US Department of Labor Is Suing Peter Thiel's Startup 'Palantir' For Discriminating Against Asians (reuters.com)

Palantir Technologies is a secretive start-up in Silicon Valley that specializes in big data analysis. It was founded in 2004 by Peter Thiel, Alex Karp, Joe Lonsdale, Stephen Cohen, and Nathan Gettings, and is backed by the FBI and CIA as it "helps government agencies track down terrorists and uncover financial fraud," according to Reuters. Today, the U.S. Department of Labor filed a lawsuit against the company, alleging that it discriminated against Asian job applicants. Reuters reports: 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. 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 those who applied 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. The majority of Palantir's hires as engineering interns, as well as two other engineering positions, "came from an employee referral system that disproportionately excluded Asians," the lawsuit said. Palantir denied the allegations in a statement and said it intends to "vigorously defend" against them. The lawsuit seeks relief for persons affected, including lost wages.

Comments

Wipro, Cognizant, Tata, you are next

[Anonymous Coward]

What is the chance to have only indians working for these outsourcing companies?
1 on google?
LOL

Re:Wipro, Cognizant, Tata, you are next

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not discriminatory if no white people apply for the jobs.

Re:Wipro, Cognizant, Tata, you are next

[Anonymous Coward]

IT recruiter here. TCS and Wipro are somewhat different from the others, don't know about Cognizant. TCS pretty much dictates that any candidate must be a citizen or permanent resident, and in some cases, they blatantly ask for 'Americans', meaning first generation immigrants, regardless of where they came from, are not a good fit. That's a pretty sharp contrast to some of the other companies who are pretty blatant in wanting Indians, and are willing to sponsor H1B or L1 visas in the process. Needless to say, usually, the driving factor for the last is the salary.

See below

[Anonymous Coward]

Steaming Pile of Bull's Freshest Shit

State sponsored corporate spies

[BigBuckHunter]

Statistically, the vast majority of Chinese spies engaged in corporate espionage and trade secret acquisition are asian.

Re:State sponsored corporate spies

[Anonymous Coward]

Chinese, not Asian.

Re:State sponsored corporate spies

[Anonymous Coward]

All Chinese are Asians? No shit, Sherlock, but (1) Not all Asians are Chinese. (2) Plantir's mission statement to "helps government agencies track down terrorists and uncover financial fraud" has no overlap with "espionage and trade secret acquisition".

Re:State sponsored corporate spies

[hawguy]

Statistically, the vast majority of Chinese spies engaged in corporate espionage and trade secret acquisition are asian.

Not the good ones... those are the expendable decoys meant to be caught.

Re:State sponsored corporate spies

[ChrisMaple]

Do you not understand the concept of "subset"?

Re:State sponsored corporate spies

[BigBuckHunter]

Ya know, I made my comment as a funny demonstration of how someone can misuse stupid statistics to make stupid assumptions to push a stupid agenda.... Why the F it got modded +5 insightful is beyond me.

Re:State sponsored corporate spies

[Anonymous Coward]

or, maybe they just haven't used up their allotment of h1-b visas?

Re:State sponsored corporate spies

[AmiMoJo]

Statistically, the vast majority of financial fraud is carried out by white men.

See why it's wrong now?

Re:State sponsored corporate spies

[Anonymous Coward]

And, there are perfectly legitimate ways to exclude those kinds of people. You just say, "must be US citizen and hold TS clearance". This can create a catch-22 in that industry; but AFAIK that's resolved by having a small number of non-cleared employees who are on track to get cleared. I was an intern like that for a while, and would have eventually been cleared if I had stayed with the company.

Re: State sponsored corporate spies

[Anonymous Coward]

And the majority of false rape reports are filed by women.

Re: State sponsored corporate spies

[Anonymous Coward]

What color are Chinese people again?

Re:State sponsored corporate spies

[Anonymous Coward]

See why it's wrong now?

No. Now I'm curious to see what would happen if we took all the white men who work at, say, Goldman Sachs and replaced them with women and minorities.

Re:State sponsored corporate spies

[stealth_finger]

Statistically, the vast majority of financial fraud is carried out by white men.

See why it's wrong now?

If that is a true statement (which it probably is), then nothing is wrong with it.

Re:State sponsored corporate spies

[Hognoxious]

All Chinese are Asians? No shit, Sherlock, but (1) Not all Asians are Chinese.

Statistically, it's as close as makes any difference.

Re:State sponsored corporate spies

[Opportunist]

No, but statistically it's quite likely that a random Asian is Chinese.

Re:State sponsored corporate spies

[Opportunist]

What's wrong about it? It's a true statement.

Re: State sponsored corporate spies

[Opportunist]

Before or after being beaten up?

(sorry, but ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer)

Re:State sponsored corporate spies

[Opportunist]

If you can get that accomplished before the month is out, we could have another Lehman Brothers as a Christmas gift.

Re:State sponsored corporate spies

[AmiMoJo]

It's wrong if you start not hiring white people because statistically they are the most likely to commit fraud. In reality it's a tiny minority of white people that do, just like it's a tiny minority of Asians that are Chinese government spies, and more over it's morally wrong and illegal to tar everyone of a particular race with the same brush.

Just saying "I have a very slightly lower risk of being subjected to corporate espionage if I avoid Asians because most Chinese spies are Asian" is about as dumb as saying "I have a very slightly lower risk of being accidentally shot because most hunting accidents involve white people". In either case you could simply make some minimal effort to vet the person in question, rather than just applying dubious statistical biases.

And of course, that's not what's happening here anyway.

Re:State sponsored corporate spies

[lrichardson]

We had an ugly situation locally, where a supremely over-qualified graduate, from a top-tier university, was passed over for even an interview, and sued. Born Chinese. The company in question does sensitive work, and had run an extensive program to detect leaks/spies ... and every person they identified was Chinese. They started running the same process on new hires ... and, over a five year period, every Chinese hire turned out to be a spy. So the company simply stopped hiring Chinese. At some point, you can sympathize with their position: why the eff are they spending huge amounts on this aspect of security, when simply saying 'No Chinese hires' solves most of the problem?

It sucks, but unless the governments start treating corporate espionage seriously, and make the penalties serious enough that people won't engage in this behaviour, it is going to continue.

The other issue is that even second - and sometimes third - generation Chinese are leaned on, because they still have family back in China. Again, really sucks, but companies are just protecting themselves.

The question becomes, at what point does 'Not hiring Chinese' go from discrimination to simply safe practice? There isn't a clear answer :(

Re:State sponsored corporate spies

[cdrudge]

Chinese spies may be Asian. News at 11.

Re:State sponsored corporate spies

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually the vast majority of financial fraud is carried out by Asians. There are after all well over 4 billion of them.

Re:State sponsored corporate spies

[funwithBSD]

I hate to tell you this, but there is this huge country to the south of China, called India.

It has a population just slightly smaller than China, and as it is in ASIA, the inhabitants are ASIAN.

Re:State sponsored corporate spies

[AmiMoJo]

It's wrong to discriminate against an entire group of people based on that statistic.

Re:State sponsored corporate spies

[Ol Olsoc]

In either case you could simply make some minimal effort to vet the person in question, rather than just applying dubious statistical biases.

And of course, that's not what's happening here anyway.

I use "asians" in quotes, because that's a really nebulous term.

Speaking of statistics, there were 21 people hired, and 17 were "non-asian" and 4 were "asian"

Now here's the problem when we go down the rabbit hole of stats, percentages, and hiring by race.

What were the numbers of hires that were of African descent?

What were the numbers of hires that identified as female?

In a business that is presumably racist, what was the situation that led the company to hire "asians" as 20 percent of the hires during this period.

From the article: "The likelihood that this result occurred according to chance is approximately one in a billion," said the lawsuit,

Yeah - I'm going to have to call bullshit on that - I'd love to see that math.

But then, according to the article The majority of Palantir's hires as engineering interns, as well as two other engineering positions, "came from an employee referral system that disproportionately excluded Asians,"

And both the comments are from the lawsuit, so I give them veracity as an integral part of the lawsuit

Well, right there is your answer. These interns and two engineering positions came from employee referrals.

In my professional life, I'm exposed to a lot of different ethnicities, but if I referred every "asian" for placement in an open position, and no non "asians" at all, and they all were hired, it might hit 20 percent, of which this lawsuit is considered racially discriminating.

So what this is actually an attack against is the process of referral. Should a referral of a known non-"asian" who might have a great track record, be disregarded for an unknown "asian" person, or even more importantly, if referrals are to become verboten, should a non-"asian" be not hired and an "asian" of known flaws be hired?

So perhaps the process of employees giving assessments of people they know is what is considered racist. That's actually a little scary, because it means an employee who knows a person as a bad actor will then not be allowed to make commentary on that.

Re:State sponsored corporate spies

[Ol Olsoc]

It's wrong to discriminate against an entire group of people based on that statistic.

Then again, there was that 20 percent asian hire rate.

It would seem that in a company that was actively discriminating against asians, the numbers of hires would be a lot closer to 0%

I wonder what the ethnicity is of an American of African descent marries a Scotch Irish person, and they have an offspring who then marries a person from China, who then have some children.

Scotch Irish "white", black, or asian?

Re:State sponsored corporate spies

[AmiMoJo]

They are not alleging active discrimination, they are saying that the company tended to go with personal recommendations which created unintentional bias. The company has a responsibility to ensure fairness.

Re: State sponsored corporate spies

[Anonymous Coward]

What color are Chinese people again?

Everyone knows Chinese people have a yellow skintone. Right? Hmm...

Although I agree at the pre-interview stage the name of the applicant and even the organisation names and locations on the resume (more likely an applicant tracking system these days) should be removed so the human resources clerk and departmental hiring manager cannot act with bias, intentionally or unintentionally. The telephone screening poses an issue unless the organisation uses voice altering filter to mask the true voice and hence gender/ethnicity until the in-person interview if it is granted to the applicant.

Re:State sponsored corporate spies

[Ol Olsoc]

They are not alleging active discrimination, they are saying that the company tended to go with personal recommendations which created unintentional bias. The company has a responsibility to ensure fairness.

How does one ensure "fairness"? Do the individual employees have to broaden their social circles to include more asians? Or is the referral system something to be eliminated? These really aren't trivial questions, as if the paramount goal is inclusiveness of all ethnicities, races, genders, sexual orientation, religion, and whatever else makes things "fair" is going to be almost impossible to coexist with a referral process that is based upon an employee's familiarity with a potential hire's suitability for a job.

As well, is the determinant factor local ratios of asians to others, or global ratios. State or National.

And what happens when there are conflicts, such as which quota is being adhered to? Is a woman who is asian working toward fulfilling two quota requirements? or just one? This is also not a trivial question, as it is possible to have mixtures that end up making the overall quota requirement fulfillment look good, but in terms of actual numbers, every person who is eligible for multiple quota fulfillment is actually depriving another person of underrepresented groups employment because of the multiple quota criteria.

I mainly bring this up because of that odd 20 percent hire rate. And if it's not active discrimination, what the hell are they suing for? It either is, or it isn't. If you get a workplace in Silicon Valley that has no asians or women or people of African descent, or the Huffington Post's all white woman and one asian woman boardroom meeting, that is pretty obvious that there's something going on, and it's active intentional discrimination. 20 percent asian hires though? Might be just people's networking going on. As a lawsuit action, what is the remedy? You can't have a lawsuit without a remedy. That's what I am interested in

Re:State sponsored corporate spies

[Opportunist]

It's wrong to discriminate against a group due to a statistics that doesn't say anything about that group, I give you that.

What does the statistic say? The essence is "most financial fraudsters are white males". It is NOT permissible to turn it around and say "white males commit financial fraud". It is not even permissible to say "white males are more prone to commit financial fraud than other groups of people". Because a crucial element is missing: The population. What such conclusions omit is taking into account what fraction of people who are in a position to commit financial fraud are white males. When you take that into account, you will come to the result that the vast majority of people who are in this position are white males. So anything but finding that the majority of financial fraudsters being white males would actually be a surprise.

Statistics have no agenda. Statistics just is. Unfortunately, it is easy to abuse statistics if you do. And even more unfortunately, people believe statistics because it's just numbers without an agenda, and people do not understand statistics and how it may be used to draw conclusions.

Re:State sponsored corporate spies

[Nidi62]

All Chinese are Asians? No shit, Sherlock

Not all

Re: State sponsored corporate spies

[Anonymous Coward]

It's only wrong if it's untrue. I can't say I'm aware if that statement is true or not.

Too many people use the word 'wrong' when they really mean 'I don't like that being pointed out'.

Re:State sponsored corporate spies

[AmiMoJo]

Basically it comes down to having a responsibility to check for reasonable fairness and do something when it becomes apparent that there is an issue. That means collecting the stats and when you see something like this identifying the problem and taking steps to rectify it.

It looks like the issue is understood, the lawsuit cites the reason why it is happening, so really there isn't much excuse for not fixing it.

As to how to fix it, use less recommendations and more objective hiring.

It's got nothing to do with quotas, they are a bad way to address the issue. That's why the only people who suggest them are people who oppose diversity. They are not needed here.

Re:State sponsored corporate spies

[Ol Olsoc]

Basically it comes down to having a responsibility to check for reasonable fairness and do something when it becomes apparent that there is an issue.

Fire the non-asian people? Make a ruling that no one but asians are hired until this fairness is achieved? What is fair? And then, what do we do about other groups that are underrepresented? Will there come a time when a white woman is not hired and is passed over by a asian male? Is that in keeping with the demands for inclusiveness?

That means collecting the stats and when you see something like this identifying the problem and taking steps to rectify it.

As I noted, since there is a multiplicity of demands for inclusiveness, that in order to comply with them, someone is going to lose based not on their ability to do the job, but where their anscesters came from.

It looks like the issue is understood, the lawsuit cites the reason why it is happening, so really there isn't much excuse for not fixing it.

Yes, eliminating networking, and hiring exclusively a particular enthinicity, as the overarching criteria of the job, perhaps fireing some, until the company reflect the proper diversity.

I don't know your ethnicity, but would you give up your job for hiring someone of a different ethnicity? I didn't give up my job, but I gave up three promotions so a woman could get promoted. There was a quota system on promotions, and I voluntarily gave up deserved promotions for a female. It didn't work out for the place, since they left. But I do understand that in real life, it isn't always fair.

As to how to fix it, use less recommendations and more objective hiring.

It's got nothing to do with quotas, they are a bad way to address the issue. That's why the only people who suggest them are people who oppose diversity. They are not needed here.

The problem is of course, that in a numbers or percentages based system, you have to deal with numbers as a measurement of success. Otherise you throw out all of the numbers altogether.

What you are suggesting if you use as little as possible a quota as possible, is that since a 75 percent figure was claimed as the asian applicants, with 21 positions filled, anything other than 15.75 asian hires is racist.I guess one of them has to be a pregnant female.

That would be accepting that entering an application makes all potential employees as qualified as each other. So 75 percent is an inviolable number, and must be adhered to, otherwise you will be sued.

And that, sir, would be the very definition of a quota.

Now we are going to get uncomfortable. Who gets a job between 3 equal candidates, a white woman, a non gender specific person of African descent, or an asian male? The implied inequality is simple when it's a male of European descent, let's just in this case discard those in order to avoid a lawsuit, because hiring one might put you over your limit. Not hiring the white male is an easy decision, but not so much when the underrepresented groups become pitted against each other. Challenge, make your choice of the first three. No need for your rationalization, just your choice. Who gets the job?

And no, Animojo, I don't oppose diversity, nor do I care for your implicit accusation that I do. I do however, not ascribe to simplistic ideas as to what constitutes diversity. My questions are uncomfortable, piss people off, and perhaps constitute a learning experience.

Re:State sponsored corporate spies

[rockmuelle]

Asia has 4.47 billion people, China has 1.35 billion people. Chances a random person from Asia is Chinese: 30%

It's "quite likely" that a randomly selected person from Asia is _not_ Chinese.

-Chris

Re:State sponsored corporate spies

[Anonymous Coward]

it's a tiny minority of Asians that are Chinese government spies, and more over it's morally wrong and illegal to tar everyone of a particular race with the same brush.

Nationality is a big factor in any job related to National Security, which is what this company deals with. What percentage of Chinese Nationals are NOT Asian? Not very fucking many. So when 90% of your applicants are eliminated because of their Nationality, the fact that they are all "Asian" is a side effect, not a reason.

