6 ms·

Here's the actual government complaint, the allegations are listed in sections 10 and 11, https://www.dol.gov/sites/default/files/newsroom/newsreleases/OFCCP201

by guelo 10y ago

Here's the actual government complaint, the allegations are listed in sections 10 and 11, https://www.dol.gov/sites/default/files/newsroom/newsreleases/OFCCP20160926_0.pdf https://www.dol.gov/sites/default/files/newsroom/newsrelease... My concerns, 1) why is the qualified candidate pool, whatever that is, so overwhelmingly Asian, 73-85%? Isn't the candidate selection process biased towards Asians? 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.

onmatest 10y ago
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 people because of referrals, there would be more uproar. Ultimately, the implications would be that if that logic were applied to government positions, (ie, if government positions took into account referrals more than merit) you could end up with a government that is overwhelmingly white and/or arbitrarily discriminates against people applying to positions.
- derefr 10y ago
  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.
  - ezzaf 10y ago
    Tax dollar ROI for whom? Part of the benefit of ensuring a diversity in government roles is aiding governments to better provide services for all aspects of society, not just the minority who hold those roles.
    - sib 10y ago
      Tax dollar ROI for taxpayers (since they are the "investors").
      - simplemath 10y ago
        The government isn't a corporation.
      - hinkley 10y ago
        Stop that. Stop that shit right now. You are not an investor. You are not a consumer of services. This is not a business, and we don't need a CEO. You're a CITIZEN of one of the most powerful nations on the planet, and don't you dare forget it.
        pyronik 10y ago
        >Stop that. Stop that shit right now. Why are you trying to shut down debate? It's a good point. I want my tax dollars to be maximized and not used to somehow enforce your idea of racial justice.
        mattnewton 10y ago
        Eh, I sure hope My situation is more like an investor with a vote, because I have very little ability to boycott the US government. Even if I go to the trouble of choosing a competing "product" by getting citizenship somewhere else I will still feel it's influence!
        solipsism 10y ago
        Stop that. Stop that shit right now. This is not a business, and we don't you acting like a jerk CEO and yelling at people. I guess you didn't get downvoted because people agree with you. I agree with you also. And yet, being right is not an excuse for the overly antagonistic way you made your point.
  - Shivetya 10y ago
    tax dollar ROI is less important to politicians than an equivalent of voter ROI. It cost them nothing to turn out an inferior program, project, expenditure, or whatever, provided the political points are accounted for. seen companies at local airport bidding contracts who have minorities who are merely paid to be on the board so they qualify for the contract. want to know one reason the government is so large, intrusive, and inefficient, look no further to rules that enforce everything but efficiency.
    - simplemath 10y ago
      How do you know why those minority employees were hired?
      - tastythrowaway2 10y ago
        my guess is it's... simple math YYYEEEEAAAAAAAHHHHHHH
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  - pqhwan 10y ago
    I'd say that in this case, providing job opportunities to diverse groups of people is part of the ROI (to a certain extent)
  - bcheung 10y ago
