16 ms·

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

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. 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.

vthallam 10y ago
Wow! I kind of fit into your sterotype, except i graduated from a large private university. Isn't it stupid that you are putting a billion people in the same pool(Indian bachelors+ consulting firm exp+US State school = suckers)?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- mahyarm 10y ago
  That subset of indians isn't a billion although...
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
Spooky23 10y ago
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.
- tomp 10y ago
  I agree woth this. I and my friends always wondered how so many Asians get accepted to top UK universities (with very high English-language requirements), when they can barely speak a word of intelligible English. Now I have a close friend from China, and the mistery is solved: others are doing their exams/essays/assignments for them. Keep in mind though, this is likely a huge generalisation (not all Chinese cheat and other nationalities cheat as well), and I put more than half of the blame on the universities themselves (they earn a lot of money accepting these kinds of students), but long-term, it really dilutes the value of this education in my eyes.
  - WhitneyLand 10y ago
    >>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.
    - brbsix 10y ago
      I have nothing to say about profiling individuals but cheating appears to be a huge issue among international students. Per the WSJ [0]: Public universities in the U.S. recorded 5.1 reports of alleged cheating for every 100 international students, versus one report per 100 domestic students Faculty singled out Chinese students in particular. [0]: http://www.wsj.com/articles/foreign-students-seen-cheating-more-than-domestic-ones-1465140141 http://www.wsj.com/articles/foreign-students-seen-cheating-m...
    - barry-cotter 10y ago
      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 rampant. On a more anecdotal level one of my fiancee's friends was dating a guy who sold SAT answers for a while. I have a couple of friends who teach at international high schools here in Shanghai. It takes quite a long time to get through to the students that plagiarism is not okay and is taken seriously. By the way no one brought up race in this thread until you did.
Devthrowaway80 10y ago
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.
- chaosphere2112 10y ago
  My alma mater has a great undergrad program, but an absolutely awful masters. I've been told that they don't have the resources to teach it, and that the college keeps sending recruiters throughout Asia to pick up as many foreign students as possible for the extra tuition money, though that might have just been a bitter professor.
  - WhitneyLand 10y ago
    Sounds like CSU Chico.
  - danieltillett 10y ago
    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.
    - shostack 10y ago
      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.
      - danieltillett 10y ago
        >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.
jpeg_hero 10y ago
> and now doing a master's at a large state university ahh, Georgia Tech
- praneshp 10y ago
  I went to Georgia Tech, and a small subset of Indians there matched the "bachelors in India + work in consultancy" description. I didn't feel anyone there was clueless though. Definitely no fake resume shit. It is possible that I'm clueless, and cannot identify clueless people. Thanks to you, TIL that Tech is a state university. Never knew.
  - kelukelugames 10y ago
    You didn't know George Tech was a state school? Does that have some special meaning other than public?
    - praneshp 10y ago
      No, I did not. I thought it was privately owned (like Stanford, Johns Hopkins, USC, etc).
      - kelukelugames 10y ago
        LMAO. I'm sorry but that's hilarious. How many years were you there?
        paulddraper 10y ago
        I didn't go there, but I thought the same. "Techs" seem to always be private...MIT, Cal Tech, Florida Tech, etc. (Oh, by the way, Florida Tech definitely fits the aforementioned stereotype.)
        Fomite 10y ago
        Virginia Tech is also public.
throwaway8976 10y ago
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 fairs).
- api 10y ago
  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?
  - sib 10y ago
    "How in the world are people making it through schools (with a MS!) without actually.... uhh.... you know.... knowing the subject at all?" I'm sure that there are many more people who could complete FizzBuzz on a homework assignment, with the help of the Googles, than could do so in an interview. And there are many mid-tier MS programs that are happy to take money from international candidates and give them every opportunity to keep paying.
  - throwaway8976 10y ago
    > 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. Absolutely. They may even have washed out at higher numbers. The applicant pool described in the complaint definitely isn't representative of US CS majors nationwide, so you can't use it to draw inferences about the quality of students overall.
  - 67726e 10y ago
    I'm rather shocked by this as well. I understand not knowing the latest frameworks and such, but I have close personal friends that say my name should be in parenthesis next to theirs on their diplomas. A lot of CS courses can be passed by getting help on take home assignments and rote memorization on tests. At least for your typical state schools.
tn13 10y ago
I met Mr. X who earns over $10K in cash each month. Job ? Answer interviews on other people's behalf. The setup is sophisticated. Screens shared, Headphones with two inputs and what not. Visas are faked, resumes are complete rubbish and it is my suspicion that the hiring managers/committees are bribed directly or indirectly. I know people with 0 years of experience drawing salary of $110K from a large company by showing fake 8 years of experience. Sadly all people involved are from my home country India. It really saddens me that we arrive here as economic refugees and destroy the very system that is so welcoming to us.
just_saying_it 10y ago