Re:State sponsored corporate spies

[Stickasylum]

Speaking of statistics, there were 21 people hired, and 17 were "non-asian" and 4 were "asian"

Now here's the problem when we go down the rabbit hole of stats, percentages, and hiring by race.

The lawsuit makes no claims about percentages by race in relation to the larger population (as you seem to imply), but only to percentage in reference to the qualified applications. 95 of the qualified applicants for those 21 QA engineering intern positions were asian, and only 35 were non-Asian. But half of the non-Asian applicants were hired while only 5% of the Asian applicants were hired, indicating differential hiring from the applicant pool.

From the article: "The likelihood that this result occurred according to chance is approximately one in a billion," said the lawsuit,

Yeah - I'm going to have to call bullshit on that - I'd love to see that math.

I'm not sure exactly which method they've used, but here's one simple option: Assuming equivalent merit of applicants, "random chance" means choosing 21 applicants randomly from the applicant pool of 95 Asian and 35 non-Asian applicants. We want to compute the probability that only 4 or less of those 21 selected applicants are Asian. The number of Asian applicants selected follow a hypergeometric distribution. This distribution doesn't have a simple formula computing tail probabilities (your welcome to look it up), but many statistics packages will do it. This methods gives us a roughly 1 in 60 million probability of 4 or less Asian hires due to random chance. Not 1 in a billion, but I suspect that the Department of Labor's analysis incorporated additional information. And 1 in 60 million is still low enough to suggest that something is going on.

But then, according to the article The majority of Palantir's hires as engineering interns, as well as two other engineering positions, "came from an employee referral system that disproportionately excluded Asians,"

And both the comments are from the lawsuit, so I give them veracity as an integral part of the lawsuit

Well, right there is your answer. These interns and two engineering positions came from employee referrals.

In my professional life, I'm exposed to a lot of different ethnicities, but if I referred every "asian" for placement in an open position, and no non "asians" at all, and they all were hired, it might hit 20 percent, of which this lawsuit is considered racially discriminating.

And this is likely (at least part) of what's going on. Employee referral programs are definitely not "by random chance".

So what this is actually an attack against is the process of referral. Should a referral of a known non-"asian" who might have a great track record, be disregarded for an unknown "asian" person, or even more importantly, if referrals are to become verboten, should a non-"asian" be not hired and an "asian" of known flaws be hired?

So perhaps the process of employees giving assessments of people they know is what is considered racist. That's actually a little scary, because it means an employee who knows a person as a bad actor will then not be allowed to make commentary on that.

Employee referral programs can exacerbate existing demographic imbalances, and cause members of certain demographics to have a much more difficult time getting hired at your company. Just because the discrimination is structurally propagated does not get the company off the hook. Large companies that want to avoid exactly this situation closely monitor their key demographics and balance their use of employee referrals to ensure diversity.

Re:State sponsored corporate spies

[Grishnakh]

I hate to tell you this, but there's a big region to the west of India, called "the Middle East". It includes countries like Israel, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and most of Turkey. It has a pretty large population too, and as it is in ASIA, the inhabitants are ASIAN.

However, no one actually calls Middle Easterners "Asians". Especially not in the context of minority groups in American employment statistics. Middle Easterners are their own group, and so are Indians. "Asia", in this context, means "Far East Asia".

Re:State sponsored corporate spies

[AmiMoJo]

What part of "fair" don't you understand? I say they need to be fair when hiring, and you suggest a load of obviously unfair things.

I even told you how to make it fair. How can we discuss this when you ignore what I say and go off on a bizarre rant about these crazy ideas you have?

I thought you were one of the sane ones.

Re:State sponsored corporate spies

[Anonymous Coward]

Asia has 4.47 billion people, China has 1.35 billion people. Chances a random person from Asia is Chinese: 30%

It's "quite likely" that a randomly selected person from Asia is _not_ Chinese.

-Chris

Applying for a tech job in the bay area? No. It is quite likely they are Chinese.

Context matters.

Re:State sponsored corporate spies

[Stormcrow309]

A company should spend time looking at their affirmative action programs, not just metrics. The metrics can lead to issues with creating quotas. However, we need to set guidelines and programs that target recruitment across minorities, protected veterans, and disabled. Likely, Palantir needs to develop job descriptions and requirements. For example, I don't see a requirement for security clearance, but considering some of their projects, that could be a limit. If I am an immigrant or child of an immigrant, there is significant impact to my chance of getting a security clearance, as would be bad credit or other issues.

I would hold recruiting events, specify specific hiring criteria - including clearances, and set some guidelines into positions. I would also recognize issues with cultural norms and hold training and expected behavior. For example: Palantir values teamwork, but that means different things to different cultures. Maybe the focus on team selection and referrals, which has some benefit to team dynamics, but can cause group think. It is a hard line to walk

Re: State sponsored corporate spies

[Anonymous Coward]

The question of why use 73% is a very fair question. If we assume all races have same ability, then 4/21 is actually over represented for US population.

Why would we assume same qualification of grossly overrepresented race ? We should actually assume the opposite (unless we racist believe that rave has a higher average value)

Re:State sponsored corporate spies

[Ol Olsoc]

A company should spend time looking at their affirmative action programs, not just metrics.

The deathstar problem is however, you get sued by the metrics. It's like the silly no child left behind schooling. Thy teach to the test, and only the test. If the kid actually lerns anything they don't give a damn. And if the test scores aren't good enough, the school is punished.

The metrics, as it were.

Re:State sponsored corporate spies

[Ol Olsoc]

What part of "fair" don't you understand?

Th e part where you define fair - Now define it. And I suppose that you aren't going to answer my question about who you are going to hire, the white woman, the African ethnicity of any gender, or the asian.

Tell me, since you are the one who clearly says I do not undertand "fair". TEach me, this might be th emoment where I gain some insight, and I would be forever grateful to be schooled in something I have no idea of.

You say you do.

So which one is it Animojo? Two of the three are not going to have a job, all are considered underrepresented, and you decide based on you knowing what is fair. Who gets the job, and who does not?

Re: State sponsored corporate spies

[Anonymous Coward]

ALL date rape is FAKE rape.

Re:State sponsored corporate spies

[AmiMoJo]

Okay, I'll answer your question. The premise is ridiculous, the chances of there being three exactly equal candidates with identical qualifications, equal experience, identical goals in terms of working with the company to advance their careers, equally pleasant and likeable, equally good at interviews, all asking for the the same salary level... And no budget to hire more than one, exactly one job position to be filled with no future expansion. Everyone else involved thinks the candidates are exactly equal too. The team is already fairly diverse so there is no advantage to bringing other perspectives.

But for the sake of argument, let's say that is somehow the case. I'd probably pull a name out of a hat or something.

Re:State sponsored corporate spies

[Ol Olsoc]

Okay, I'll answer your question. The premise is ridiculous

Yes, or at least very unlikely. Narrow it to two people and it becomes more likely. But it was foremost a test case to get some active thought going. Separating a social goal from fairness on a personal level.

But for the sake of argument, let's say that is somehow the case. I'd probably pull a name out of a hat or something.

annnnnd..... You pass! Very good. In a problem with no good answer, no satisfactory solution that doesn't offend someone, no fairness to the individuals, you cast race and gender aside, and use plain random chance. Which of course is the only logical answer.

In a world of agendas, and people who are promoting their own agenda over other's agendas, and where rational thought is precious scarce, some times ya gotta just employ chance.

And I apologize for badgering ya (sincerely) but I do this kinda shit some times.

Re:State sponsored corporate spies

[AmiMoJo]

Fair enough, apology accepted. But in future, please at least try to assume I'm some kind of weird reverse-racist or insane lunatic... It makes for a much easier, better conversation. People attribute some very weird ideas to me.

Re:State sponsored corporate spies

[suutar]

From the article: "The likelihood that this result occurred according to chance is approximately one in a billion," said the lawsuit,

Yeah - I'm going to have to call bullshit on that - I'd love to see that math.

73% of 130ish applicants asian, so 94.9ish asian applicants. Let's call it 94, and 36 non-asian. Then we have 17 non-asian hires and 4 asian hires. So the question is, using random sampling without replacement from that pool of 94A and 36N, what're the odds of getting 17N and 4A?

I'm using the formulas from http://people.wku.edu/david.ne...
So in our case the figure we want is C(36,17)*C(94,4)/C(130,21) - ways to choose 17N and 4A divided by ways to choose just any 21.
Conveniently, you can google "36 choose 17" to do the calculation, but the formula for N choose K is N! / (K! * (N-K)!)
36 choose 17 is 8597496600
94 choose 4 is 3049501
so C(36,17)*C(94,4) is about 2.6218074e+16 (yeah, we lost a little precision but we can live without it)
130 choose 21 is 8.7664606e+23
So our final result is 2.62e16 / 8.77e23, or 1/3.35e7

one in 33 million isn't one in a billion, so I would also be interested in seeing their math, but the conclusion that the selection was biased seems to be fairly well supported.

Re:State sponsored corporate spies

[Anonymous Coward]

I routinely eliminate people from the hiring process if it's difficult to understand their speech. Guess what.... if we can't understand you, you're not a good fit.

On paper that could easily appear to be discrimination based on ethnicity, but it is absolutely not. It is discrimination based on skills based qualifications.

Re:State sponsored corporate spies

[rhyous]

But your statistics are missing all kinds of relevant data. Let's assume all candidates are scored from 0 to 100. Then let's add some additional data points:

Data Point 1 - Referrals
A referral is like a +5 bonus to the candidate's scoring.
Divide the resumes into two groups: 1. referred, 2. not referred.
Were any of the Asians referred? If an unreferred candidate gets a 90, that is pretty good. Another resume would have received an 86, but it included a +5 referral bonus. So it is a 91.

Data Point 2 (A big one) - Social/Soft/Communication Skills
Add Social/Soft/Communication Skills aspects to candidates.

Asians often have communication issues. To start with, for many, English is a second language (ESL). ESL candidates must prove that they can:
1. Speak clearly enough to be understood.
2. Write clearly enough to be understood.

Many ESL candidates have accents. Having an accent is not necessarily a problem. Having an accent is not a justifiable reason to exclude someone. However, the candidate has an accent so thick that it makes it difficult for coworkers/customers to understand, then that is a problem. Being unable to communicate clearly IS a justifiable reason not to hire some. As it turns out, some Asians have difficult to understand accents.

Many ESL candidates are not fluent, even when they claim to be. They may say or write sentences that don't make sense. For example: "I have a doubt about your product." What does this mean? In English, it means there is doubt the product will do what it says it will do. However, if you talk to this ESL person, you will see that they meant, "There is something about your product that I don't understand." Those are two completely different statements. The ESL person who used the word "doubt" clearly was not fluent in English.

If you can't speak English well enough to be understood, you cannot consider yourself fluent. You may be able to read and write fluently, but in speaking fluently includes pronunciation and being understood. Not being fluent or being only partially fluent in English is a valid reason not to hire some one.

I recommend that any English as a Second Language person with an accent problem takes a class on phonetics and work with a speech therapists at least until their accent is good enough. Also, I recommend that they read books (both fiction and non-fiction) out loud in English. Working in a second language is tough.

So a difficult to understand accent, or not being truly fluent could be anywhere from a -1 to a -100 (so bad of an accent they are un-hireable) in the 0 to 100 candidate scoring system.

Data Point 3 - Citizenship
Were all the Asian candidates citizens? Choosing a citizen over a non-citizen is not discrimination. How many of the Asian candidates are non-citizens?

There are probably a dozen or so more data points to add.

Re:State sponsored corporate spies

[Ol Olsoc]

But in future, please at least try to assume I'm some kind of weird reverse-racist or insane lunatic.

Did you mean "please don't assume? i hope?

Re:State sponsored corporate spies

[Ol Olsoc]

So our final result is 2.62e16 / 8.77e23, or 1/3.35e7

one in 33 million isn't one in a billion, so I would also be interested in seeing their math, but the conclusion that the selection was biased seems to be fairly well supported.

The question is though, arr all of the applicants assumed to be equal in all qualifications? Have some come from a placement service like ITT? which has been discredited.

And like it or not, since we are dealing with Asians, have some been state sponsored? There are issues with organizations dealing with issues of a secure or sensitive issues and state sponsored foreign actors..

Mere numbers of applicants are not telling the entire story.

Re:State sponsored corporate spies

[suutar]

True. I thought I had added a note that I'm explicitly ignoring anything other than raw numbers, like suitability ranking, but apparently I forgot to actually type it.

Re:State sponsored corporate spies

[suutar]

The summary (and article) is also missing all those kinds of relevant data :) I thought I had added a comment to my post that I was ignoring things like suitability ranking, but apparently I didn't actually type it. However, it should be unsurprising that my calculations don't include data that's not available, no?

Re:State sponsored corporate spies

[AmiMoJo]

Yeah... I should use the preview button, but I'm too lazy.

Re:State sponsored corporate spies

[Stormcrow309]

Sorry for the late reply. Metrics are problematic within themselves. If I manage exclusively by metrics, then I have to explain why. Eventually, you will have to explain why your metric based program is causing substandard performance, discrimination against another group, and the flight of employees who see previous potential. You set requirements, put in outreach programs, and check point your processes and policies. That is the actual law and serving it protects you better in the Affirmative Action space.

Re:State sponsored corporate spies

[Ol Olsoc]

Sorry for the late reply. Metrics are problematic within themselves. If I manage exclusively by metrics, then I have to explain why. Eventually, you will have to explain why your metric based program is causing substandard performance, discrimination against another group, and the flight of employees who see previous potential. You set requirements, put in outreach programs, and check point your processes and policies. That is the actual law and serving it protects you better in the Affirmative Action space.

There's nothing wrong with testing - but when the test becomes the ultimate end goal, you just - and this is at the very luckiest best, produce people who don't have much else giong for them but they are good at taking tests.

And then there is common core math. Making the simplestst forms of math difficult. We are not suposed to philosophize about 1 plus 1, it seldom has ant other answer than 2.

Except for extremely large values of 1.

What about the NBA?

[TsuruchiBrian]

If we assume that all races of people are equally good at basketball, how can it be explained that 74.4% of basketball players are African American but African Americans only make up 13.2% of the population? The chances that there is no discrimination is way lower than 1 in a billion.

Re:What about the NBA?

[110010001000]

We already know why. Fast twitch muscle. But being good at working at startups that spy on the American people is equally good for all races.

Re:What about the NBA?

[alvinrod]

This assumes that the two populations produce an equal number of top tier basketball players, which is highly unlikely to be true so with the assumption being false, the rest of the argument doesn't logically follow. But me simply saying it's unlikely to be true isn't really much better in terms of logical reasoning so consider the following argument as well:

In a sport like basketball where there are only a few players on the court at any one time, a single star player can vastly improve a team's success. If white people were being unfairly excluded, one or two teams that weren't discriminating would have access to an immense amount of talent that should allow them to dominate the league simply because other teams wouldn't acquire those players.

That we don't see something like this happening suggests that your assumption is wrong, unless you'd like to claim some kind of mass conspiracy. Also, we already know that teams are willing to take the best players as we've seen from history that many sports leagues excluded black players in the past, but quickly started to hire black athletes when those rules changed because there was a lot of untapped talent available and the teams that continued to discriminate missed out on those players and likely faired less well than those teams who went for the most talented individuals regardless of race.

Re:What about the NBA?

[TsuruchiBrian]

So if fast twitch muscles is the explanation for why African Americans are good at basketball, would you say that other sports which don't see African American participation levels comparable to 74.4% are discriminating against them?

Re:What about the NBA?

[110010001000]

Yes. Most definitely. Is that a surprise?

Re:What about the NBA?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or self-selection. Black kids in America grow up playing basketball. Kids in Latin America grow up playing baseball. Canadian kids grow up playing hockey. When they reach adulthood, it turns out they're good at the sports they've been playing all their lives.

In the case of basketball specifically, there might be a racial influence in that height is so important. But saying "black people are just more athletic" is a pretty short gap from saying "white people are just smarter." And not any more true.

Re:What about the NBA?

[Anonymous Coward]

How can it be explained? It is because your initial assumption that all races are equally good at basketball is false. Basketball performance depends very much upon height, and height is a characteristic that is race-dependent. Basketball players are selected for their performance, not for their race.
You don't see numbers of short African Americans getting preference over from tall white players.

