got in or are able to graduate.
Here's the actual government complaint, the allegations are listed in sections 10 and 11, <a href="https://www.dol.gov/sites/default/files/newsroom/newsreleases/OFCCP20160926_0.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.dol.gov/sites/default/files/newsroom/newsrelease...</a><p>My concerns,<p>1) why is the qualified candidate pool, whatever that is, so overwhelmingly Asian, 73-85%? Isn't the candidate selection process biased towards Asians?<p>2) The complaint is concerned about the use of employee referrals. Studies have shown that building teams from referrals can be a big productivity boost because it enhances team cohesion. While employee referrals can lead to a monoculture it doesn't seem that the federal government should prohibit it.
I think many of the comments are missing a few important points:<p>1. Yes, 20% Asian hiring rate is pretty decent when you compare to the general Asian population at large. <i>However</i>, 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.<p>2. Palantir is involved in government contracting, so there are also very specific regulations for compliance <a href="https://www.dol.gov/ofccp/aboutof.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.dol.gov/ofccp/aboutof.html</a><p>3. The lawsuit is being brought on by the Department of Labor. IMO, generally government agencies are usually reluctant to initiate lawsuits that they are afraid of losing.<p>4. It might be malicious, it might not be. But Palantir was given multiple chances to correct their compliance issue: "The Labor Department sent Palantir a notice in October 2015 about its findings, according to the lawsuit. Both before and after that notice, labor regulators attempted to secure Palantir's voluntary compliance, the lawsuit said, but they did not succeed."
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.<p>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.<p>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.
I'm extremely disappointed by the vitriol and generalisations against Asians in this thread. Marginalising individual candidates because there are trends in the community is the textbook definition of racial profiling.<p>I'm a dev from India. I work hard and always try my best to stay as honest as I possibly can, and I think I'm fairly competent. For the last job offer I received, I had to take around 7 interviews (phone + in-person) along with take home problems. Recently I'd been wondering if it would be a good idea to do a Masters in US, maybe specialisation in Machine Learning/Deep Learning. But it seems most people here would dismiss candidates like me because "Asians people cheat" or "Asians aren't competent enough".<p>I expect better from my fellow HN-ers.
This is a case of damned if you do, damned if you don't.<p>If their employee racial ratios matched the US population, then they will get bashed like this.<p>If their employee racial ratios match the 'qualified candidate pool', then they'll get bashed for not hiring enough women and black people.<p>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 supporting their own points of view...
It would be really nice if some of these reporters at least clarified if among those rejected were US Citizens. In the kind of work Palantir is involved in it is quite possible that they are trying to staff a US Citizen only shop to meet government requirements. Just look at the ITAR regs for example and the 'nonpermanent resident' gets waved about quite a lot.
The part that doesn't make sense to me is... what does Palantir have to gain by discriminating?<p>The other way this happens is by cultural biases causing discrimination, but not intentionally with some specific goal in mind.<p>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 maybe different story when you bring gender into the mix, but I didn't think Asians as a whole had issues with employment discrimination at the ground level. I could just be wrong on the aggregate statistics though.
Hang on... so ~20% of the hires ended up being asian. Doesn't the same thing happen at other firms aiming for ~diversity~ where the % accepted deviates from the % applied?
I remember interviewing at Palantir in 2012 at the VA office, i did not see a single non-white person in the office. Everyone i met except for the HR person was most likely below the age of 25 and they all had similar personalities in a weired way. I still don't know why I didn't make past my final interview because i did not get any feedback. It never crossed my mind that it may have to do with the fact that I am not white. I thought it had to do with showing my concern over their unlimited vacation policy and the work life balance and they probably wanted someone that lives in the office. Hope it's the latter.