Look at the story submissions by the comment author above. May be, there might be a bias here.
- statictype 10y ago
  Nice catch
statictype 10y ago
A few paragraphs in: "The accusation that Palantir discriminated against Asians is an oddity in Silicon Valley, where big companies including Google parent Alphabet Inc. and Facebook Inc. have been criticized for hiring too many white and Asian engineers, and too few blacks and Hispanics." Your organization is almost certainly not like Palantir so I'm not sure where your sympathy is coming from.
IndianAstronaut 10y ago
They are cash cows and can produce good results on paper at least. Also, they come from an education system which focuses on memorization, so memorizing a bunch of interview questions and answers is nothing to them.
vietdung2910 10y ago
Wait. Based on my knowledge, India is not in southeast Asia. Source: I'm from southeast Asia.
- bitter-pill 10y ago
  Indians all want to say they are asian....
  - spacehome 10y ago
    Which continent is India in, again?
  - sctb 10y ago
    This account seems to have been created to post only unsubstantive comments in this thread. Creating accounts is fine, as long as you contribute meaningfully to the discussion.
- vacri 10y ago
  In the UK, 'asian' tends to refer to people from India or Pakistan. In other primarily-English-speaking countries, it tends to mean people from eastern Asia. (yes, technically anyone from Asia is Asian, but when someone says 'asian', it doesn't evoke the mental image of a caucasian Russian who lives in Novosibirsk.)
  - daemin 10y ago
    Yeah, in some cases "Asia" extends far into the Middle East - Football / Soccer, there is an Asian club championship with teams from the *stan's and Australia.
jalayir 10y ago
Different organizations have different strategies. Looks like yours has a policy of "throwing plaster at the wall, and seeing what sticks".
sriram_sun 10y ago
You are comparing Apples and Oranges. The Asian student applicants on whose behalf the DoL filed the lawsuit have to be U.S citizens. If you read the suit itself, there is a lot of wiggle room for Palantir. Here is the threat (paragraph 14 B) "An order permanently enjoining Palantir and its officers, agents, successors, divisions, subsidiaries, and those persons in active concert or participation with them... " Here is how they can easily wiggle out: (paragraph 14 D.) "An order requiring Palantir to provide complete relief to the affected class of Asian applicants.." and (paragraph 14 E.) "An order requiring Palantir to hire Asian applicants from the affected class list."
- gerby 10y ago
  I have a sneaking suspicion that some of these "Asian" candidates are playing the race card, and actually have not so good intentions with Palantir which deals with highly sensitive information. I would be wary, and if I was Palantir, I would bite.
  - sriram_sun 10y ago
    The candidates don't file a complaint with the DoL. DoL already has information on ethnicity. All Govt. contractors are required to collect this information. The applicants of course can refuse to divulge that information I believe. It is foolish to create one bucket called "asian" and throw in people from Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia Philippines in addition to those from China, Japan and Korea. I personally do not think that the students have time to sit around and play the "race card". They've probably moved on to other things. I've also noticed the lack of diversity in startups that is disproportionately affecting minorities. Software being what it is is usually a trade off between many solutions that actually work in the short term. So it is actually pretty easy to hire friends of friends and so on and if they can get something to work, you'll convince yourself that you've hired the right person for the job. Friends being friends will easily pass the "culture fit" test. Anyway I see a lot of direct and veiled comments against interview candidates from Asian countries with reference to their accents etc. I don't think HN should be the place for such comments. Having worked in the Bay Area, I can say that an accent is the last thing on anybody's mind once you've proved competence.
T2_t2 10y ago
> I'm not sure how they got in or are able to graduate I can't speak for elsewhere, as I went to university in Australia, but down here we have a MASSIVE foreign student population as a percentage - International education is currently Australia's third largest export overall - mostly from India and most parts of Asia (kinda our closest neighbours). My personal, very anecdotal experience is that Indian students were either amazing, or very much not very good. The route seemed to be do ANY degree in India, followed by a (one year?) Masters in IT in Australia. This then legitimised their IT bonafides. The Indian culture also has a different attitude to cheating - it is seen as much worse to fail than to be caught cheating - and I saw this play out a fair few times, to the point that in one exam 5 Indians had to be physically separated for passing paper back and forth. We also had one girl who said to her lecturer "I don't see why it matters, I'm never going to work. I just need a degree so I can go home and marry a good man". Now, to answer the quote, the reason this continues is due to the Australian need for the foreign $$$. As a result, very few foreign students are (or is it were?) disciplined for these infractions. Several times it has been a massive scandal down here (http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/mymaster-essay-cheating-scandal-more-than-70-university-students-face-suspension-20150312-1425oe.html http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/mymaster-essay-cheating-scandal-mo... although it seems common: http://www.wsj.com/articles/foreign-students-seen-cheating-more-than-domestic-ones-1465140141 http://www.wsj.com/articles/foreign-students-seen-cheating-m...), and many locals worry it devalues their own education. On the flipside, the very best students in my year were foreign, and often Indian, so this was not a one-size-fits-all situation. YMMV, but the Australian universities need for foreign student $$$ has lead to MUCH lower standards for foreign students passing than locals, at least in the past.