You lose 10 points for making a sports reference. Also, you lose another 10 points for not knowing the difference between differentiation based on race and differentiation based on performance.

The OP stated that the resumes of the applicants were equivalent .The DoL analysis believes that the data shows differentiation is based on race rather than performance. I say the DoL is fulla shit and has no idea why the applicants were selected or rejected.

Re:What about the NBA?

[110010001000]

Um no. Why do people with genes from West Africa (but who live all over the world in different cultures) make up the top 95% of the top sprint times? It isn't because they grew up sprinting. Same thing applies to basketball (or any other sport that requires athleticism). There are guys in the NBA that didn't start playing basketball until they were 18!

Re:What about the NBA?

[LynnwoodRooster]

Wait, are you saying there are physiological differences between people? I am triggered! Time to sue! But first - do you have as much money as Peter Thiel?

Re:What about the NBA?

[110010001000]

Nah, I am sure if you they practice really, really, really hard anyone can make it to the NBA. :) I do have more money as Peter Thiel, but it is all in altcoins.

Re:What about the NBA?

[Anonymous Coward]

Um no. Why do people with genes from West Africa (but who live all over the world in different cultures) make up the top 95% of the top sprint times? It isn't because they grew up sprinting. Same thing applies to basketball (or any other sport that requires athleticism). There are guys in the NBA that didn't start playing basketball until they were 18!

But they've been grabbing stuff and running their entire lives!

Re:What about the NBA?

[EEPROMS]

the reason one tribe in Africa decimates all comers in running sports has been mentioned on NPR. Basically it is due to cultural genetic selection that only allows members to breed if they can withstand extreme physical stress. http://www.npr.org/sections/pa...

Re:What about the NBA?

[Gussington]

If we assume that all races of people are equally good at basketball, how can it be explained that 74.4% of basketball players are African American but African Americans only make up 13.2% of the population? The chances that there is no discrimination is way lower than 1 in a billion.

And the fastest times in every event at the Olympics are all held by men! The discrimination is infinite!

Re:What about the NBA?

[EEPROMS]

nope, wrong it is more complex than that

http://www.npr.org/sections/pa...

Re:What about the NBA?

[Anonymous Coward]

nope, wrong it is more complex than that

http://www.npr.org/sections/pa...

Holy crap, what a bunch of animals. *with a sharp stick*

Re:What about the NBA?

[Anonymous Coward]

I say the DoL is fulla shit and has no idea why the applicants were selected or rejected.

It's possible that they simply had company cars and didn't want them all smash up.

Re:What about the NBA?

[gijoel]

Stereotype threat.

Re:What about the NBA?

[Anonymous Coward]

So in baseball, when the fraction of black players 40 years ago was (depending on who you ask) somewhere between 20 and 25%, and now, when it is 8%, your argument would be that over a time span of under two generations they have suddenly lost the genetic ability to hit or throw a baseball?

Re:What about the NBA?

[quantaman]

If we assume that all races of people are equally good at basketball, how can it be explained that 74.4% of basketball players are African American but African Americans only make up 13.2% of the population? The chances that there is no discrimination is way lower than 1 in a billion.

Basketball makes up a bigger part of African American culture, generating an excess amount of talent. This is also why there's so many more elite Canadian hockey players. It also explains why volleyball players are disproportionately white (despite a similar height bias).

And yes, there may also be a difference in athleticism, similar to how East Africans are great distance runners and West Africans great sprinters.

However, you can still have discrimination even when the two populations have different talent distributions. One way is by controlling for the talent of the people of each race. If equally talented black basketball players got favoured over white counterparts that would be evidence of discrimination.

Just like equally talented white applicants were being favoured over their Asian counterparts at Palantir.

Re:What about the NBA?

[gman003]

We cannot - therefore, your assumption must be incorrect, in a case of proof by contradiction.

Sports are physical events, where certain biological differences clearly affect performance. Race does involve biological factors besides just skin color, and some scientists have concluded that sub-saharan africans (not just "blacks", but a more specific subgroup) have a leg-length-to-body-size ratio that favors the kind of movement seen in basketball. You will find a similar bias towards taller basketball players - height being a quite clear advantage in the game. Discrimination is in fact allowed when you're discriminating on "ability to do the job" - you see which college-level players perform well, and hire them, and if reality happened to be biased towards a specific group, that's not really a problem.

However, no reproducible study has found a statistically significant difference in mental capacity between humans of different races. There are clearly some people who are smarter than others, but race is not a reliable predictor of intelligence. And since there are no physical differences that make one better or worse at data analysis, seeing any company that does data analysis with a substantially different racial makeup is suspicious. Maybe there's an explanation - it could be coincidence, or maybe another company has a hiring policy that's biased towards asians and hired them all up. Maybe there's a factor being discriminated on that correlates with race - preferring native citizens or permanent residents over those on work visas might give this result (or it might not). Or maybe Thiel's just racist. He hasn't been charged with anything yet, they're just checking to make sure there's not anything illegal going on.

Re:What about the NBA?

[Anonymous Coward]

However, no reproducible study has found a statistically significant difference in mental capacity between humans of different races.

Well, which race invented pretty much all technology and developed nearly every scientific method in the past couple of thousand years?

Re:What about the NBA?

[Time_Ngler]

However, no reproducible study has found a statistically significant difference in mental capacity between humans of different races.

http://www.iq-tests.eu/iq-test...

Re:What about the NBA?

[TsuruchiBrian]

Philosophers syndrome: Mistaking a failure of imagination for an insight into necessity.

It doesn't even need to be the case that there is a difference in mental capabilities between races. It could be that certain groups have a culture that leads them to be better or worse at certain tasks on average, and those groups can be predominantly of one race/ethnicity. It could be that some cultures cause people to be overconfident in their abilities (e.g. causing them to be more likely to apply for jobs they are unqualified for).

Culture affects everything. It even affects how good African Americans are at basketball on average. It affects how good Jamaicans are at sprinting (e.g. there is no discernible difference between Jamaican sprinters and those of other Caribbean islands).

I'm not saying that any of these is en explanation. I am not saying there was no racism in this case. What I am saying is that it is not rational to assume racism simply because some test did not yield a cross section of society. There are a million other potential explanations, racism being one.

Re:What about the NBA?

[TsuruchiBrian]

I never meant to imply that there couldn't be racism. My point was that these numbers showing racial outcome of a test do not alone do not prove any racism. You actually have to do the work of controlling for competence, rather than simply assuming every population is equally competent.

Re:What about the NBA?

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course. They moved from throwing stones into store windows for a quick smash and grab and using bats for mugging to guns.

Re:What about the NBA?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, I don't know. Asians and arabs, mostly. White men merely improved and expanded the original inventions.

Re:What about the NBA?

[AmiMoJo]

Being tall is an advantage when playing basketball. Being non-Asian doesn't seem to be a help in doing data analysis. This can easily be checked by comparing the Asian candidate's qualifications and experience. I imagine this will be checked in court.

Or are you trying to use the widely debunked argument that white people are just more intelligent?

Re:What about the NBA?

[OneSmartFellow]

I particularly enjoy the lack of correct conjugation in that sentence.

Re:What about the NBA?

[Viol8]

Wow, the chinese and arabs invented the internet, the telephone, the computer, the car, the TV?? Incredbile! Why weren't we told!

Reality check: Yes, the arabs came up with a lot of new maths, the chinese invented gunpowder and a few other odds and sods. But this all pales into insignificance compared to what the west has created since the industrial revolution.

Re:What about the NBA?

[stealth_finger]

Um no. Why do people with genes from West Africa (but who live all over the world in different cultures) make up the top 95% of the top sprint times? It isn't because they grew up sprinting. Same thing applies to basketball (or any other sport that requires athleticism). There are guys in the NBA that didn't start playing basketball until they were 18!

Basketball is hardly a complex game. It's a tiny court with few guys and ball through a net. That's the hardest part of it but with practice it's easy.

Re:What about the NBA?

[Opportunist]

Shoulders of giants and all that. If the Arabs didn't have the brains to actually protect the Greek findings when we descended into religious bullshittery where we condemned it all as the work of heathens, we'd still be a few hundred years back and busy rebuilding.

Yes, it's kinda odd that they're now the religious loonies. One has to wonder where they learned that. Maybe the crusades were more of an export success than we ever dreamed they'd be.

Re:What about the NBA?

[lrichardson]

Technically, there are no human 'races', as we can all interbreed. However, I'll forgive your lapse :) That said, there is one ethnic group - identifiable by both genetics and culture - that actually does have a statistically significant higher IQ: the Askenazi Jews. And yes, there have been several studies, so that qualifies as 'reproducible'.

Re:What about the NBA?

[PeeAitchPee]

Yes -- even in the womens' races.

Re:What about the NBA?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't bother. There are still people that scream "racism" is you try to explain the differences between races.

Blacks have better strength and endurance, and higher emotional quotients. (held over from our tribal days)
All the other races are inferior because we fucked some hairy humans in Europe.
While we gained a boost in intelligence, we also gained selfishness (lost from our tribal days), worse immune systems (in whites especially, me included) and lost some of our natural strength and endurance to balance that out.

Whites gained the most in terms of selfishness and lack of caring for "the tribe", which is why we are so ruthless and basically own the world in spite of being a minority now.
We were also shit on pretty hard by the ice age, but it did cause some pretty major changes which led to the above traits.

Asians mostly optimized for smaller frames and higher intelligence, shaped by some of the strange landscapes and weather in Asia.
You'll rarely find really fat Asians even with shitty diets. However, these issues also lead to higher chances of heart disease because of the way their bodies store fat differently, and diabetes too.
We still aren't sure why this difference exists. The same amount of fat around the belly is more damaging than in whites. Still ongoing research.

Then there are all the other minor offshoots that bred in isolation, the islanders, the Amazon tribes, Himalayas, etc.

The so-called "african americans" are technically one of these offshoots since the slaves were selectively bred, essentially, for strength. That is why there is a tendency for violence in them compared to Africa. (the North is really the main bad areas, and that is only because of intervention by others and the constant wars between Christian and Muslim gangs)
Brute strength sadly comes with that tendency for violence, regardless of race. (it also inhibits intelligence)

There is no real massively advantageous gain or loss in our evolution.
Whites selfishness has only really been beneficial in our artificial construct called The Economy.
But overall we have worse lives than most other races given an equal standing. Thems the facts.

Re:What about the NBA?

[AmiMoJo]

No, this has been widely debunked. There are many factors, including the tests themselves being biased towards certain cultures, access to education, general levels of health in populations and so forth that explain observed differences. Race itself is considered a social construct, not a biological or genetic one. The IQ test itself is somewhat dubious.

Wikipedia covers it in extensive detail.

The main supporters of the theory that race has a significant link to IQ are openly linked to white supremacist groups.

Re:What about the NBA?

[arth1]

It doesn't even need to be the case that there is a difference in mental capabilities between races. It could be that certain groups have a culture that leads them to be better or worse at certain tasks on average, and those groups can be predominantly of one race/ethnicity. It could be that some cultures cause people to be overconfident in their abilities (e.g. causing them to be more likely to apply for jobs they are unqualified for).

Or more desperate to get a job, making more of them apply for positions they don't match, or pad their resumes.
Or have worse connections, not getting headhunted to jobs, making relatively more of them apply for jobs than natives do.
Or have less resources and means, making them pick from the bottom of the barrel when choosing recruiters; the type that pads resumes and work on the redneck duck hunting principle (fill the sky with lead and you'll hit something), instead of taking time to search for employers that are a good match.

In either case, if 80% of applicants to a job are from somewhere, it doesn't mean that 80% of qualified applicants for a job are.
And it doesn't imply discrimination if a large amount of them get turned down. That some are, indeed, hired, goes a long way to hint at it being merit that lands the jobs.

Re:What about the NBA?

[Anonymous Coward]

We will replace the Paralympics with a slight retarded version of it, the feminist olympics.

Re:What about the NBA?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, we are all equal. Woman's NBA is just as fun as the Man's NBA. Sexism and racism does not exist, we are all equal, with equal means.

Re:What about the NBA?

[Anonymous Coward]

is that your go-to rebuttal for everything?

Re:What about the NBA?

[liquid_schwartz]

I never meant to imply that there couldn't be racism. My point was that these numbers showing racial outcome of a test do not alone do not prove any racism. You actually have to do the work of controlling for competence, rather than simply assuming every population is equally competent.

You assume they are looking for actual answers to real problems. People who cry racism generally to anything they can to avoid an actual discussion with facts and dispassionate analysis. Logic and consistent thinking is not the strong suit of this crowd. On the one hand they want to complain about discrimination but their solution is always more discrimination. The "racism" was predetermined and anything you say contrary just proves how racist you are. It's a modern version of a witch hunt.

Re:What about the NBA?

[Anonymous Coward]

Less dunking, good fundamentals

Re:What about the NBA?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is just so much fallacy in these sproutings of historical misfacts that it is astounding. The reason western civilization has done so well is the development of the scientific method. That process was invented by the amateur scientist philosophers of Europe, most of whom were either aristocrats or Christian clerics. As well as the scientific method Christianity, specifically Catholicism invented the University.
Neither the Chinese nor the Islamic civilizations were capable of analyzing and synthesizing their serendipitous discoveries into any kind of organized advancement of technology.
Islam threw away any scientific edge they might have had when they decided as a religious culture to move from beleif in a rational creator to beleif in a creator disposed to irrational behavior.
The crusades were a defensive response to the armed conquest of over half the ancient world by a group that converted by the sword and who attacked Europe as recently (before modern times) as the 15th century. The most recent crusade was launched in the 15th century to counteract the expansion of the Ottoman Empire in that period, an expansion not stopped until the European victory at Lepanto.

Re:What about the NBA?

[Anonymous Coward]

I know you're trying to be snarky and clever, but there's writings of the brutality of the Muslims going back before the crusades. A few years back the pope got in hot water for reading the writings of a previous pope who said Islam was a religion of brutality and how they killed each other just as readily as they killed the Christians. This pope was from something like the early 1100s. Read up on the history of Alhambra if you'd like to learn something about how far back fighting goes between Christianity and Islam. You'll discover that part of the crusades was to get back territory that was seized from them by the Muslims. It's a long sordid affair and there's really no innocents involved. And it goes back so far that whatever started it is lost to history. It might as well be what's written in the Bible because there's no other records.

Re:What about the NBA?

[jedidiah]

You also have different groups of people that ignore sports as a way to get ahead entirely. They decide to go to college in order to get ahead or start a business in order to become rich and famous.

American blacks are an intensely anti-intellectual demographic versus Pakastanis.

Re:What about the NBA?

[mrscorpio]

So....natural eugenics?

Re:What about the NBA?

[Anonymous Coward]

Shoulders of giants and all that. If the Arabs didn't have the brains to actually protect the Greek findings when we descended into religious bullshittery where we condemned it all as the work of heathens, we'd still be a few hundred years back and busy rebuilding.

Arabs are responsible for global warming?

Re:What about the NBA?

[Khyber]

"Why do people with genes from West Africa (but who live all over the world in different cultures) make up the top 95% of the top sprint times? It isn't because they grew up sprinting."

I love your anthropological fail. They most certainly did grow up sprinting, as nomadic hunter tribes.

Re:What about the NBA?

[jedidiah]

It also depends on believing that playing basketball is a way to get ahead in life.

Re:What about the NBA?

[gmack]

American blacks are an intensely anti-intellectual demographic versus Pakastanis.

Not just blacks. American culture in general.

Re:What about the NBA?

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of it has to do with access and opportunity. You can have 10 of one race and 10 of another but because one group does not get the same access to the colleges where NBA does the most recruiting you end up with a bias.

Re:What about the NBA?

[Time_Ngler]

I looked at the wikipedia article. It's mostly just arguments by authority. Show me some actual evidence that proves the IQ tests are not valid. I don't think you can.

IQ tests correspond to the success one has in careers, wealth, productivity, less crime, etc. Besides which, the parent was discussing whether companies should hire applicants, and regardless of whether the outcome of the tests is social construct or an innate ability, the point is the same. IQ tests *do* correspond with ability to perform at mental tasks, and racial differences *do* correspond with different IQ levels, so regardless of why that is, it follows then that racial differences would correspond to the ability to perform, and therefore it would be common sense that more people of a certain racial group that performs better at IQ tests on average, would be more highly represented at jobs that require mental skills.