The cited example was interns.<p>Who doesn't favor employee referrals for interns? You can be encrusted in diamonds and you're going to get put in the back of the line behind the known quantities and get-in-so-and-so's-good-graces hires for an intern position. There's also the fact that people start to favor/discriminate schools based on history. Had a great intern from Stanford? Hire another Stanford kid. Had a terrible intern from Texas Tech? Scratch all the TT kids who apply for a few years.<p>We'll see how this pans out, but like most of the other people in this thread, I'm inclined to give Palantir the benefit of the doubt at the moment.
"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.<p>What in the world does that alleged statistic mean?
<i>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.</i><p><i>"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><p>You'd kind of expect them to,† given the near certainty that they're being actively snooped upon by various foreign governments. Still one wonders what Labor's definition of "qualified" was in this case, and whether the need for visa sponsorship played a role in the selection process.<p>† Which should please not be construed to mean that I condone such discrimination (if it's happening to the degree alleged), or that I think it's inevitable. Only, one would suspect, not unexpected behavior for companies working in the so-called "intelligence community", or overlapping it to a significant degree.
What about top universities discriminating against Asian applicants? In many states, affirmative action is legally denying opportunities for Asian Americans.
I'm asian, and I honestly believe the DOL has bigger, more real fights to fight than Palantair - which most likely isn't discriminating at all.
I don't think the regulators have a case. The applicants failed the phone screens. Apparently U.S. regulators don't think Asians can fail to be qualified or that they are qualified simply for being Asian. They don't define what 'asian' even means, and they are trying to make this a "white" vs "asian" thing. Sounds like a lot of bullshit, maybe they just want to stop doing business with Palantir and need an excuse.
Since much of their work consists of analyzing classified data, they may also be screening out those they decide aren't likely to obtain those clearances. Many defense contractors hire you provisionally (and might put you on a non-classified project) but don't expect to keep that job if you wash out of the background check process. There are plenty of interview questions you could ask to avoid candidates that you know won't make it.
When was the last time U.S. regulators reviewed the percentage of 'asians' in companies like Infosys and WiPro? And who exactly qualifies as an 'Asian' applicant? Does a person born, say, in Israel qualifies as one?
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.
I'm wondering, how do they define equally qualified? Suppose for instance that a company has an anonymous interviewing procedure (e.g. maths puzzles, supposing it is relevant for the job) that somehow discriminates against a minority, would that be an issue?
Wow this is flimsy;<p><pre><code> 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.
</code></pre>
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, <i>assuming applicants were selected randomly</i>, 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.
Some great points here about citizenship/security clearance being part of the issue.<p>But I'd also ask the government regulators to define "asians". Including East Indians? I'm not sure how the government breaks down their racial statistics but certainly East Indians are Asians. They might not be East Asians but they're Asians.<p>Not only that but Native Americans and most Latin Americans are to some degree of Asiatic origin as well. So they'd have to define recent, or historical Asian origin?<p>Further, we'd need clarification on whites vs Europeans. Europeans presently live in Eurasia, which technically is the same landmass as Asia. Beyond that, all Europeans and their white descendants alive today share the same ancestors as the Native Americans[0], which are of clear Asiatic origins. That also begs the question about my Saudi friends from college: they were adamant that they were Asians as they were indeed from the same continent.<p>So, which "asians" are we talking about here? I think this whole type of thing is a mess and so anti-scientific that it's entirely political. The government and their racial censuses are awfully convoluted. Which should be abolished, as Mexico has been our leader here and already abolished racial censuses long ago- if the US government is truly against racism. Change should always start at the top, leading by good example!<p>In sum, there's only 5 heavily-populated major landmasses in the world and 4 of those 5 are occupied by a majority with folks of wholly Asian or at minimum, mixed-Asian descent. With Africa being the only real exception. So our government need to get its act together and if they're going to use racial terminology and policy, to do it in a little bit more scientific manner.<p>[0]<a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-29213892" rel="nofollow">http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-29213892</a>
Do they mean Asians from Asia or Americans of Asian descent?<p>The article is unclear, but if the former, given Palantir'a security work with various US government agencies, it might be a factor as others have pointed out.
