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The part that doesn't make sense to me is... what does Palantir have to gain by discriminating? The other way this happens is by cultural biases causing discri

The part that doesn't make sense to me is... what does Palantir have to gain by discriminating? The other way this happens is by cultural biases causing discrimination, but not intentionally with some specific goal in mind. 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.

rb2k_ 10y ago
I have no idea, but just a random guess: If you try to sell a lot of secret spying services to the government (which I think Palantir does?), they probably think it helps if your employees don't look/sound Chinese, seeing as the government might be afraid of China's espionage efforts. I also don't know how much trouble they have getting clearance for someone that grew up in China compared to other countries. (again: I have no idea, that's just a random guess)
- kzx0110 10y ago
  I would speculate that the majority of 'asians' who applied to Palantir were not from China, but rather from the region sometimes called South Asia.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - rb2k_ 10y ago
    To save the lazy people a google search: "The current territories of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal, India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka form the countries of South Asia."
- MaxfordAndSons 10y ago
  That's what I thought too. I would imagine if something like this were the case, it would be more likely done out of clearance concerns or even a genuine fear of infiltration, than for customer facing optics.
  - munchbunny 10y ago
    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 believe that there would be a lawsuit over racial biases if it's driven by clearance requirements making non-citizens ineligible.
    - hiram112 10y ago
      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 live there, and who often travels back for visits. Even if the naturalized American - Chinese citizen was not corrupted himself, countries like China would not be above threatening his relatives still there.
      - munchbunny 10y ago
        Let's say I take your reasoning and run with it. There are plenty of people of Chinese ancestry (or Asian ancestry in general) who have no family (within a few generations), friends, or relations to China, and never stepped foot there. If the objection is to naturalized US citizens from China who have still have ties to China (I am one of those people), fair enough, but then there are three problems: 1. You should be filtering for foreign connections in general, not for ethnicity. That test already happens in the process of getting security clearance. 2. You can leverage people in plenty of other ways that do not involve threatening friends or relatives. Both the US and China have teams in government agencies that do that for a living. 3. Oh man this is a huge can of worms when it comes to civil rights, equality, and constitutional issues in general. That makes for a not-very-accurate filter that is ethically suspect that is also not hard to bypass for the seemingly valuable intel underneath. Seems like bad ROI. Perhaps I really am naive as you say, but on the second order of analysis it seems to me like an ineffective policy if it were actually a policy.
- mildbow 10y ago
  It's a pretty shitty guess. That's the sort of thinking that led to japanese internment camps.
hackuser 10y ago
> 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.
- munchbunny 10y ago
  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 information to me is whether there really is something wrong with their company culture that would cause hiring preferences to deviate away from "generally average in the aggregate."
  - hackuser 10y ago
    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.
- dnautics 10y ago
  they do a lot of government contracting, and government contract awards often want you to have population-proportional hiring, to show you aren't racist.
bane 10y ago
I don't think it's explicit discrimination. From what I've heard they're very "culture fit" biased in their hiring. "Culture fit" is a notorious discrimination problem in startup-land, but it often just comes from wanting to hire people who share similar interests and socio-economic factors rather than race -- but it can have the same effect. For example, if somebody started a company that hired people overwhelmingly on their music preference, and that preference was Blue Grass, the employee pool would probably not well represent the racial makeup at large.
ryuker16 10y ago
Some companies prefer a "white" office and too many asians is an issue. Alternatively, they trashed resumes with south east asian names and schools becuase they usually arent even usa citizens.
Fomite 10y ago
Discrimination doesn't have to be intentional. Just the tendency to hire "people like me" can be problematic.

rb2k_ 10y ago

I have no idea, but just a random guess: If you try to sell a lot of secret spying services to the government (which I think Palantir does?), they probably think it helps if your employees don't look/sound Chinese, seeing as the government might be afraid of China's espionage efforts. I also don't know how much trouble they have getting clearance for someone that grew up in China compared to other countries. (again: I have no idea, that's just a random guess)

kzx0110 10y ago
I would speculate that the majority of 'asians' who applied to Palantir were not from China, but rather from the region sometimes called South Asia.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- rb2k_ 10y ago
  To save the lazy people a google search: "The current territories of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal, India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka form the countries of South Asia."
MaxfordAndSons 10y ago
That's what I thought too. I would imagine if something like this were the case, it would be more likely done out of clearance concerns or even a genuine fear of infiltration, than for customer facing optics.
- munchbunny 10y ago
  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 believe that there would be a lawsuit over racial biases if it's driven by clearance requirements making non-citizens ineligible.
  - hiram112 10y ago
    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 live there, and who often travels back for visits. Even if the naturalized American - Chinese citizen was not corrupted himself, countries like China would not be above threatening his relatives still there.
    - munchbunny 10y ago
      Let's say I take your reasoning and run with it. There are plenty of people of Chinese ancestry (or Asian ancestry in general) who have no family (within a few generations), friends, or relations to China, and never stepped foot there. If the objection is to naturalized US citizens from China who have still have ties to China (I am one of those people), fair enough, but then there are three problems: 1. You should be filtering for foreign connections in general, not for ethnicity. That test already happens in the process of getting security clearance. 2. You can leverage people in plenty of other ways that do not involve threatening friends or relatives. Both the US and China have teams in government agencies that do that for a living. 3. Oh man this is a huge can of worms when it comes to civil rights, equality, and constitutional issues in general. That makes for a not-very-accurate filter that is ethically suspect that is also not hard to bypass for the seemingly valuable intel underneath. Seems like bad ROI. Perhaps I really am naive as you say, but on the second order of analysis it seems to me like an ineffective policy if it were actually a policy.
mildbow 10y ago
It's a pretty shitty guess. That's the sort of thinking that led to japanese internment camps.

hackuser 10y ago

> 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.

munchbunny 10y ago
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 information to me is whether there really is something wrong with their company culture that would cause hiring preferences to deviate away from "generally average in the aggregate."
- hackuser 10y ago
  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.
dnautics 10y ago
they do a lot of government contracting, and government contract awards often want you to have population-proportional hiring, to show you aren't racist.

bane 10y ago

I don't think it's explicit discrimination. From what I've heard they're very "culture fit" biased in their hiring. "Culture fit" is a notorious discrimination problem in startup-land, but it often just comes from wanting to hire people who share similar interests and socio-economic factors rather than race -- but it can have the same effect. For example, if somebody started a company that hired people overwhelmingly on their music preference, and that preference was Blue Grass, the employee pool would probably not well represent the racial makeup at large.

ryuker16 10y ago

Some companies prefer a "white" office and too many asians is an issue. Alternatively, they trashed resumes with south east asian names and schools becuase they usually arent even usa citizens.

Fomite 10y ago

Discrimination doesn't have to be intentional. Just the tendency to hire "people like me" can be problematic.