And whether white supremacist groups agree or don't agree does not affect the actual facts. Bringing that up has nothing to do with the statistics, and is muddying the issue. Of course, that was your intent.

Re:What about the NBA?

[AthanasiusKircher]

The problem with your link is that showing an IQ test gap doesn't necessarily prove a "significant difference in mental capacity between humans of different races." Correlation does not necessarily equal causation and all that jazz.

For one, many people have pointed out flaws in IQ tests. Do they really measure "general intelligence"? Are there components they don't track well? And are there aspects of test design that favor some socioeconomic or cultural groups over others?

But let's assume that IQ tests ARE actually a perfect measure of general mental capacity for just a moment. Even if that's true, your own link shows part of the problem -- from your link:

However, even small differences in average IQ at the group level might theoretically have large effects on social outcomes. For example, a randomly selected group of Americans with an average IQ of 103 had a poverty rate 25% lower than a group with an average IQ of 100. Similar substantial correlations in high school drop-out rates, crime rates, and other outcomes have been measured.

Now, one conclusion we might take from this is that the marginally lower IQ of race X leads to greater poverty, high-school drop-out, crime rate, etc. in race X compared to Y.

OR -- the causation could be the opposite. That is, maybe living in a local sub-culture that doesn't complete education as much (or doesn't have access to as high-quality education as others, see most inner city schools) and has greater poverty and other social problems could result in worse education and conditions for raising children, resulting in lower IQ test schools.

It seems that the latter is the larger factor in the explanation, based on a number of studies. If you take poor black kids and raise them in middle-class or upper-class white households, a large percentage of the "IQ gap" magically disappears. If you control for socioeconomic status and parents' education level, a lot of the supposed "gap" disappears. In addition to educational opportunity, a lot of this is also likely related to health and nutrition -- it is well-established in many studies that nutritional deficiencies, particularly at early ages, can cause significant differences in IQ. (And black and hispanic kids in the U.S. are known to have a greater rate of nutritional problems than other races.)

Once you factor in all of this stuff, you're left with MAYBE a few points of IQ difference between races at most. Maybe -- it's still inconclusive, and some adoption studies have suggested there's really no difference at all.

Point being -- at least when it comes to the observed racial differences, a much larger portion is likely based in cultural factors rather than genetics. At least that's what the studies on black and hispanic kids have shown. I haven't seen as many studies looking at whether the asian IQ advantage dissipates when environmental/cultural factors are taken into account, but there have been at least a few which show the effect is diminished in adopted kids or once asian kids are removed from their language or culture.

Re:What about the NBA?

[AmiMoJo]

Wikipedia doesn't make arguments, it simply summarises reliable sources. So yeah, it looks like an appeal to authority, because that's what Wikipedia is - a summary of authoritative sources.

So, you want some proof that IQ tests are not valid. Well, you could have read the Wikipedia article about them, but I'll save you the trouble. I created a new intelligence test just now that works by having the test subject blindfolded and told to throw darts at a dart board. I have a clever system that converts the numbers they hit into an IQ score with 100.02% reliability.

Prove to me that my method is not valid. I don't think you can.

Re:What about the NBA?

[mufflon]

Ever heard about algebra?

Re:What about the NBA?

[Anonymous Coward]

A concept that gives Progressives hardons.

Re:What about the NBA?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's because white neighborhoods consider basketball as a game played by "hoodlums", and have their HOAs ban basketball hoops in driveways or even at the park, and remove hoops when they gentrify one.

Meanwhile, black communities play pick up hoops all the time, because they actually interact with each other.

Thusly, the black talent pool for hoops is MUCH larger than the white talent pool.

Re:What about the NBA?

[Anonymous Coward]

Blacks have better strength and endurance, and higher emotional quotients. (held over from our tribal days)

Yep. Africans-Americans have a long history of running for survival. The same is true today except instead of outrunning predators they now outrun, of attempt to, the police or more accurately bullets. African-Americans evolved into criminals though none of them had ever been a slave except to their own indulgences in drugs and thuggery. Their mamas should have beaten their backsides to instill a little fear and a lot of respect for the rule of law.

Re:What about the NBA?

[Anonymous Coward]

All of the crusades except one were in response to Muslim aggression, aimed at retaking land that had been taken without provocation, and similar circumstances. And the so-called "dark age" wasn't a huge intellectual step back.

You seem to love to spout things off without any idea what you're talking about.

Re:What about the NBA?

[Anonymous Coward]

I created a new intelligence test just now that works by having the test subject blindfolded and told to throw darts at a dart board. I have a clever system that converts the numbers they hit into an IQ score with 100.02% reliability.

If across multiple trials one demographic consistently scored higher on your test than other demographics, that would be conclusive evidence that they were better at accurately throwing darts blindfolded. Then you could talk about whether it was better motor skills, or a better ability to visualize the target without seeing it, or just that these people play darts more than other people, but it clearly would not be random chance.

There are many factors, including the tests themselves being biased towards certain cultures, access to education, general levels of health in populations and so forth that explain observed differences.

The positions "the difference in test results is explained by other factors" and "the test is not measuring anything" are not compatible.

Re:What about the NBA?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well you know it's kinda like religion and mass political movements are like an unholy mix of cocaine and a socially transmitted disease.. once a critical mass of people become addicted to feeling superior and indulging their inherited latent blood lust, it spreads through a population like wildfire leading to repression, persecution by an orthodoxy, witch hunts and purges.

You have this in your own society. Just look at the SJW takeover of Yale, Harvard or really any American university. Being intelligent is no protection from irrational fanaticism. It may even be an enabler.

Re:What about the NBA?

[Anonymous Coward]

Shoulders of giants and all that. If the Arabs didn't have the brains to actually protect the Greek findings when we descended into religious bullshittery where we condemned it all as the work of heathens, we'd still be a few hundred years back and busy rebuilding.

If only it had been the Arabs. But it wasn't. It was the Persians... Only the caliphate had overrun the Persians at the time, so the took the credit even though it wasn't due.

And there was plenty of religious bullshittery in the caliphate at the time. So no differnce there.

Re:What about the NBA?

[Anonymous Coward]

Notice AmiMoJo not criticizing the correlation between ethnicity and physical ability when accepting that fact is positive for minorities. Makes you wonder why AmiMoJo puts up such a vigorous defense when there is a correlation between ethnicity and mental ability when accepting that fact is negative for minorities.

Almost as if what race it benefits determines AmiMoJo's opinion, as racists and bigots choose their own opinions.

Re:What about the NBA?

[TsuruchiBrian]

There are lots of tall white people. If you look at the countries with the tallest people it's: Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Greece, US, Australia.

No being non-Asian doesn't help you with most jobs, but that is a causal relationship. What we have is a negative correlation between Asians that applied to a particular company and Asians that got that job.

There are all kinds of things that can cause strange correlations that have nothing to do with racism. For example: Why were 73% of the applicants Asian? Certainly 73% of the population isn't Asian. Maybe Asian people are more likely to apply to more jobs, making it less likely overall that they will get any particular job (i.e. they can't get all the jobs they apply to). In fact Asians did get 4/17 (19%) of the jobs and Asians only make up 5.6% of the population.

You have to actually do the research to see what actually happened. You can't just look at how many Asians were hired and then conclude racism. You actually have to measure how qualified the applicants were. You can't just assume that the qualified applicants to a particular company perfectly match a cross section of the US or the applicant pool.

Re:What about the NBA?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think if you look at percentages of people who train to a pro level and tryout, the numbers will still be skewed but much less so. Black youth are much more likely to devote their lives to sports because (rightly or wrongly) they see it as the best path to success.

Re:What about the NBA?

[Anonymous Coward]

Race is a social construct, and there are larger genotypical and phenotypical differences within ethnic groups than there are between groups. Look it up.

Re:What about the NBA?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but don't forget the Arabic brainiacs from a few centuries ago leaned HEAVILY on India & Persia's existing philosophy, math, and medical knowledge, (especially anatomy & surgery). Yes, historic Arabia should not be demeaned BUT their culture of desert survival, expanding out of the desert, deep tribal/family culture, Talmudic cleanliness taboos, and general xenophobia were typical of many cultures of the day. And definitely NOT imported via the crusades. People can be nice or dangerous anywhere around the world, no need to paint cultural, scientific, and philosophic/math appropriators as saints. They've never moved from their ancient ways- and continue the same mentality today, (well at least the newsworthy ones do).

But yes, the ancient version of their culture was a great contributor to the west after the fall of Rome. And we can thank India/Asia/Persia for the original ideas absorbed through Arabia to the west.

Re:What about the NBA?

[Anonymous Coward]

IQ tests have a language component. If you don't know the language it's written in then you can't even complete the test. Given that, it is not possible for it to be an objective measure of different humans in general.

IQ tests appear to correlate with something else in many cases but on their own are pretty much pseudo-science.

Re:What about the NBA?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your view of history is exactly backwards. The Arabs burned the libraries of Alexandria and Constantinople while the Catholic church preserved Greek and Roman books that otherwise would have been lost. On two occasions Rome would have fallen to Muslim armies if the outcome of a battle had been different. Western civilization was fighting for its life while Islam was spreading across all of southern Asia through violent conquest, destroying the cultures they came in contact with. What the Mullahs did in India is 1000 times more horrific than anything that happened during the crusades. It is too bad real history doesn't fit your narrative, but feel free to keep inventing false history to support your warped world view. It's a free country, after all, not like one ruled by Islamists who would kill you for criticism of their prophet that is in fact true.

Re:What about the NBA?

[Anonymous Coward]

It was the Christian monasteries that preserved the knowledge of Greek and Roman Antiquity through the "dark ages".

I'll put this one down to the standard revisionist history of the typical irrational postmodern atheist, whose position is mostly "all religions are bad, but... especially Christianity, despite the facts of actual relative cultural behavior... because, well, I have a lot of personal shitty behavior I'm ashamed of and so I attack the religion that causes me to think about that the most".

Captcha: "unfair". Indeed.

Re:What about the NBA?

[EllisDees]

The link that you posted doesn't support your assertion at all. In fact, the graph on that page contradicts it.

Re:What about the NBA?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the Catholic Church was responsible for maintaining almost all knowledge of science and history after the fall of the Roman Empire.
The Arabs mostly copied things they learned from the Indians and Chinese, and the Westerners copied those.

If the Chinese hadn't been such a backward, anti-science, anti-technology, anti-progress empire, they would have taken over the world LONG before the Romans had the chance.

Re:What about the NBA?

[Rakarra]

We've called it "selective breeding" for hundreds of years.

Re:What about the NBA?

[Rakarra]

Technically, forced government sterilization for "idiocy" is still legal in the US and was upheld by the Supreme Court. Of course, in this day and age, if anyone actually tried to go through with that, that's a court case that would be overturned right quick. There just hasn't been a need for a challenge.

Re:What about the NBA?

[Rakarra]

Of course. They moved from throwing stones into store windows for a quick smash and grab and using bats for mugging to guns.

That's generally not how evolution has worked -- IE, the giraffe long-neck problem. The explanation that giraffes gained long necks by "stretching" and then that trait was passed down was originally thought to be how evolution worked, but it's not true. It's far more likely that the giraffes that naturally had long necks were able to reach more food, and thus they were the ones more likely to survive to breed and pass the trait.

At this point in humanity, what we do (occupation/pastime/etc) seems to have little to do with whether we can breed and pass on our genes.

Re:What about the NBA?

[Anonymous Coward]

What a truly shitastic analogy.

Re:What about the NBA?

[Anonymous Coward]

American blacks are an intensely anti-intellectual demographic versus Pakastanis.

Not just blacks. American culture in general.

Woo! Yeah!!!

Slam those stupid Americans! Show your superiority to the WORLD!

Re:What about the NBA?

[Time_Ngler]

But if they do correlate with job performance, and they also correlate with race, it would stand to reason that race correlates with job performance.

I'm not arguing that this means this is due to innate racial characteristics. It may be due to any number of social constructs. But regardless if whether it's nature or nurture that causes it to be, it still is.

And it follows, then, that just because a company's employees consist of more white and asians than blacks and latinos then the general population does not indicate the company has racist hiring policies.

Re:What about the NBA?

[Time_Ngler]

Wikipedia states in big bold letters right at the start of the article:

This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these template messages)
The neutrality of this article is disputed. (October 2012)
This article may be unbalanced towards certain viewpoints. (October 2012)
This article's factual accuracy is disputed. (October 2012)

You can't tell me just read Wikipedia's article (another argument of authority, btw... you never actually state your position), when Wikipedia itself believes the article to be factually inaccurate.

Also, your "dartboard" IQ test has not been proven to be correlated with anything. That is the difference.

I'm not arguing whether IQ tests are testing native ability, education, or a combination of both. Just that IQ tests correspond to job performance, and race corresponds to IQ test, so then race corresponds to job performance. Whether that is due to socioeconomic factors or innate ability is irrelevant to my point, which is that if a company hires more whites and asians than blacks and latinos, they can't immediately be concluded as racist by default.

Re:What about the NBA?

[TsuruchiBrian]

If you are asking me if it is surprising to me that you would actually believe something like this, then no. Feel free to offer some actual good evidence if you want to convince others.

Re:What about the NBA?

[TsuruchiBrian]

Um no. Why do people with genes from West Africa (but who live all over the world in different cultures) make up the top 95% of the top sprint times? It isn't because they grew up sprinting.

It's not? Because they do. I don't think anyone is saying there are no biological differences in people of different ethnicities, but it's pretty clear that culture also plays a big role. African countries have a culture of running. Some countries (e.g. Jamaica) with a stronger culture of sprinting and produce more good sprinters than other nations with exactly the same genetic makeup.

You're starting with the fallacy that there can be only one cause to some phenomenon.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/14/opinion/sunday/the-secret-of-jamaicas-runners.html?_r=0

Re:What about the NBA?

[skovnymfe]

If white people spent a proportional amount of time living in a ghetto and doing nothing but playing basketball all day since young, then there would similarly be many white people who were as good as black people. But poor white people don't live the same way poor black people do. The community is just different.

Re:What about the NBA?

[TsuruchiBrian]

That's sort of what I was getting at. There is a large cultural component.

Re:What about the NBA?

[david_thornley]

You seem to be saying that western civilization is better because it developed the scientific method, without actually examining what other cultures have done. Assuming you're completely correct, science developed once in the world, and it was in western Europe. This doesn't mean there's anything inherently special about western Europe; it's entirely possible that these Europeans chanced on a really good approach to learning things. Had western Europe developed things independent of and comparable to the scientific method multiple times, and no other civilization did, you'd have some evidence that this wasn't by chance.

Re:What about the NBA?

[david_thornley]

I'd suspect that, given wars between any group A and group B, A's accounts will talk about B's brutality, and B's accounts will talk about A's brutaility. In the early 1100s, as in pretty much every other period of history, Christians fought Christians at least as happily as they fought Muslims and pagans.

Re:What about the NBA?

[Anonymous Coward]

Spoken like a true nerd.

Re:What about the NBA?

[shutdown -p now]

The crusades were a defensive response to the armed conquest of over half the ancient world by a group that converted by the sword and who attacked Europe as recently (before modern times) as the 15th century.

They were? I didn't realize that e.g. Prussian pagan Slavs and Balts were trying to convert European Christians by the sword.

Re:What about the NBA?

[Anonymous Coward]

It was the Christian monasteries that preserved the knowledge of Greek and Roman Antiquity through the "dark ages".

That's a highly misleading claim. Most of the knowledge of Greek and Roman Antiquity was preserved in the Byzantine state, though some was preserved in the West.

The eventual collapse of the Byzantine state (in 1453, almost one thousand years after Rome fell) was a major contributing factor to the Renaissance, as former Byzantine scholars and artists started fleeing to the West well before the final collapse - with ideas and techniques that had largely been lost in the West (or never known).

Re:What about the NBA?

[RespekMyAthorati]

Technically, there are no human 'races', as we can all interbreed.

Interbreeding is irrelevant to the concept of race, which is a statistical concept relating to where in the world the majority of your ancient (>1000 years) lived.
However, it is true that there is no reliable difference between races in terms of intellectual talent.