I hope plantair wins this sort of lawsuit could really hurt women and diversity efforts to get into tech jobs if companies are forced to hire based on qualified candidate pools.
What is the definition of Asian, here? One has to remember that Middle Eastern countries and Pakistan are in Asia.<p>Given the nature of what Palantir does, it is easy to guess why it would discriminate against a certain category of people who have ties to foreign countries in general, and sensitive countries in particular.<p>It is the same problem intelligence agencies faced when they wanted Arabic/Urdu speakers. Those who spoke these languages would never be vetted.
Indian here (I hope that still makes me Asian).
I did interview on-site at Palantir in 2014. I did not feel like any kind of discrimination was in play at any point.
In fact, 3/6 of the people I interacted with during the course of my interviews seemed to be from a Asian / east-Asian ethnicity.
I did feel like the people working there were a little overly confident in nature, but discriminating? I don't think so.
Is this just like the complaints about elite universities discriminating against Asians/Indians to maintain the diversity? Perhaps people who know about Palantir's diversity ratio can comment.<p>I have seen some companies preferring certain race of applicants to maintain diversity in teams even though there are plenty of qualified applicants.
You have to stop discrimination from first principles downwards: Identify the discriminating policy or behaviour and stop it. You cannot assess discrimination from the other side, by looking at percentages and then conclude a systemic bias. That is not only unsound statistics, it is fascism.
The key question, it seems to me, is what the evidence is that this allegation is true: "The lawsuit alleges Palantir routinely eliminated Asian applicants in the resume screening and telephone interview phases, even when they were as qualified as white applicants".
I guess this is the other side of the coin when it comes to government contracting.<p>Government contracts are great if you can make them work -- these organizations have big budgets, and many individual layers of the bureaucracy have a "we must spend our allowance or we won't get one next year" mentality. Find a good use case for your tech, hire a couple of people who are good at making gov't relationships and who know how to do the paperwork right, and you're in business.<p>The flip side of this is that government contracting rules are really, really strict. And the impact of being barred or even partially restricted from government contracting work would be really, really bad for Palantir.
The interesting question to me is how does discriminating against asians help palantir's bottom line ?<p>Has this something to do with culture, or the fact that Palantir think that even american asians are leaking information to countries like china, india, etc.
Does anyone know how affected applicants are supposed to participate in this lawsuit? That is, the remedies include remuneration for these applicants, but it doesn't look like there's a clear way for people to indicate that they think they were affected by this bias.<p>(Note that this is a government lawsuit, so it's not like a class-action where additional parties "join" the suit or are included in a class. It's just the government versus the company, with remedies (apparently) to be paid to other individuals.)
Doesn’t this result just tell us that Palantir’s recruitment funnel is broken. If your funnel is attracting 73% Asians then fix the funnel at the top, not the bottom.
"<i>In 2015, Asians represented 27.2 percent of the professional workforce at Google, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, LinkedIn and Yahoo but were 13.9 percent of the companies' executive workforces, according to a study by pan-Asian professionals organization Ascend.</i>"<p>Asians are culturally inclined towards collective work and are therefore disinclined to the competitive environment of management.<p><i>Tongue in cheek comment of the day.</i>
I'm not sure how the stuff about executive positions is relevant for internships.<p>> In 2015, Asians represented 27.2 percent of the professional workforce at Google, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, LinkedIn and Yahoo but were 13.9 percent of the companies' executive workforces, according to a study by pan-Asian professionals organization Ascend.
Who does Palantir think they are ?? The ivy league?? Geesh we all know only tier 1 colleges can discriminate against asians using the "diversity" card..
I bet it's more subtle than overt (not an excuse if it's happening, of course, merely a possible explanation)... probably managers hiring unaware they're hiring people whom look like them, rather than hiring the most skilled and capable people whom fit with the company culture. I've seen this at a number of universities and enterprise shops when there's not a conscious effort to minimize useless bias.
Haha Silicon Valley is notoriously racist. It was started by the US military. Hell, even Stage Jobs went public talking about nuking Koreans like it was pearl harbour and everyone thought that was a swell thing to say.<p>There's gotta be some other motive here.