vthallam 10y ago

Wow! I kind of fit into your sterotype, except i graduated from a large private university. Isn't it stupid that you are putting a billion people in the same pool(Indian bachelors+ consulting firm exp+US State school = suckers)?

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
mahyarm 10y ago
That subset of indians isn't a billion although...
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

Spooky23 10y ago

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.

tomp 10y ago
I agree woth this. I and my friends always wondered how so many Asians get accepted to top UK universities (with very high English-language requirements), when they can barely speak a word of intelligible English. Now I have a close friend from China, and the mistery is solved: others are doing their exams/essays/assignments for them. Keep in mind though, this is likely a huge generalisation (not all Chinese cheat and other nationalities cheat as well), and I put more than half of the blame on the universities themselves (they earn a lot of money accepting these kinds of students), but long-term, it really dilutes the value of this education in my eyes.
- WhitneyLand 10y ago
  >>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.
  - brbsix 10y ago
    I have nothing to say about profiling individuals but cheating appears to be a huge issue among international students. Per the WSJ [0]: Public universities in the U.S. recorded 5.1 reports of alleged cheating for every 100 international students, versus one report per 100 domestic students Faculty singled out Chinese students in particular. [0]: http://www.wsj.com/articles/foreign-students-seen-cheating-more-than-domestic-ones-1465140141 http://www.wsj.com/articles/foreign-students-seen-cheating-m...
  - barry-cotter 10y ago
    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 rampant. On a more anecdotal level one of my fiancee's friends was dating a guy who sold SAT answers for a while. I have a couple of friends who teach at international high schools here in Shanghai. It takes quite a long time to get through to the students that plagiarism is not okay and is taken seriously. By the way no one brought up race in this thread until you did.