Re:What about the NBA?

[RespekMyAthorati]

Race itself is considered a social construct, not a biological or genetic one.

By who?
Forensic scientists routinely identify the most likely race of a person based on the skeletal measurements of a corpse.
Here "race" just refers to where in the world the majority of the person's ancient ancestors lived
(Europe, Africa, South Asia, East Asia, etc.). This affects their likely appearance and is an important aid in identifying their remains.

Re:What about the NBA?

[Anonymous Coward]

"We already know why. Fast twitch muscle."

BS. The main driver is socioeconomic. Those with better opportunities than pro basketball take them, leaving the lower socioeconomic strata in sports

This is not just basketball, it's the same in football and baseball, but basketball is easier to practice in cramped inner-city areas than field sports.

Oh my.

[Lieutenant_Dan]

"helps government agencies track down terrorists and uncover financial fraud,"

Other ethnic backgrounds not hired Palantir:
- North Korean
- Russians
- Iranians
- Cubans
- Chechens
- Former/current ISIS members

"Asians" may be a tad too broad. Chinese nationals? Hell, yes. I know of quite a few places that do something similar. The problem is that the idiots doing the screening cannot differentiate between a 2nd generation US citizen from Vietnamese or Hong Kong families, and someone who only a little while ago carried a nice red book and quoted the chairman.

What are the other 17 non-Asians? White, black, hispanic, pakistani, japanese, egyptian, etc?

Re:Oh my.

[Anonymous Coward]

What are the other 17 non-Asians? White, black, hispanic, pakistani, japanese, egyptian, etc?

Ah, the US, where Pakistan and Japan aren't in Asia.

Re:Oh my.

[Zontar The Mindless]

... someone who only a little while ago carried a nice red book and quoted the chairman.

For those of you playing along with us at home, "little while" in this context means "at least a quarter-century". Seriously, get with the times already.

Re:Oh my.

[ruir]

Asians has been (ab)used as an euphemism to Indians and muslims as of lately.

Re:Oh my.

[unixisc]

Muslims pretty much define a multi ethnic 'ethnicity' comprising Arabs, Turks, Iranians and Pakistanis. The Pakistanis pretty much bunch themselves w/ other Muslims, and since 9/11, they are a part of the geography defined by Centcom. So there is a validity in not treating them as a part of Asia.

I agree that it's ridiculous not to regard Japan or Israel as parts of Asia.

Re:Oh my.

[unixisc]

In the UK. Not in US, where other different euphemisms - like 'Hispanic' for 'Turk' apply, like the weekend WA Macy's attack

Trump'd Up Charge?

[DatbeDank]

Am I the only one here who thinks this "lawsuit" is pollitically motivated? How in god's name are they going to prove otherwise? Who has the burden of proof here?

Re:Trump'd Up Charge?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes you are. Make a tinfoil hat with your small hands

Re: Trump'd Up Charge?

[Bartles]

This government? Politically motivated? Not a chance!

Re:Trump'd Up Charge?

[unixisc]

Usually, the burden of proof in discrimination cases lies w/ the accuser, so the US Department of Labor has an uphill job.

Re: Trump'd Up Charge?

[Anonymous Coward]

Progressive establishment apologist detected!

Something deeper..

[thesupraman]

More likely some state actor is getting desperate to get some people inside.

Other than that this looks pretty normal. Anyone who deals with such placement knows that you get a flood of obviously fake, misleading, and just plain silly applications from certain Asian countries and groups which are not difficult to weed out but make the numbers look exactly as we are seeing here.
Other than that the ratio of actual placements looks pretty normal for someone not living on H1b slaves..

So.. Someone is putting a lot of work into creating this issue.. Which means either political or financial pressure.

Re:Something deeper..

[whoever57]

Anyone who deals with such placement knows that you get a flood of obviously fake, misleading, and just plain silly applications from certain Asian countries

Advertise a job in Silicon Valley and you will get lots of applications from ethnically Asian people who are local and either have green cards or are citizens. There is no reason to assume that this issue is in any way related to foreign applicants (who can be legitimately discriminated against).

Re:Something deeper..

[ShanghaiBill]

Palantir is located across the street from Stanford University. There are plenty of extremely well qualified Asians in Palo Alto. Palantir has a "boys club" culture, and tends to hire by referrals. I don't think they intentionally set out to avoid hiring Asians, it is just their hiring practices are biased toward white guys recommended by white guys.

Re:Something deeper..

[Anonymous Coward]

It's from the DoL, I figured it was trying to get revenge against Thiel.

Re:Something deeper..

[Anonymous Coward]

It does say Asian, not Asian-American. Asian means from Asia. You wouldn't call a white American a European.

Re: Something deeper..

[Anonymous Coward]

Working in a national security environment it is doubly hard to not discriminate against new citizens and legal residents when they come from countries that are targeting the US for espionage.

Re:Something deeper..

[parkinglot777]

It does say Asian, not Asian-American. Asian means from Asia. You wouldn't call a white American a European.

Are you kidding, right? There is no such Asian vs. Asian-American in this type of statistics. The Asian is determine by their appearance (and/or genes), not where they were born. People see Asians born in America as Asians when they first see them. Even when they speak to them, sometimes they can't figure out without asking them whether the Asians were born in America or came into the country when they were very young (no accent). That's why statistics usually uses the word "ethnic". I have a feeling that you are an Asian and were born in the U.S. because your reply seems to show that you are offended by being seen as Asian only.

Anyway, I still don't really see the issue in this hiring. Besides, there is no need to make a big deal out of it anyway. Why do they need to have high population of Asians in a company locating in Silicon valley? If there are 2 equally qualify candidates. One is white American and one is Asian. Companies should have the right to pick whoever they want whatever method they please. There are many other jobs (or things to do) outside Silicon valley anyway.

Re:Something deeper..

[Anonymous Coward]

There are real people who can do the job who are Asian, but the GP poster is likely referring to the Asians that are likely using fake diplomas. Asians have a culture of using fake diplomas that would scare many if they knew the extent of the problem. There are whole black market industries willing to provide a fake diploma, fake transcripts, and fake letters of recommendation to good, and sometimes top-tier Asian universities. Typically these are used to gain entry into a graduate program, but sometimes they are used in job applications. If in a graduate program, most applicants rely on Asians supporting Asians, which means that Asian TAs tend to give Asian students exam questions (and answers if possible) before the exam. Others enter PhD programs with the intent of dropping out (which typically grants a person a consolation Master's degree)

I have worked along some really good Asians, but I have also worked alongside some Asians that were awful. The latter use their poor communication skills and Asian friend networking as a shield. Once entrenched, it is nearly impossible to get them out, even if they are non-productive. They ruin many shops against Asians for the Asian people who are truly worthy.

And that's not touching on the spying, but it can explain why some Asian interviews are described by the GP as "fake, misleading, and just plain silly".

Re:Something deeper..

[Anonymous Coward]

You'd call a white America Caucasian when referring to their ethnicity. Ethnicity is independent of residence or nationality, and the ethnicity of an Asian-American person is Asian.

Re:Something deeper..

[jedidiah]

So then networking and referrals are illegal now?

This seems to be more about hiring "who you already know" versus some unknown quantity. People can look good on paper, interview very well and still manage to be a total disaster.

Re:Something deeper..

[Fire_Wraith]

While you certainly shouldn't expect companies to hire unqualified people (and if they can demonstrate that's the reason, they're in the clear), you can't simply say "Companies should have the right to pick whoever they want whatever method they please" because that's going to equate to "(Ethnic/Protected Group) Need Not Apply" in many cases. Will they outright say that? No, probably not - but you can be sure that some people will, and it's going to disproportionately hurt vulnerable groups.

Don't forget, too, that Equal Employment Opportunity impacts more than just racial/ethnic minorities. If nothing else, age discrimination is something that everyone in tech is going to face at some point, and it can get pretty pervasive, not the least of which because older workers tend to have higher salary expectations.

And how do you determine that someone is discriminating? It can be very hard to prove that in the case of deciding between two equally qualified applicants that discrimination was the deciding factor. That said, when you have a repeated and consistent pattern, there's probably something going on there. At the very least, it's the job of the Department of Labor to go after those cases, let the company defend itself, and let the Courts determine the facts.

Re:Something deeper..

[Anonymous Coward]

+1 Bingo!

Re:Something deeper..

[SirSlud]

> Companies should have the right to pick whoever they want whatever method they please.

I bet you think you sound intelligent when you say that, keepin' it real, being objective, and everything. "Life should be a meritocracy!" screams person who is too unfamiliar with history to notice how humans have never achieved a meritocracy in societies with zero laws barring discrimination throughout history. But if you spend two seconds thinking about it, what you're saying is fucking dumb. Companies can pick whoever they want so long as they obey the law, one of which is not discriminating against gender, race, and other factors, because to let them pick whoever they want would be stupid enough to think that a "leave the companies alone" market discourages or prevents discrimination. Never has, never will.

Re: Something deeper..

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, ethnicity is basically exactly the opposite of what you said it was.

Re: Something deeper..

[Anonymous Coward]

China... Follow the money.

Re: Something deeper..

[KenHansen]

Companies can pick whoever they want so long as they obey the law, one of which is not discriminating against gender, race, and other factors, because to let them pick whoever they want would be stupid enough to think that a "leave the companies alone" market discourages or prevents discrimination. Never has, never will.

The issue here is the gov't decided that every applicant was qualified for software engineer positions at this well-regarded company, then it determined that 85% of the qualified applicants were Asian. Then the gov't decided that if freezer than 85% of the hires are Asian that in and of itself was proof of discrimination. Second, hiring by quotas IS discrimination - forcing an employer to 'fill out' their Latino quota and reject better qualified Asian, black or white applicants is rightly seen as discrimination by the better qualified Asian, black, and white applicants.

Re: Something deeper..

[KenHansen]

"if freezer than 85%" should read "if fewer than 85%" Damn autocorrect...

Re:Something deeper..

[parkinglot777]

And I think you are those who select only a certain portion of a whole content and spin/use it for your own agenda. It shows from how you "quote" only a portion of my post...

Re: Something deeper..

[parkinglot777]

You have a point there. I guess that they (gov't) try to combine favorite (lean toward) and discrimination (take away) together...

Re: Something deeper..

[david_thornley]

Why would the government need actual proof of lawbreaking to file a lawsuit? Proof, in this case, is a legal concept, to be determined in court. Should the government be required to convict someone in a court of law without an actual lawsuit?

What the government has is strong evidence of illegal activity, and at some point the government does have to file a lawsuit or give up all pretense of enforcing the law.

Re: Something deeper..

[Anonymous Coward]

I have had the same experience studying and working in Australia.

I really wouldn't lump all Asians together.

When you study at post-graduate level you often end up in enforced assignment teams with students from India who have astonishingly poor knowledge and especially attitude suggesting that their undergrad qualifications were bought somewhere, not studied for.

My experience with Chinese, Vietnamese etc students was quite the opposite. It was often me who struggled to keep up.

Re:Something deeper..

[Anonymous Coward]

There are other companies (Fortinet for instance), who are US based, that predominantly employ asian staff One of the driving factors there is also the predominant workplace language (Mandarin probably). It does make some companies looking deep into security issues a little nervous... (Sorry for the anon posting, but I'm telling tales out of school here)

Good ole boy system

[ArtemaOne]

Seems like it was less intentional racism, and more exposing the systemic racism of the good ole boy system.

Re:Good ole boy system

[Anonymous Coward]

So why are 70%+ of the applicants asian if that's not what the community is? Something is really off here.

Also, they're only looking at resumes to determine qualifications. I'll tell you right now that we get a TON of bogus resumes from body shops, especially Indian ones. Make no mistakes: we have many qualified Indians, including management, but you get a ton of padded resumes that don't hold up under questioning. And yes, you do get those from everywhere, but the predominately Indian body shops can drown you in them.

Re:Good ole boy system

[larryjoe]

Seems like it was less intentional racism, and more exposing the systemic racism of the good ole boy system.

In all companies I've worked at, there has always been a strong statistical correlation between the race of the hiring manager and the race of team members. This has been true for Chinese, Indian, and white managers. For my managers, I have felt that the bias has not been intentional but rather subconscious. Nonetheless, it is usually obvious.

For my first job, my Indian manager had a team that was one-third Indian and one-third Chinese. After about three years, all the Chinese had left, while all of the Indians had stayed. When I pointed this out to my manager, he showed obvious embarrassment about the implication of racial factors in the makeup of his team. I liked my manager, and I don't consider him to be racist. However, race is always factor, at least in a subconscious way.

Re:Good ole boy system

[Anonymous Coward]

And happen to remember once what one indian said: Indians supports indians. End of story.

Re:Good ole boy system

[arth1]

Also, they're only looking at resumes to determine qualifications. I'll tell you right now that we get a TON of bogus resumes from body shops, especially Indian ones. Make no mistakes: we have many qualified Indians, including management, but you get a ton of padded resumes that don't hold up under questioning. And yes, you do get those from everywhere, but the predominately Indian body shops can drown you in them.

I concur. Unfortunately, of all the job interviews I do, there's a strong correlation between padded interviews and the origin of the applicant. That doesn't say anything about the individuals from these countries, but based on the original number of applicants, a proportionally higher number of them will not get hired - their qualifications did not meet the requirements.

For applicants from some other countries, there is a pattern of not listing all qualifications they have. That doesn't mean that the individuals are better, but statistically, those applicants are more likely to advance in the queue after an interview.

This is not racism. It's looking at actual qualifications.
I couldn't care less whether you're green and furry, but if something in your resume appears to be an untruth, you're not going to get hired. If a higher percentage of Indians put qualifications they don't have on their resumes, a higher percentage of Indians are going to get turned down.

The recruiting companies have to take a lot of the blame, I think. Some, i fear i have reason to believe, suggests what the applicants should add.
But if your resume says several years of Unix sysadmin experience, and you cannot name a Unix vendor or OS name when asked, you're not discriminated against when turned down.

Re:Good ole boy system

[Anonymous Coward]

If I had to work with Indians, I would had left too....

Re:Good ole boy system

[Anonymous Coward]

However, race is always factor, at least in a subconscious way.

Cultural commonality, not race. I get really sick of this "everyone is racist" tripe.

The Indian boss hired more Indian employees because their common culture and conversation style made them more comfortable and appealing to him than someone without those connections. When I have been on the asking side of interviews, I favored people who I could understand, showed a respect for things I respect, and demonstrated either direct familiarity or a wide scope of experience. None of which mattered because I was overruled by my boss, and then he spent a lot of time complaining about the quality of people working for him. There are days I'm amazed I still work here, both wondering at my own choice and at him not firing me in a fit of irritation.

People either favor or despise what they know, unknowns have a worth based on a person's optimism or pessimism. The part where it gets difficult is that, for survival purposes, harm is much more strongly remembered than help and people teach each other from what they remember.

Re:Good ole boy system

[Anonymous Coward]

Worked at Cars.com (owned by ADP). All Indians except 1 dude. I wasn't Indian, so didn't get hired (to no surprise).

Re:Good ole boy system

[hucker75]

Nothing wrong with racism. A company who is paying people should have the right to pay who they want to pay. It's THEIR money.

Maybe they just had an Austrailian recruiter

[alvinrod]

Maybe the recruiter at their agency was Australian. It seems to have been a problem at least once in the past.

Re:Maybe they just had an Austrailian recruiter

[Aaron B Lingwood]

Epic

I'll hire whoever the fuck I want

[Anonymous Coward]

If I have a business, and I want to hire 50 white men or 50 black women, it's my choice. I don't care if 10,000 white men and 50 black women apply, if I want to hire only the black women, that's my choice.

Re:I'll hire whoever the fuck I want

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently not so much for organizations that do business with the US federal government or are directly funded.

Re:I'll hire whoever the fuck I want

[Opportunist]

No problem there.

But don't you DARE hiring the 50 white men only!

feature, not a bug...

[guygo]

do they think the applicants come with a hardware backdoor?

Re:feature, not a bug...

[ArtemaOne]

I think that's sexual harassment.

Re:feature, not a bug...

[Lehk228]

I would be more concerned if they didn't, as they would be so full of shit they would be qualified to be senators.

Please define "Asian"

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't blame any company for excluding Indians, considering their education isn't to the same standards and nobody can understand them.