    In terms of tax dollars, I'm disappointed that I had to pay for this to begin with. It's a waste of money. I highly doubt Palantir did any kind discrimination based on race. The initial demographics of the founders and the early team has a large impact on the rest of the hires in my experience at previous startups. Main reason being that the early people are more prone to hire from referrals in their network of people they know. Some things to consider: P(qualified | referral) > P(qualified | all applicants) P(same race | referral) > P(different race | referral) and thus: P(hire | referral applicant) > P(hire | all applicants) I don't see any evidence of malicious or specific racial discrimination.
  - toomanybeersies 10y ago
    Governments are not businesses, and should not be run as such. There are a lot of things that a government does that can't be measured as a direct monetary benefit.
    - derefr 10y ago
      I wasn't suggesting monetary ROI; rather, effectiveness at achieving whatever goal is in the department's charter to achieve, by whatever metric that goal is measured: QALYs for the surgeon general, victories for the army, average time-to-destination for the Department of Transportation, etc. Currently, we seem to just think of the government as a machine that turns dollars into achieved consensus goals at some fixed (very low) efficiency. We never seem to say "what if we measured [metric] out per dollar in, and then tried to make that ratio increase?"
  - stale2002 10y ago
    Erased Essa wrasse w dad ex Zaire Cs
- stretchwithme 10y ago
  I would assert that its not a higher standard, but a less-informed one. If I have people I trust sharing their knowledge with me, its not immoral to leverage their judgment. And that's part of the problem with government doing things. It does not handle intangible considerations very well.
Kadin 10y ago
> why is the qualified candidate pool, whatever that is, so overwhelmingly Asian, 73-85%? Isn't the candidate selection process biased towards Asians? This is almost certainly because they're using recruiters, and the recruiters are funneling them candidates who aren't representative of the broader CS-degreed candidate pool.
ryuker16 10y ago
Id imagine indians in india looking for visa sponsorship. They spam alot of jobs regardless of visa sponsorship
DanielBMarkham 10y ago
Yes. This has all kinds of alarm bells going off. I don't care who you are or what you look like. I don't care how old you are, your gender, sexual preferences, citizenship status, and so forth. I'm certain that having a large mix of these will make my work environment more productive and interesting, but for each candidate I have much more important things to think about. The job is to make technology do stuff for people. This means you must have technology skills and people skills. Folks can argue about the ratio, but as a first approximation, for the vast majority of commercial software development work, it's about 10 percent tech and 90 percent people skills. We aren't building the next Google. We're going down the hall to talk to the CSRs about why the IVR system is acting up. I have interviewed devs. I found them almost universally atrocious both in tech and people skills. I found no correlation between certifications and actual ability to perform (except a positive correlation between advanced degrees and feelings of self-entitlement.) Do whatever tech tests you want, and for sure capture a ton of metrics. But the only process that has made any sense to me over the years is the team audition process. It's a play. We have try-outs. For a few folks we pick some candidates and backups. Everybody shows up for a sprint or two and the rest of the team sees how it works out. I don't see that universe as being anything close to the universe the government allegation seems to assume, where ratios of one category of candidate should translate into the same ratios of successful applicants.
- gaius 10y ago
  Everybody shows up for a sprint or two and the rest of the team sees how it works out. How do you hire people without 2 weeks vacay to burn on this process?
  - DanielBMarkham 10y ago
    It's an internal hiring model. There's a different one for externals.