Devthrowaway80 10y ago

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.

chaosphere2112 10y ago
My alma mater has a great undergrad program, but an absolutely awful masters. I've been told that they don't have the resources to teach it, and that the college keeps sending recruiters throughout Asia to pick up as many foreign students as possible for the extra tuition money, though that might have just been a bitter professor.
- WhitneyLand 10y ago
  Sounds like CSU Chico.
- danieltillett 10y ago
  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.
  - shostack 10y ago
    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.
    - danieltillett 10y ago
      >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.

jpeg_hero 10y ago

> and now doing a master's at a large state university ahh, Georgia Tech

praneshp 10y ago
I went to Georgia Tech, and a small subset of Indians there matched the "bachelors in India + work in consultancy" description. I didn't feel anyone there was clueless though. Definitely no fake resume shit. It is possible that I'm clueless, and cannot identify clueless people. Thanks to you, TIL that Tech is a state university. Never knew.
- kelukelugames 10y ago
  You didn't know George Tech was a state school? Does that have some special meaning other than public?
  - praneshp 10y ago
    No, I did not. I thought it was privately owned (like Stanford, Johns Hopkins, USC, etc).
    - kelukelugames 10y ago
      LMAO. I'm sorry but that's hilarious. How many years were you there?
      - paulddraper 10y ago
        I didn't go there, but I thought the same. "Techs" seem to always be private...MIT, Cal Tech, Florida Tech, etc. (Oh, by the way, Florida Tech definitely fits the aforementioned stereotype.)
        Fomite 10y ago
        Virginia Tech is also public.

throwaway8976 10y ago

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 fairs).

api 10y ago
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?
- sib 10y ago
  "How in the world are people making it through schools (with a MS!) without actually.... uhh.... you know.... knowing the subject at all?" I'm sure that there are many more people who could complete FizzBuzz on a homework assignment, with the help of the Googles, than could do so in an interview. And there are many mid-tier MS programs that are happy to take money from international candidates and give them every opportunity to keep paying.
- throwaway8976 10y ago
  > 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. Absolutely. They may even have washed out at higher numbers. The applicant pool described in the complaint definitely isn't representative of US CS majors nationwide, so you can't use it to draw inferences about the quality of students overall.
- 67726e 10y ago
  I'm rather shocked by this as well. I understand not knowing the latest frameworks and such, but I have close personal friends that say my name should be in parenthesis next to theirs on their diplomas. A lot of CS courses can be passed by getting help on take home assignments and rote memorization on tests. At least for your typical state schools.

tn13 10y ago

I met Mr. X who earns over $10K in cash each month. Job ? Answer interviews on other people's behalf. The setup is sophisticated. Screens shared, Headphones with two inputs and what not. Visas are faked, resumes are complete rubbish and it is my suspicion that the hiring managers/committees are bribed directly or indirectly. I know people with 0 years of experience drawing salary of $110K from a large company by showing fake 8 years of experience. Sadly all people involved are from my home country India. It really saddens me that we arrive here as economic refugees and destroy the very system that is so welcoming to us.

just_saying_it 10y ago

Look at the story submissions by the comment author above. May be, there might be a bias here.

statictype 10y ago
Nice catch

statictype 10y ago

A few paragraphs in: "The accusation that Palantir discriminated against Asians is an oddity in Silicon Valley, where big companies including Google parent Alphabet Inc. and Facebook Inc. have been criticized for hiring too many white and Asian engineers, and too few blacks and Hispanics." Your organization is almost certainly not like Palantir so I'm not sure where your sympathy is coming from.

IndianAstronaut 10y ago

They are cash cows and can produce good results on paper at least. Also, they come from an education system which focuses on memorization, so memorizing a bunch of interview questions and answers is nothing to them.

vietdung2910 10y ago

Wait. Based on my knowledge, India is not in southeast Asia. Source: I'm from southeast Asia.