No excuse for not hiring asians that were educated in first world countries and speak good English.

Mind you, government contractors that work on classified projects are the last home for native-born US citizen engineers these days because government regulations force them to hire us.

Re:Please define "Asian"

[Anonymous Coward]

speak good English

"speak English well"

Re:Please define "Asian"

[quenda]

speak good English

"speak English well"

Both are grammatically correct. Its the second AC who doesn't speak English good.

Re: Please define "Asian"

[Anonymous Coward]

"convey their thoughts in intelligible English"

Better?

Re:Please define "Asian"

[Anonymous Coward]

Except good isn't an adverb.

Re:Please define "Asian"

[Anonymous Coward]

Found the American Public School graduate.

Re:Please define "Asian"

[Anonymous Coward]

Jeebus, 'good' is being used as an adjective. NOW who doesn't speak good English?

Re: Please define "Asian"

[Anonymous Coward]

If you can do good work, then I can speak good English.

Re: Please define "Asian"

[Opportunist]

After all, you also say that a hooker gives good head, you don't say she gives head well, that's ... just wrong.

Re:Please define "Asian"

[Anonymous Coward]

Yikes, my bad. I didn't realize there was a "good English." So, do they speak good English well or poorly?

Re:Please define "Asian"

[Anonymous Coward]

By which you must mean quenda, I assume? So you're complimenting the Ameircan school system because he is correct.

One speaks English well, or speaks good English. Learn to talk.

Re:Please define "Asian"

[unixisc]

Which group of Asians did the above story allude to? Indians, Chinese or others?

Re:Please define "Asian"

[Anonymous Coward]

speak good English

"speak English well"

Both are grammatically correct. Its the second AC who doesn't speak English good.

He probably speaks it well.

Re:Please define "Asian"

[quenda]

woosh?

Obvious grammatical error in sentence about grammar is obvious. Let not take it too seriously. I was responding to the grammar nazi, not being one.

Re:Please define "Asian"

[Anonymous Coward]

Double "whoosh" on you. I was making a joke; "well" vs "good". I can draw a picture if you'd like.

Please follow your on advice and don't take it too seriously.

Re:Peter Thiel is a Trump supporter

[Anonymous Coward]

Obama administration attacking a Trump supporter? Gee, no surprise.

Suing for lost wages?

[Anonymous Coward]

For a person that did not get hired? Can then Palantir resue the people it has to pay "lost wages" for gross and willful underperformance on their non-job, possibly by working elsewhere?

I can see hitting Palantir with penalties but I don't see "lost wages" as anything that even makes any sense for a person that was not hired in the first place and never got a letter of acceptance.

Re:Asian discrimination??

[EEPROMS]

I've actually done interviews for I.T positions and talked to many asian applicants and the issue has nothing to do with qualifications. There are actually two issues that make employing asians problomatic, 1 is language skills and the ability to communicate with a predominantly European team. The second issue is "wrote only skills", I don't know why but schools in asian nations are allowing students to get qualifications based on book sense not the ability to work through a complex problem that may need a left of field answer. If you want an engineer to go by the book asians are great, if you want someone who is going to lay fresh ideas down and be asian then good luck with that.

Re:Asian discrimination??

[EEPROMS]

PS when I say asian I mean asian as in from an asian nation not one who has grown up locally in a western nation.

Chinese speakers only

[BradMajors]

Meanwhile, you will see many Silicon Valley job descriptions for low level engineers that require the ability to speak Chinese.

Re:Chinese speakers only

[omtinez]

I've never seen those. Can you post an example? Not questioning your claim, just legitimately curious. I wonder if it's related to being able to read datasheets.

Re:Chinese speakers only

[TheGratefulNet]

no shit. I've seen the subtle and not so suble job descrs that clearly tell non-asians 'need not apply here, buddy'.

having worked at a lot of bay area companies (cisco, etc) - I can tell you that whites are a TINY minority. you can walk the hallways for a long time and never hear english. indian dialects and chinese, lots and lots. see a white or black guy? rarely. at least in engineering. perhaps the upper upper mgmt is americans, but first line managers are almost all asian and indian.

so I find it very 'rich' that someone dares to complain that the asians don't have a 100% stranglehold on the bay area jobs.

some people are never satisfied. perhaps I should go more than a year between jobs - while some imported labor never stays unemployed for more than a month or two, tops. you don't have to be skilled, either; just part of the clan that is hiring and you're all set.

come out to the bay area; walk around outside the main companies and tell me that there is equal opportunity for all races that exist in this area. you'll conclude that its been unfairly stacked for a good 20 years, now. ever since h1b abuse went mainstream, local born citizens can be jobless for much more than a year. we pay our taxes, we grew up here, we have a vested interest in the US and yet the US companies do all they can to avoid hiring us.

asians: realize that you already OWN most of the companies here; and all the landlords are also asian. what more do you fuckers want? SHEESH! you have it all and still are not happy. damn.

Re:Chinese speakers only

[Anonymous Coward]

What are some of the job descriptions you mean?

Re:Chinese speakers only

[Anonymous Coward]

The ability to speak Chinese (you probably mean Mandarin) is not limited to a race any more than the ability to speak English is. If a Chinese national can learn English you can also learn Mandarin.

Thus, this is not racial discrimination, as would be, for example not hiring Asians.

Re:Chinese speakers only

[TheGratefulNet]

look at many of the apple job ads. they hint that you may be traveling to asia for work projects, but they do say that you need to speak chinese to work on many of the projects.

apple also lists many jobs that are for 'interns' and you know what that means: low pay and young age, only.

Re:Chinese speakers only

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish more job descriptions in the Silicon Valley required the ability to speak and write English.

Re:Chinese speakers only

[Anonymous Coward]

I was curious too and did some searching. The magical words are "engineer fluent mandarin". That conjures up thousands of jobs. They are not limited to Silicon Valley. The job postings are for all over the country. Many from widely different companies in widely different areas have "fluency in [ mandarin | Chinese ] is a plus", like that phrase has been copied by all of them. Very curious. Must be a HR version of stack overflow.

Most of the ones that require the language say so with tact. "We are looking for an application engineer. A candidate fluent in mandarin.." and so on. The very first search on dice in California is for "Network Engineer (Mandarin)". Only requires an associate's. Who knew it was so easy to become an engineer.

I never thought this was a thing for non-international positions.

Re:Chinese speakers only

[Anonymous Coward]

If a Chinese national can learn English you can also learn Mandarin.

I did, and I'm in my 50s. Maybe the younger folks could benefit from spending a little less time looking for things to be offended by, and cracking a book instead; they might be surprised at what they could accomplish.

Re:Chinese speakers only

[Anonymous Coward]

No it is essentially a racial requirement. If you had any clue how difficult it is to learn Mandarin, you would know that maybe 1% of non-asians speak mandarin.

Re:Chinese speakers only

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish more job descriptions in the Silicon Valley required the ability to speak and write English

There's the rub. How many of the "qualified" Asians that were rejected are able to speak and write in fluent English? Not a requirement for an analysis job? That should be up to the employer.

Re:Chinese speakers only

[jcr]

That's not an unreasonable requirement, given the need to work with manufacturing operations in China.

-jcr

Re:Chinese speakers only

[jcr]

fluency in [ mandarin | Chinese ] is a plus

Of course it's a plus. I'm likely to be hiring a group of Mechanical Engineers in the next six months, and I certainly want at least one of them to be fluent in Mandarin to make it easier to work with Chinese suppliers. It would be pretty handy if they speak Korean, Japanese or Hindi, too.

-jcr

Re:Chinese speakers only

[jcr]

If you can't keep a job, maybe it's because nobody wants to deal with a racist scumbag.

-jcr

Re:Chinese speakers only

[stealth_finger]

fluency in [ mandarin | Chinese ] is a plus

Of course it's a plus. I'm likely to be hiring a group of Mechanical Engineers in the next six months, and I certainly want at least one of them to be fluent in Mandarin to make it easier to work with Chinese suppliers. It would be pretty handy if they speak Korean, Japanese or Hindi, too.

-jcr

So why not include an interpreter in your batch of hires? Unless one of your hires is Chinese/Korean/Japanese or whatever or you get one of each, but then are you hiring for their spoken languages or engineering ability?

Re:Chinese speakers only

[Anonymous Coward]

That this not invalidates the language of the country is English.

Re:Chinese speakers only

[Anonymous Coward]

You say that, but I don't think you understand what you're saying. You see, Mandarin has this nasty little thing about it that very few languages on earth has which makes it exceptionally difficult to learn. It's a tonal language. In other words, simply knowing the vocabulary and grammar is not enough, you need to know the tones that you're supposed to do. Low to mid-low, low to mid, mid to high, high to mid-high, etc, etc, etc. And all of these can change the meaning of the base word by quite a lot. The only thing you could do to make Chinese harder to learn would be to add in taboos, but fortunately those only exist in a couple south east island nations. (Imagine certain words that are fine in one area be banned in another, so you have to learn that taboos of each individual group your associating with, and these are at a family level, not a regional area *shudders*).

Yeah, generally the only thing thought of being harder than learning to speak a tonal language is learning how to read and write Japanese. Not speak Japanese, but to read and write it, apparently it's considered one of the most complex writing systems on earth.

Re:Chinese speakers only

[Anonymous Coward]

So why not include an interpreter in your batch of hires? Unless one of your hires is Chinese/Korean/Japanese or whatever or you get one of each, but then are you hiring for their spoken languages or engineering ability?

An interpreter? LOL. What good would a non-technical interpreter do in an engineering context?

Much easier to simply hire an engineer that speaks the desired language.

Re:Chinese speakers only

[AmiMoJo]

Do you have any links to such job postings?

Re:Chinese speakers only

[Anonymous Coward]

As it turns out I happened to be reading up on the Civil Rights act yesterday and came upon a use of the CR Act in respect to the specific question of 'language'. Apparently treating people the same regardless of their ability (or lack thereof) to speak English is discrimination...specifically the Department of Education sued California & won with respect to California's policy of putting non-English speaking people in the same classes (presumably history, math and even English courses) in the same classes as English speakers. As such it is clear the 'ability to learn' a language is of no value to the argument that requiring a given language ability is discrimination. (no I won't provide the link, I think it was on Wikipedia but could have been a link from there. You'll have fun learning stuff trying to find this reference. :-) To help out in your search I believe the year was 1974 or there abouts).

So no, it isn't 'racial discrimination' but it is apparently 'discrimination' none the less to require someone to be able to speak a given language in order to perform any given task, at least without also giving someone the ability to perform the task (in this case learning a subject) in the language of their choice. Of course I have no doubt that the students involved were of races (at least from countries) that don't regularly speak English, so this was likely a way for the Department of Education to claim 'racial discrimination' without actually doing so because of course it would be unlikely they could have won a 'racial discrimination' case given that no races were being discriminated against (everyone was being treated the same regardless of race).

Now, you and I might both find such a thing non-sensical, that is it seems relevant on its face that someone doing a task/job be able to conduct themselves in the language that the task/job requires. In this case, doing business in China or with the Chinese might just require speaking some dialect (mandarin being the most popular but not the only one) of the people you might do business with, or if taking school in the US being able to speak English might be considered a pre-requisite. Be that as it may, it is discrimination to REQUIRE this at least according to case law. Don't come looking at me, I don't make this shit up.

Re:Chinese speakers only

[Anonymous Coward]

Because heaven forbid an American actually spend the effort to be bilingual or be rewarded for it in any way.

Re:Chinese speakers only

[Anonymous Coward]

You may THINK its 'not an unreasonable requirement' but in fact it can & is considered discrimination under the Civil Rights act to discriminate on the basis of ability (or lack thereof) to speak a given language (here check this out: http://www.workplacefairness.org/language-discrimination#1).

Of course, this ONLY applies to trying to get people to speak English in the US, I guarantee that this wouldn't be applied to the instant case of wanting someone to be able to speak Mandarin (or some other dialect) when working with the Chinese. Ok, maybe I shouldn't 'guarantee' that, as I haven't done an exhaustive search to find out if any discrimination law suits have been filed by English speakers not getting a job that requires speaking Mandarin, but given the nature of this particular thread it would seem that if it shows up on a job description than its not actually being treated as discrimination.

It doesn't seem to matter that you & I may think it 'not an unreasonable requirement', heck I'd suggest it is reasonable to expect people coming to & living in the US to be able to speak English, but its discrimination to REQUIRE it, and more so to not provide services in the language of such people. So, what is good for the goose is good for the gander, therefore requiring someone to speak Mandarin to work with the Chinese is discriminatory. To avoid such discrimination companies should be required to provide translators or other methods of communication commensurate with the 'size' of the non-Mandarin speaking population of the company.

Re:Chinese speakers only

[Anonymous Coward]

I've seen that in jobs adverts for post-doc research positions in the UK (www.jobs.ac.uk). Sometimes vacancies have a requirement that the person must be a non-UK citizen from Europe who has been in the UK for the past three years. Or positions in Europe, must be a European citizen from the native country.

Re:Chinese speakers only

[Anonymous Coward]

And much more difficult to find. Usually, the hiring company would specify that the candidate has to be a citizen or permanent resident, meaning that one can only hire people in the US, but who have the required technical qualifications and know the languages required. Consider yourself lucky if the number of qualified people hits double figures.

Re:Chinese speakers only

[Rakarra]

Most of the ones that require the language say so with tact. "We are looking for an application engineer. A candidate fluent in mandarin.." and so on. The very first search on dice in California is for "Network Engineer (Mandarin)". Only requires an associate's. Who knew it was so easy to become an engineer.

In the tech land, "engineer" does not mean you have an engineering degree or certification. It means you're good with computers and they don't have to pay you overtime.

Are we still pretending...

[Bartles]

...that government agencies are apolitical?

Re:Are we still pretending...

[Anonymous Coward]

Or the new SJW?

Re:Are we still pretending...

[Anonymous Coward]

...that government agencies are apolitical?

Were you going to explain what political issue surrounds this Palantir place? What political agenda is the DoL pursuing that isn't part of their mission?

Re:Are we still pretending...

[Bartles]

Peter Thiel is an outspoken critic of the administration, and a gay Republican. Stop feigning ignorance.

What does the DoL mean by "Asian"

[Anonymous Coward]

I read the DoL link: https://www.dol.gov/sites/default/files/newsroom/newsreleases/OFCCP20160926_0.pdf

So they are lumping in people from China, India, Siberia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey, the "stans", Japan, etc into one group called "Asians". OK, so they all have ancestors from that continent, if they weren't actually born there. Or are we talking about foreign nationals?
I wonder why they didn't break it out by country. Is it because a large number of the applicants are from a country known for bogus job applications and inflated resumes? Were the rejected applicants submissions from the same staffing agency?

Re:What does the DoL mean by "Asian"

[Anonymous Coward]

They say "Asian" so that they can sue a Trump supporter's company over rejecting Chinese moles, ISIS sympathizers, and diploma-mill graduates from consideration for national security positions.

Not surprising

[Gravis Zero]

Considering they are in the game of information warfare, I'm not surprised they are excluding Asians. Regardless of what's being said, the US and China are in an information war and the two countries that steal the most information are the US and China. I'm betting the Asians they did hire are Japanese or South Korean.
I don't blame them for discriminating and I wouldn't blame a Chinese company doing the same thing for excluding US allies from their list of potential hires.

Re:Not surprising

[TheGratefulNet]

I once applied to huawei (sp?) for a networking job. not that I wanted to work there, per se, but I was in dire need of a job and a recruiter contacted me about this place.

one of the first questions from the interviewer on the phone was:

"so, why do you, an american, want to work for a chinese company?"

it went downhill from there.....

glad I didn't get the job. from reading glassdoor, if you are not chinese and don't speak it, you'll never get anywhere in this place; and its right in the middle of silicon valley, too.

Re:Not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

So nobody not living in China should buy Huwai, because they discriminate against non-Chins.

The USA is the only country in the world that does not support this kind of economic chauvinism. You will not find a Hollandish (the proper term for a citizen of Holland) person buying Sony products, they will buy Phillips.

All wars are ultimately economic. The nation with the strongest economy gets the bitches. Buy buying Huwai, you are ensuring that your daughters will have to move to China or Mexico to prostitute themselves. USAians should support the USA, just as the Chin buy Chinese.