by guelo 10y ago

onmatest 10y ago

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 people because of referrals, there would be more uproar. Ultimately, the implications would be that if that logic were applied to government positions, (ie, if government positions took into account referrals more than merit) you could end up with a government that is overwhelmingly white and/or arbitrarily discriminates against people applying to positions.

derefr 10y ago
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.
- ezzaf 10y ago
  Tax dollar ROI for whom? Part of the benefit of ensuring a diversity in government roles is aiding governments to better provide services for all aspects of society, not just the minority who hold those roles.
  - sib 10y ago
    Tax dollar ROI for taxpayers (since they are the "investors").
    - simplemath 10y ago
      The government isn't a corporation.
    - hinkley 10y ago
      Stop that. Stop that shit right now. You are not an investor. You are not a consumer of services. This is not a business, and we don't need a CEO. You're a CITIZEN of one of the most powerful nations on the planet, and don't you dare forget it.
      - pyronik 10y ago
        >Stop that. Stop that shit right now. Why are you trying to shut down debate? It's a good point. I want my tax dollars to be maximized and not used to somehow enforce your idea of racial justice.
      - mattnewton 10y ago
        Eh, I sure hope My situation is more like an investor with a vote, because I have very little ability to boycott the US government. Even if I go to the trouble of choosing a competing "product" by getting citizenship somewhere else I will still feel it's influence!
      - solipsism 10y ago
        Stop that. Stop that shit right now. This is not a business, and we don't you acting like a jerk CEO and yelling at people. I guess you didn't get downvoted because people agree with you. I agree with you also. And yet, being right is not an excuse for the overly antagonistic way you made your point.
- Shivetya 10y ago
  tax dollar ROI is less important to politicians than an equivalent of voter ROI. It cost them nothing to turn out an inferior program, project, expenditure, or whatever, provided the political points are accounted for. seen companies at local airport bidding contracts who have minorities who are merely paid to be on the board so they qualify for the contract. want to know one reason the government is so large, intrusive, and inefficient, look no further to rules that enforce everything but efficiency.
  - simplemath 10y ago
    How do you know why those minority employees were hired?
    - tastythrowaway2 10y ago
      my guess is it's... simple math YYYEEEEAAAAAAAHHHHHHH
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- pqhwan 10y ago
  I'd say that in this case, providing job opportunities to diverse groups of people is part of the ROI (to a certain extent)
- bcheung 10y ago
  In terms of tax dollars, I'm disappointed that I had to pay for this to begin with. It's a waste of money. I highly doubt Palantir did any kind discrimination based on race. The initial demographics of the founders and the early team has a large impact on the rest of the hires in my experience at previous startups. Main reason being that the early people are more prone to hire from referrals in their network of people they know. Some things to consider: P(qualified | referral) > P(qualified | all applicants) P(same race | referral) > P(different race | referral) and thus: P(hire | referral applicant) > P(hire | all applicants) I don't see any evidence of malicious or specific racial discrimination.
- toomanybeersies 10y ago
  Governments are not businesses, and should not be run as such. There are a lot of things that a government does that can't be measured as a direct monetary benefit.
  - derefr 10y ago
    I wasn't suggesting monetary ROI; rather, effectiveness at achieving whatever goal is in the department's charter to achieve, by whatever metric that goal is measured: QALYs for the surgeon general, victories for the army, average time-to-destination for the Department of Transportation, etc. Currently, we seem to just think of the government as a machine that turns dollars into achieved consensus goals at some fixed (very low) efficiency. We never seem to say "what if we measured [metric] out per dollar in, and then tried to make that ratio increase?"
- stale2002 10y ago
  Erased Essa wrasse w dad ex Zaire Cs
stretchwithme 10y ago
I would assert that its not a higher standard, but a less-informed one. If I have people I trust sharing their knowledge with me, its not immoral to leverage their judgment. And that's part of the problem with government doing things. It does not handle intangible considerations very well.

Kadin 10y ago

> why is the qualified candidate pool, whatever that is, so overwhelmingly Asian, 73-85%? Isn't the candidate selection process biased towards Asians? This is almost certainly because they're using recruiters, and the recruiters are funneling them candidates who aren't representative of the broader CS-degreed candidate pool.

ryuker16 10y ago

Id imagine indians in india looking for visa sponsorship. They spam alot of jobs regardless of visa sponsorship

DanielBMarkham 10y ago

Yes. This has all kinds of alarm bells going off. I don't care who you are or what you look like. I don't care how old you are, your gender, sexual preferences, citizenship status, and so forth. I'm certain that having a large mix of these will make my work environment more productive and interesting, but for each candidate I have much more important things to think about. The job is to make technology do stuff for people. This means you must have technology skills and people skills. Folks can argue about the ratio, but as a first approximation, for the vast majority of commercial software development work, it's about 10 percent tech and 90 percent people skills. We aren't building the next Google. We're going down the hall to talk to the CSRs about why the IVR system is acting up. I have interviewed devs. I found them almost universally atrocious both in tech and people skills. I found no correlation between certifications and actual ability to perform (except a positive correlation between advanced degrees and feelings of self-entitlement.) Do whatever tech tests you want, and for sure capture a ton of metrics. But the only process that has made any sense to me over the years is the team audition process. It's a play. We have try-outs. For a few folks we pick some candidates and backups. Everybody shows up for a sprint or two and the rest of the team sees how it works out. I don't see that universe as being anything close to the universe the government allegation seems to assume, where ratios of one category of candidate should translate into the same ratios of successful applicants.

gaius 10y ago
Everybody shows up for a sprint or two and the rest of the team sees how it works out. How do you hire people without 2 weeks vacay to burn on this process?
- DanielBMarkham 10y ago
  It's an internal hiring model. There's a different one for externals.