I'm not totally comfortable with the fact that the knee-jerk reaction here is that an allegation of racial discrimination in hiring is wrong on its face. Although Asians certainly aren't a significantly underrepresented minority in tech on the whole, eliminating bias from hiring processes is a hard problem and it definitely seems plausible to me that Palantir could have, for whatever reason, fallen into an anti-pattern that effectively (if not consciously) discriminated against the Asian applicant pool.<p>Some of the comments here seem to suggest people might be instinctively identifying with Palantir when they talk about their own difficulties in trying to find qualified job applicants. It's without a doubt incredibly hard to find qualified job candidates, and there's a huge number of factors that can go into making any hire/no-hire decision, but for those very reasons these types of lawsuits from the DOL are both hard for them to win and pretty rare, which suggests to me that there's a fair amount of objectively quantifiable evidence pointing towards discrimination. I think, unfortunately, that it's much more common for widespread discrimination to never be addressed in certain companies than for the federal government to overzealously sue corporations on marginal evidence.<p>I don't think there's any question that Palantir is going to be ultimately ok as a company, however the law suit turns out. Even if the ruling was to wrongly come down against them, they'd pay $___ million, change their hiring processes so they're at least less likely to be sued again, and then move on with their lives as a hugely valuable multi-billion dollar corporation. Discriminatory hiring processes, on the other hand, I think need to be routed out wherever they may occur because systemic injustices ultimately hurt our society as a whole.<p>This allegation is very serious and I think needs to be taken seriously. When our instinctive reaction to an accusation of discrimination is that it's more than likely overblown or outright false, we're implicitly endorsing the idea that discrimination is both rare and always obvious, neither of which I think are true. I'm not ready to make any judgements about Palantir as a company or its hiring process, but it seems very likely that they (like any company) have blind spots in the way they're hiring that disadvantage some groups, especially if the DOL thinks there's enough evidence to win a court case over it. The great news for Palantir is that even if that's true, it's not an issue that really affects any core component of them as a company and it's 100% fixable with some extra HR spending.<p>I think the more constructive take-away from a news article like this is to think about what we ourselves do to eliminate bias from our hiring and potentially talk about what works and what doesn't. No one wants or needs us to hire unqualified candidates, but it's undesirable for us to unfairly exclude groups of qualified candidates because of race or any other discriminatory factor, both because of the societal implications and because we end up missing good candidates in a time where good engineers are in incredibly high demand. Like I said, establishing fair hiring practices is a hard problem; it goes a lot further than just trying to "do the right thing" and reaches into a lot of core parts of how we perceive the world. As engineers we constantly try to study and adjust for our imperfect brains' natural tendencies so that we can build more useful products and get more done. Why can't we try to fight bias in the same way?
I interviewed for Palantir in 2010 for a QA position. They flew me in from East Coast, and took good care of me. I didn't accepted the offer as I went on to accept a SW position in a different company. I didn't felt like I was biased against.<p>I'm not sure about Palantir's bias against Asians, but the tone of comments here are surely negative and partially racist. Let me think, if I really meant "racist". May be it is the fear of competition, usually shown by below par individuals, or may be just signs of arrogance.<p>Either ways, I am N.E.V.E.R. going to apply to companies like Palantir, Theranos, Snap, Reddit, Path, etc. Damage is done. Congrats.<p>p.s. Throwaway account.
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.
Very interesting line in the complaint that other companies should take note of:<p>> "In addition, the majority of Palantir's hires into these positions came from an employee referral system that disproportionately excluded Asians."<p>Also, the complaint says they tried <i>twice</i> to get Palantir in compliance (starting in late '15) and are only now filing this complaint.
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?
Compliance would be a lot fairer and lower-overhead if the government would simply inform businesses of the racial composition they wanted to see, rather than randomly cracking down on firms because particular groups were "only" 4x overrepresented rather than 10x.