Re:Not surprising

[Zontar The Mindless]

"Hollandish" is not even an English word. The English demonyms are "Dutch" and "Dutchman". If you don't like that, you're free to go post on a board that uses some other language than English.

Re: Not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

You obviously understood what was meant by the user's words and therefore the user communicated correctly. Predictated/spoken language has always preceded "dictionary" language, always. In other words: dictionaries exist only because of the former, not the other way around and there isn't a law, written or otherwise, that enforces strict adherence to words only found in dictionaries.

Recent additions to Oxford:

biatch
Butt-fuck
Cheerer-upper
Clickbait
Moobs
Refurb

http://public.oed.com/the-oed-today/recent-updates-to-the-oed/september-2016-update/new-words-list-september-2016/

It seems sir, as though you are the "moron" as you so wittingly put it earlier in this very thread!

Re: Not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

And you are a pedantcocksucker.
Not a word you say? But you understood my meaning right?

Re:Not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

You will not find a Hollandish (the proper term for a citizen of Holland) person buying Sony products, they will buy Phillips.

Wow... just ... wow. Let's start with that 'Hollandish' is not a proper term in any language. The corresponding term in Dutch would be 'Hollander'. Then just note that Holland is not even the right name for the country called The Netherlands (though we kind of roll with it, because it is such a widespread mistake). we could also mention that Phillips has gotten out of the television and audio/video business years ago, licensing the use of the brand, so only a sadly uninformed fool would think that buying a Philips branded tv over a Sony would somehow be more Dutch...

But the main part is just so blatantly incorrect, it would interesting to know how the heck you came up with it. The Dutch (yes - that is the proper English term for us) generally don't give a crap about such jingoist considerations as what country that giant big corporation is based in, when buying goods. We rather go by such weird things like price, reviews, recommendations from others and such. You know, like most people.

Re:Not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Why stop there, Manzanar.

Re:Not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

If it's a good investment, then maybe my daughter won't have to work at all. I'm just selling out you other Americans because nations are imaginary cages and I don't value you above Chinese people. Lemme guess Trump 2016 amirite?

But how funny would that be... if mercantilism was a valid economic concept, and we sent our daughters there a generation after they sent us THEIR daughters!

Re: Not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Absolutely, moobsucker ;)

Why did you hide your name this time? We know it's you. Peekaboo!

Re:Asian discrimination??

[quenda]

It depends which Asians. TFA is incredibly vague.

Are they talking about middle-eastern applicants? Perhaps there are security concerns?
Indians? Around here its not unusual to get a lot of applications from blatantly unqualified Indian immigrants, or fake qualifications that become apparent at the interview stage. So applicant numbers don't mean much there.

I wish TFA would just say what it means. It might be obvious to the locals, but not to everyone else.

Security Clearance

[Anonymous Coward]

Ethnically Asian or foreign nationals from Asia on a H-1B visa? They are not the same thing to a defense contractor that requires its employees to hold a TS/SCI or full scope poly security clearance.

How about -rent- to whoever the fuck you want?

[Anonymous Coward]

"If I have an apartment building, and I want to rent to 50 white men or 50 black women, it's my choice. I don't care if 10,000 white men and 50 black women apply, if I want to rent only to the black women, that's my choice."

Does that work? No. You live in a society, you play by its rules. This society (the United States) has collectively decided through its laws, that certain transactions between people have a significant imbalance of power from one party to the other, AND that there has been such massive ongoing, systemic, and unjust discrimination in these transactions that the government has both the legal right and the moral right to step in and make rules to address the unfairness. Renting a place to live is one of these areas. Hiring people for work is another. This is why we have the category of 'protected classes' of individuals, that the government specifically targets as groups of people needing a corrective action from the government so they can have a fair shot in these areas. Don't like it: fucking go some place else. (Or lobby and vote against such policies, but obviously I hope and pray you fail dismally).

Re: How about -rent- to whoever the fuck you want?

[Anonymous Coward]

People have the freedom to decide with whom they do business with, you don't believe in individual freedom.

Re:How about -rent- to whoever the fuck you want?

[ChrisMaple]

"collectively decided" oxymoron.

Re:How about -rent- to whoever the fuck you want?

[Zontar The Mindless]

Whereas you're just a moron, no fancy prefixes required.

Re:How about -rent- to whoever the fuck you want?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck you and the politician who rides you!
It was the politicians who collectively decided to fuck up the US, not the society. The sheeps accepted it as they didn't had any choice.
Also, can we stop with the bullshit about voting? The power to vote for someone (or something) was taken from the people a long time ago, when the new ruling class (aka politicians) took over.

17 to 4

[freeze128]

So they hired 4 Asians, and 17 Non-Asians, and the Labor Department calls that "1 in a billion chance"? Well, what if the pool of 17 Non-Asians was made up of 5 White, 4 African, 4 Latino, and 4 European? That would seem to me to be WELL ROUNDED!

Re:17 to 4

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, the one in 1 billion claim will be laughed out of court if they bring it up there. Somebody failed math badly, that's not how combinatorics work. Actual chances of that outcome are slightly better than 1 percent, so 'only' four orders of magnitude higher.

Re:17 to 4

[zdzichu]

"5 White, ... 4 European"
I have trouble visualising that difference.

Re:17 to 4

[Anonymous Coward]

Clearly you haven't been to Europe lately!

Re:17 to 4

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, it's not TOO far off. Alas, one has to acknowledge that 'europeans' these days are increasingly non-whites. At this rate, by 2040, they will have become a minority in their own countries, which will consist mainly of (Muslim) Arabs and Africans.

Of course, by then it might not be 'Europe' anymore, but Eurabia, which would make them 'Eurabians' instead of 'europeans', I guess.

Re:17 to 4

[Anonymous Coward]

Did any of them go into a bar?

Re:17 to 4

[Anonymous Coward]

One was a Turk... Duh.

Re:17 to 4

[Anonymous Coward]

White, usually refers to the WASP, White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, which would be ancestry north and eastern Europe, but usually refers to white Americans. Southern Europe around the Mediterranean are not White, Anglo-Saxon or Protestant. The whole region of Europe and parts of Russia and Africa are actual referred to as Caucasian.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasian_race

Re:17 to 4

[Anonymous Coward]

There's lots of white people in this country that were born here, they didn't come from Europe.

Re:17 to 4

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably because you aren't an Irish or Italian immigrant from many years ago.

Asians are considered White now in some organizations. It doesn't mean what you think it means.

Re:17 to 4

[Huge_UID]

That would seem to me to be WELL ROUNDED!

Well, at least their eyes are.

Re:17 to 4

[Anonymous Coward]

Australia, mate! Crikey.

Re:17 to 4

[thegarbz]

That would seem to me to be WELL ROUNDED!

So you're saying they discriminated against applicants by race in order to make a team that is not based on suitability for the role but rather to meet someone's goal of a well rounded team of one person from every race.

Yep not racial discrimination at all. Gotchya.

Re:17 to 4

[Anonymous Coward]

I know we don't read the article, but this is even covered in the summary.

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 those who applied were Asian. [...] the company hired 17 non-Asian applicants and four Asians.

Re:17 to 4

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you lack experience and imagination. Like most commentators here.

Funny how this indictment came down...

[Nova Express]

...right after Thiel was revealed to be a Trump supporter.

Almost as if the Obama Administration wanted to punish him for expressing non-liberal thoughts...

So what?

[Bartles]

Universities in America discriminate against Asians in exactly the same way. Literally exactly the same way. Asians are admitted at a much lower rate than of which they apply.

Re:So what?

[Gussington]

I have no problem with this. Culture is important, and if we were to globally distribute every race on earth I'd be a minority in my own country.
Culture has value, we need to ensure we retain some of it.

Re: So what?

[Bartles]

They discriminate against American Asians.

Re: So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Every time that is spoken a SJW's head implodes.

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

I run a small enough business that I personally screen and hire everyone that works for me.

Asians, as in, from the continent of Asia, are the overwhelming majority of applicants.

However, to make the first cut, the point at which I'm not looking at the applicants name nor hazarding guesses about their ancestors continent or origin, they need to be able to write clearly and originally. And few of those remaining after that cut are Asians.

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Haha, my college and the one next door are chock full of Asian students. Not asian-american, but rich Chinese who do not integrate into our culture in any way, use umbrellas to keep their skin, white, and go back to China when they leave. If it was up to me I wouldn't accept any of them.

Re: So what?

[Gussington]

What by giving them higher scores in Maths? Boom tish!

No runder

[Anonymous Coward]

they couldn't pronounce the company name, "Parantiw"

(Sowy, couldn't wesist, -Bawwy Kwipke)

Re:Asian discrimination??

[EEPROMS]

actually blame my text input editor it changed rote to wrote lol.

Re:Asian discrimination??

[ArmoredDragon]

If these were IT positions, then I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of them who were qualified on paper were rejected because their actual knowledge didn't reflect their written qualifications. That is, they might have braindumped their way through some vendor certifications, which would qualify them on paper, but doesn't necessarily mean they're knowledgeable. Braindumped IT certifications look far more legit than a degree from a diploma mill, and would probably fool a government entity who is auditing their screening process just based on paper qualifications (I'm guessing they probably didn't have recordings of the phone screenings.)

Besides, I'm having a really hard time believing that an IT shop would discriminate against Asians.

Security OR Asians - pick ONE

[Anonymous Coward]

"Asians" is broad.. Ganges valley, or Yangtse valley? In one case you may land with "contractors" posting basic how-to questions on public forums and including complete sections of sensitive code, server configs, urls, passwords, etc - or in the other case, regular mirrors of all your IP buggering off to a certain country we all know from their Made In labels. Broad brush, I know, but the statistics are stacked and backed by experience. Given the sensitive areas Palantir are working in, best practice is hire the best people (including security profile). Racial quotas are a bad, bad, bad idea.

Re:Asian discrimination??

[Zontar The Mindless]

Nobody believes you lol.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't

[Solandri]

If you hire in proportion to how many applicants of each race you get, you are sued for racial discrimination because the racial makeup of your employees doesn't match the general population.

If you hire in proportion to the racial makeup of the general population, you are sued for racial discrimination because you didn't hire in proportion to how many applicants of each race you got.

Step 1: Establish laws where people are guilty no matter what they do.
Step 2: Those in power decide which people/companies are undesirable.
Step 3: Sue them and only them for violating those laws.

Big Brother would be proud.

Re:Damned if you do, damned if you don't

[serviscope_minor]

Dial in the paranoia there buddy.

You can sue anyone at any time for any reason and on the grounds of no merit whatsoever, regardless of the law. Just because someone's being sued doesn't mean they're going to lose and it also doesn't mean they've done something contrary to the laws. Those two things are of course often quite unrelated.

Re:Damned if you do, damned if you don't

[Anonymous Coward]

you could probably get away with only hiring women that isn't white

Re:Damned if you do, damned if you don't

[Anonymous Coward]

Big Brother = political correctness

nowadays, everything is software-based, so don't base a person gender on certain built-in hardware, you have to go software-base, ask.

it's getting to an asinine proportion, everything has to be balanced, racially, genderally and whatever, then we need another bureau to track and enforce it.

i've heard that mathematics is racist! am sure that Intel's core i7 will run a few MHz faster since it was designed by a racially and genderally balanced team.

am sure everyone have had experienced dealing with particular racially-diverse person and thinking at the back of their mind that the person can't cut the mustard, did this person get to the position through eeoc or one of those title x's? that's the harm of pc.

oh, am a bonafide minority.

Re: Damned if you do, damned if you don't

[Entrope]

The plaintiff in this case is the US Department of Labor. They're not supposed to sue people without good reason, but the allegations as stated are very thin, and IMO likely to lead to a loss in court. Palantir will probably be entirely vindicated, but only after spending way more on lawyers than should be required.

Re: Damned if you do, damned if you don't

[serviscope_minor]

Palantir will probably be entirely vindicated, but only after spending way more on lawyers than should be required.

That's a flaw with the legal system, and has nothing to do with paranoia over anti discrimination laws. I've been a victim of such things, from a private individual. I'm 100% sure the case had no merit, but I had to settle out of court because not only did I not have the time or money to fight properly, but being involved in a legal dispute would have spelled death for my company at that stage. The plantiff knew all of that and chose his time carefully.

His timing was prefect and I settled out of court. I'm absolutely sure I would have won and I'm absolutely sure the victory would have been phyrric.

Re:Damned if you do, damned if you don't

[AmiMoJo]

False dichotomy. Notice how certain sports that are dominated by certain races don't get sued for discrimination? That's because they hire based mostly on ability, which is fair and non-discriminatory.

To be clear I'm not saying that sport is free from discrimination, far from it, I'm saying that the requirement is to hire without discrimination against protected classes, not to reach some arbitrary statistical goal. Stats are only used as a basic measure of diversity, but when there is a non-discriminatory reason for skewed numbers it's fine.

Look at Trump's companies. They were found to have discriminated. There isn't really any doubt that they did, it's not just stats saying so, it's their actions and policies that were clearly designed to keep minorities away from his property because he thought that would keep rents higher. If you want to claim there is a conspiracy, you need to refute such evidence.

Re: Damned if you do, damned if you don't

[Entrope]

Sure, the US legal system is designed to make it easy for people to sue. You're overlooking my point: We should expect the government to be more discerning in its (civil) lawsuits than the "average" case. When the federal government prosecutes abusive lawsuits that cost citizens time, money, and stress, at least two branches of the government have failed.

Re: Damned if you do, damned if you don't

[david_thornley]

Nobody's shown that the lawsuit is baseless. The Department of Labor claims that there's a large disparity between the racial composition of qualified applicants and those who get offers. If this is true, it's strong evidence of illegal racial discrimination.

At what point should the government intervene to enforce the law? This is more evidence than a lot of search warrants are based on, and a search warrant will cost someone time and stress and possibly money.

Re:Asian discrimination??

[EEPROMS]

also when has stating reality been a racist comment!! The reality is the same would apply to a western trained english speaking engineer trying to join a predominantly asian engineering team in lets say Japan. I would happily accept that they have more asians than westerners on a Japanese team and will employ (yeah dream on) a few western engineers for off shore sales and translation. Have you ever tried getting a job as a western engineer in lets say Japan even "when there is no language barrier". Trust me you will feel like an Olympic champion in an arse kicking team after 12 months of employers pretending your application never even turned up.

Re:Asian discrimination??

[EEPROMS]

lol seriously is that the best trolling you can do, what are you using as reference material fisher price golden books.

The reason is that Thiel is a Trump supporter

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the only reason that he's being sued. This lawsuit is without merit since Palantir hired more Asians than the proportion of Asians in the US population would require. Obama and the Clinton globalists are a bunch of assholes.

Re:Asian discrimination??

[Orgasmatron]

This is an American news story. Here, Asian means Oriental, which is where ninjas, samurai and kung-fu monks come from. But we shouldn't say Oriental any more because it reinforces racist notions about which direction the Roman Empire thought the sun rose from in the morning. (Part of that is a joke, but, sadly, not enough.)

If it was a European news story, Asian would mean Muslim and nothing more, though you can usually make a good guess based on the country: English Asians are mostly Pakistani, German Asians are mostly Turkish, French Asians are mostly Tunisian, Algerian, Moroccan, etc, Italian Asians are mostly "Syrian, *wink* *wink*", and so on.

Re:Peter Thiel is a Trump supporter

[Anonymous Coward]

You fucking moron. Palantir hired more Asians than the proportion of Asians in the population demands. This lawsuit is without merit and Thiel should sue the government for targeted political persecution by the Obama administration.

True!

[Anonymous Coward]

Harvard has a quota to stop too many Asians being accepted!!!! Even if they have top marks higher than white or black candidates. It's as illegal as hell, so why isn't the government leaning on Harvard to get rid of a racist quota? Funny how liberals are so selective about whose rights they choose to protect!