bitter-pill 10y ago
Indians all want to say they are asian....
- spacehome 10y ago
  Which continent is India in, again?
- sctb 10y ago
  This account seems to have been created to post only unsubstantive comments in this thread. Creating accounts is fine, as long as you contribute meaningfully to the discussion.
vacri 10y ago
In the UK, 'asian' tends to refer to people from India or Pakistan. In other primarily-English-speaking countries, it tends to mean people from eastern Asia. (yes, technically anyone from Asia is Asian, but when someone says 'asian', it doesn't evoke the mental image of a caucasian Russian who lives in Novosibirsk.)
- daemin 10y ago
  Yeah, in some cases "Asia" extends far into the Middle East - Football / Soccer, there is an Asian club championship with teams from the *stan's and Australia.

jalayir 10y ago

Different organizations have different strategies. Looks like yours has a policy of "throwing plaster at the wall, and seeing what sticks".

sriram_sun 10y ago

You are comparing Apples and Oranges. The Asian student applicants on whose behalf the DoL filed the lawsuit have to be U.S citizens. If you read the suit itself, there is a lot of wiggle room for Palantir. Here is the threat (paragraph 14 B) "An order permanently enjoining Palantir and its officers, agents, successors, divisions, subsidiaries, and those persons in active concert or participation with them... " Here is how they can easily wiggle out: (paragraph 14 D.) "An order requiring Palantir to provide complete relief to the affected class of Asian applicants.." and (paragraph 14 E.) "An order requiring Palantir to hire Asian applicants from the affected class list."

gerby 10y ago
I have a sneaking suspicion that some of these "Asian" candidates are playing the race card, and actually have not so good intentions with Palantir which deals with highly sensitive information. I would be wary, and if I was Palantir, I would bite.
- sriram_sun 10y ago
  The candidates don't file a complaint with the DoL. DoL already has information on ethnicity. All Govt. contractors are required to collect this information. The applicants of course can refuse to divulge that information I believe. It is foolish to create one bucket called "asian" and throw in people from Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia Philippines in addition to those from China, Japan and Korea. I personally do not think that the students have time to sit around and play the "race card". They've probably moved on to other things. I've also noticed the lack of diversity in startups that is disproportionately affecting minorities. Software being what it is is usually a trade off between many solutions that actually work in the short term. So it is actually pretty easy to hire friends of friends and so on and if they can get something to work, you'll convince yourself that you've hired the right person for the job. Friends being friends will easily pass the "culture fit" test. Anyway I see a lot of direct and veiled comments against interview candidates from Asian countries with reference to their accents etc. I don't think HN should be the place for such comments. Having worked in the Bay Area, I can say that an accent is the last thing on anybody's mind once you've proved competence.

T2_t2 10y ago

> I'm not sure how they got in or are able to graduate I can't speak for elsewhere, as I went to university in Australia, but down here we have a MASSIVE foreign student population as a percentage - International education is currently Australia's third largest export overall - mostly from India and most parts of Asia (kinda our closest neighbours). My personal, very anecdotal experience is that Indian students were either amazing, or very much not very good. The route seemed to be do ANY degree in India, followed by a (one year?) Masters in IT in Australia. This then legitimised their IT bonafides. The Indian culture also has a different attitude to cheating - it is seen as much worse to fail than to be caught cheating - and I saw this play out a fair few times, to the point that in one exam 5 Indians had to be physically separated for passing paper back and forth. We also had one girl who said to her lecturer "I don't see why it matters, I'm never going to work. I just need a degree so I can go home and marry a good man". Now, to answer the quote, the reason this continues is due to the Australian need for the foreign $$$. As a result, very few foreign students are (or is it were?) disciplined for these infractions. Several times it has been a massive scandal down here (http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/mymaster-essay-cheating-scandal-more-than-70-university-students-face-suspension-20150312-1425oe.html http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/mymaster-essay-cheating-scandal-mo... although it seems common: http://www.wsj.com/articles/foreign-students-seen-cheating-more-than-domestic-ones-1465140141 http://www.wsj.com/articles/foreign-students-seen-cheating-m...), and many locals worry it devalues their own education. On the flipside, the very best students in my year were foreign, and often Indian, so this was not a one-size-fits-all situation. YMMV, but the Australian universities need for foreign student $$$ has lead to MUCH lower standards for foreign students passing than locals, at least in the past.