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chapman/ct-asians-enrollment-harvard-colleges-perspec-0524-20150522-column.html

http://observer.com/2015/06/asian-americans-are-indeed-getting-screwed-by-harvard-but-not-how-they-think/

https://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/2015/06/01/college-counselors-advise-some-asian-students-appear-less-asian/

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/12/do-diversity-initiatives-indirectly-discriminate-against-asian-americans/

http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21635027-does-university-impose-silent-quotas-against-asian-americans-harvard-under-fire

Having brand name universities sucks anyway. Lets face it: Most colleges can providing you a perfectly awesome training in your field. People choose those colleges not because of what they teach, but because having Havard or Yale on your resume gets it to the top of the pile. Prestige opening doors is the only reason.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/09/us/led-by-stanfords-5-top-colleges-acceptance-rates-hit-new-lows.html?_r=2

WOW, this is fucked

[WindBourne]

This company works with TLAs so they are obviously working hard to hire ppl that are NOT SPIES. Yet, we have 2 main types of Spies to be concerned about: Russian and Chinese. Chinese and Indian account for the vast majority of the Asian ppl. Obviously, the CHinese are going to be looked over hard. So, that leaves the Indians. And oddly, within India's military, they are VERY close to Russia. Much closer to Russia than to the west. As such, Indians are going to be looked at as well.

And dept. of Labor is saying that we must hire ppl of which a known quantity is going to be spies.

I have dealt with 1-2 spies already and both were Chinese. I would hate to have Dept. of Labor be able to control a company that deals with national security to this degree.

Re:WOW, this is fucked

[AmiMoJo]

You are making some assumptions here. Chances are most of those Asian applicants were Americans, born in the US, lived there their whole lives. Chances of them being spies is fairly low, and being the kind of company that works with TLAs they could have had government background checks anyway if there was any concern.

So either there is an assumption that many of those people were foreign, or an assumption that being Asian makes them more likely to be disloyal or turned by foreign agencies. Of course, historically it was mostly white guys being turned by Russia.

The argument that people of [race] are more likely to be [problematic thing] is discriminatory. Legally, you have to treat everyone as an individual. If they can show that they did security checks and a lot of Asian applicants failed then fair enough, but I think it's pretty unlikely and if they could have they would have presented that evidence when being investigated.

Re:WOW, this is fucked

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

And oddly, within India's military, they are VERY close to Russia. Much closer to Russia than to the west. As such, Indians are going to be looked at as well.

That's not as true as it used to be. India does still buy military hardware from Russia but they buy less now than they used to and they buy more from the US than they used to. Also, Russia has been cozying up to Pakistan and that doesn't play well in India. Actually the whole "India loves the USSR/Russia" thing was pure idiocy that Ghandi and his cronies started to show how "independent" they were from the West. So India constantly voted as the USSR dictated in the UN and served as an international apologist for them. The only reason the US and Pakistan were ever friends is that India made it so by flatly rejecting the West at the time. The US wanted some influence in the region, so it took what it could get. It's really difficult for me to point to anything worthwhile that India has gotten out of its subservient relationship with the USSR and Russia, which is no doubt why the current Indian government is moving closer to the USA.

Re:WOW, this is fucked

[Anonymous Coward]

Majority of breaches from Asian spys have been US citizens, otherwise they wouldn't have gotten clearance to work on DoD stuff.
From the start security clearances work on the same argument you are saying is discriminatory. People who are [us citizens without foreign ties] are less likely to be [foreign agents].

Also when you ask them to do long term studies to prove their hiring practices are fair please note that they are a startup and very few corporations run long term studies on who to hire. They are just following the defense industry standard.

Re:WOW, this is fucked

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like you're the one making a lot of assumptions, all throughout this thread. Assumptions on skill levels of the applicants, assumptions on their nationality...

Re:WOW, this is fucked

[Fire_Wraith]

If a job requires a U.S. government security clearance, then it's trivially easy (and 100% legal) to make hiring decisions based on that requirement. You're legally allowed to put that in the job description and mandate it as a core requirement for employment. DoL and others won't even bat an eye if your response to the question of "why did these 100 Asian applicants get rejected" is "Job requires security clearance, these applicants couldn't obtain one" (assuming you can actually back that up, of course).

Re:WOW, this is fucked

[Anonymous Coward]

Chances are most of those Asian applicants were Americans, born in the US, lived there their whole lives. Chances of them being spies is fairly low

Please read "Inside the Aquarium." That's not how spies work. They are locals, recruited with either bribes or threats. You're thinking of their handlers.

Re:WOW, this is fucked

[Anonymous Coward]

Chances are those American Asians have close family that are still living in their home country. Chances are those American Asians will be the first people targeted by Asian intelligence services looking to convert new spies. Chances are those American Asians will have the highest potential for being blackmailed to provide intelligence.

> Of course, historically it was mostly white guys being turned by Russia.

This is incorrect. Those white guys were just what made the headlines, you need to read something other than newspapers.

> The argument that people of [race] are more likely to be [problematic thing] is discriminatory.

Yes, it is, but it doesn't make it less true.

Re:WOW, this is fucked

[Captain Scurvy]

Chances are most of those Asian applicants were Americans, born in the US, lived there their whole lives. Chances of them being spies is fairly low...

Actually, second-generation immigrants are very frequently recruited because they are already fluent in the target nation's language and culture.

Re:WOW, this is fucked

[Anonymous Coward]

Chances are most of those Asian applicants were Americans, born in the US, lived there their whole lives.

This seems highly unlikely.

Re:WOW, this is fucked

[WindBourne]

Companies dealing with TLA really can not afford to take chances. As such, they need to VET the daylights out of their employees. Worse yet, the gov now does a HORRIBLE job on vetting ppl.

Re:WOW, this is fucked

[WindBourne]

there are many companies that work with TLAs that do NOT get their security clearances. As snowden and a large number of chinese spies has shown, they are a joke. Instead, by focusing on hiring Whites (non-russian), blacks, and Latinos, they can reduce their risk a great deal.
Im all in favor of preventing race based hiring in NORMAL companies, which accounts for more than 99% of them. However, when it comes to national security, we really need to disregard these kinds of laws. They are KILLING US. LITERALLY.
And BTW, I HAVE dealt with Chinese spies.

Re:WOW, this is fucked

[WindBourne]

Well, a big part of India cozying up was because of Nixon and his threat to Ghandi. I could not believe that he actually threatened her with a nuke. How stupid can you be.
The other issue is that India got invaded by China back in the 60s and had to cozy up to somebody since they were surrounded by East and West Pakistan, along with China to the north. So, they picked Russia (who also saw china as a threat).

BUT, India continues to work closely with Russia, and I can tell you that there is nearly 100% chance that most of the Western companies that have been cracked by 'russians' , had just outsourced parts of production (not code, but admin) to India within the previous year. Sadly, ppl like Krebs ignores these issues, and I can not talk further about it. BUT, India is a VERY REAL THREAT to the west.

Re:WOW, this is fucked

[Mondor]

Seriously, for Chinese being Chinese means more than being American citizen. And that is so for many other ethnic groups. Russian will stay Russian, Japanese will stay Japanese. American passport is nice to have.

For most people their family means more than their country. And for some ethnic groups Fatherland (or Motherland, since we mentioned Russians) could mean more than you think, even generations after relocation. Don't hire Russian to attack Russia. Don't hire Chinese to investigate Chinese state hackers. It's plain stupid.

Asians smasians. What about older workers?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll bet they have fewer employees over 40 than they have Asians.

Lines up with the IRS, ATF,EPA and FBI

[Anonymous Coward]

The IRS commissioner has admitted under oath that his agency targeted the Tea Party (a point he confirmed to congress under oath again last week)

Several Tea Party people caught up in the IRS actions suddenly found their small businesses getting visited for the first time ever by the ATF, EPA and FBI in rapid succession for "audits" and "safety checks" right after getting entangled in the IRS scandal and complaining to congress.

I'm not personally involved in any of it, but when this stuff happens there's a funny old quote (in several variations) that probably applies: "just because you're paranoid, that does not meant they aren't out to get you"

It's interesting that shortly after he publicly opposed Obama's chosen replacement and exposed the big lie that Republicans HATE gay people (as opposed to disgreeing with the political agendas of SOME gay people), the Obama administration has accidentally gone after his company. Yup. It's just a pure coincidence. If the Bush IRS had gone after a large bunch of groups everybody suspected opposed him, and a bunch of those groups were suddenly descended upon by other Bush admin agencies, and then one of the high-profile Obama supporters was attacked by a Bush department after the 2008 DNC convention, would the left all be upset or would they blow it off as just a coincidence?

Are the lefties who scoff at this aware that their candidate, Hillary Clinton, has for decades insisted that all her opponents are part of a "vast right wing conspiracy"????

Re:Lines up with the IRS, ATF,EPA and FBI

[unixisc]

I also think another objective of this would be to try and win the 'Asian' vote, whatever it is. While the Indians tend Democrat, the Chinese, Vietnamese, Koreans tend Republican

Re:Asian discrimination??

[Anonymous Coward]

The second issue is "wrote only skills"

The article states that out of 1,160 *qualified* applicants, 85% (~986) were Asian with the remaining 15% (~174) being non-Asian. 11 Asians were hired and 14 non-Asians were hired. 11/986 = 1.1% and 14/174 = 8.0%

It's difficult to determine from just the article what "qualified applicant" means but the above numbers look really bad. Either the bar for what is considered a qualified applicant is really low thus enlarging the pool of incompetent Asians (while miraculously filtering out incompetent non-Asians) or there is a discriminatory factor that may not be fair. I've been privy to enough private conversations to know that at least some of the incredible discrepancy here is due to racial discrimination.

Left field / outside the box is American culture

[raymorris]

> I don't know why but schools in asian nations are allowing students to get qualifications based on book sense not the ability to work through a complex problem that may need a left of field answer.

According to the people I work with who aren't from the US, that's a significant cultural difference. Most cultures value more knowing and following the rules and procedures, being an efficient part of the team. And that's good - Japan achieves consistently high quality partly because the workers consistently follow the specified procedure.

The US is different in the degree to which we value "outside the box thinking" or what you call "out of left field" answers, coming up with your own way of doing things. On the other hand, many of my American colleagues lack the book knowledge. For example, database adminstrators with little knowledge of, and no respect for, the basic normalization rules. Flying by the seat of your pants, thinking outside the box can be very good, and it can be very bad. If you're trying to come up with a revolutionary new design for a mach 6 jet, you'll need to think outside the box. When manufacturing the turbine blades inside the jet's engine, you need to know the book knowledge cold and follow the correct procedures precisely.

It's no coincidence that people in the US have invented so many things, while Japan and other nations beat us mightily at building higher quality cars, electronics, and other items. Some American goes off and invents the transistor, then the integrated circuit, by trying some wild idea. Then Asian people build millions of ICs that work right, pretty damn consistently.

Again, it's a cultural thing. Obviously nothing about being American is genetic - we're a genetic soup, but we have our own culture. Less so now than 40, 60, or 100 years ago.

Paki dothead asians or chinky gook asians?

[Anonymous Coward]

n/c

Re:Paki dothead asians or chinky gook asians?

[Chrisq]

Very few Pakis are "dot heads" and those who are suffer great discrimination as well as rapes and physical attacks from the muzzies. Of course any organisation tracking down terrorists would have to turn away the majority of Pakistanis.

Re:Asian discrimination??

[Hognoxious]

It's not the text editor's fault that you can't punctuate.

I'm calling bullshit.

[jcr]

The department of labor found a statistical anomaly, and decided to try to nail Thiel for supporting Trump.

-jcr

Re:I'm calling bullshit.

[Anonymous Coward]

If the government want to do something against Thiel, they just could look into his businesses and terminate contracts. Anyway, it is surprising that the state is working with a company who's owner does not support human rights.

Re:I'm calling bullshit.

[Anonymous Coward]

Same thing happened with the Quest CEO. He didn't go along with wiretapping, so they found some stock trades he did well on and destroyed his company going after him for insider trading. Note, that what he made was nothing compared to what hillary made under similar circumstances.

Re:I'm calling bullshit.

[lowrey.neal]

Yep my first thought. Obama has 'weaponized' all the agencies and all must persecute heresy against the party.

Re:I'm calling bullshit.

[Anonymous Coward]

More like Obama decided to put out a hit on Thiel. The Labor Department is just doing his bidding, like the IRS did to conservative groups.

Obama is like a mafioso - brass knuckles and all. He pretends to be above it all, but he's not and neither are his capos. We'll be much better off when he's out of office. It's been a disastrous 16 years with two of the worst presidents to ever sit in the white house.

Re:I'm calling bullshit.

[iMadeGhostzilla]

This is an incredibly unproductive move by the Administration. I imagine if I were an Asian already working for Palantir -- like 44% of them! -- the sense of belonging to the team is now in danger if not gone. It is us vs. them, the Asians vs. the white guys.

The non-discrimination laws were designed to prevent systematic or blatant discrimination. If there really was some bias against Asians (I'm assuming American-born), it's not like those people can't get good jobs in any other engineer-hungry Valley company. And it does sound like if it was place where you mostly got hired by referrals where white guys would recommend mostly other white guys and occasional Asian friends.

And if they are talking about non-American-born Asians not being accepted to essentially an espionage company, this lawsuit is pure idiocy.

Re:I'm calling bullshit.

[Anonymous Coward]

The most insightful, honest, direct, and correct comment in the entire thread.

Re:I'm calling bullshit.

[david_thornley]

it's not like those people can't get good jobs in any other engineer-hungry Valley company.

So, you're saying that they're qualified, but Palantir doesn't want them. That sounds discriminatory to me.

And it does sound like if it was place where you mostly got hired by referrals where white guys would recommend mostly other white guys and occasional Asian friends

Except that the Labor Department looked at which qualified applicants were considered. It's easy to imagine a case where a company hires by referrals and gets pool of qualified applicants that's racially biased, but that's not what happened here. Palantir interviewed plenty of qualified Asians, but the actual hires had relatively few of them.

Companies can discriminate on citizenship provided it's a bona fide job requirement (some of our work is under ITAR, so certain positions require being a "US person"). Typically, they'll filter out applicants on the basis of citizenship early on, and presumably the Department of Labor examined that as part of being "qualified".

There's good strong evidence of racial discrimination here, which is to say good strong evidence of illegal actions. The only reason one would claim that it's wrong for the Labor Department to file suit would be that one doesn't think it should file suit in cases of illegal discrimination. If you don't like anti-discrimination laws, talk to your Congressional representatives. The administration here is prosecuting a probably case of lawbreaking.

Re:I'm calling bullshit.

[iMadeGhostzilla]

So, you're saying that they're qualified, but Palantir doesn't want them. That sounds discriminatory to me.

Yep. Deal with it. The non-44% (again, !!!) of rejected Asian candidates may have been qualified on paper but a paper cannot capture all it takes to join a team. News flash, that kind of discrimination happens everywhere, every day. And their economic prospects were not hurt, they could get a job anywhere else. The laws are meant to prevent an individual's economic ruin, such as when a black person couldn't get a job anywhere, they are not put in place to protect someone's feelings that they can't always get what they want.

This administration's move is either trying to hurt this business for political points, or out of SJW-ing gone wrong, or both. Things have been taken too far and it's unlikely to be good for them in the coming elections.

Re:I'm calling bullshit.

[david_thornley]

So, since everyone does illegal stuff, the only grounds for going after lawbreakers is politics or ideology? That's what your claims sound like to me.

Re:I'm calling bullshit.

[iMadeGhostzilla]

It's actually the opposite, the only ground for going after lawbreakers in a world with limited resources is using a sense of what is productive and not using politics and ideology, the latter being what seems to be going on in this case. As you know there are too many laws and most of us are breaking several of them at any given time. If you drive 47mph in 45mph zone you are breaking the law. Should the cop who sees you pull you over and give you a ticket? It depends. If you are driving on a long stretch of road where there's nothing around, it would be silly to do so. If you are close to the residential area and there are large groups of pedestrians around and it's night and it just started raining, he should.

Re:I'm calling bullshit.

[david_thornley]

If you want to say that politics and ideology play a part in deciding priorities in law enforcement overall, I'll agree. It's obvious that you value anti-discrimination laws much less than I do, presumably based on differences in our politics and ideology. However, you seem to be saying that only someone who differs from you ideologically is acting out of ideology, which seems one-sided.

Re:I'm calling bullshit.

[iMadeGhostzilla]

You're right. I instinctively see your view of anti-discrimination as over-protective and ideological. And if someone came and said anyone should be able to discriminate against black and disabled and not give them jobs if they don't want to, I'd consider that to be under-protective and harmful and also ideological. But who is to say that I am right and that you and that the other guy are not?

Ultimately though, there is no answer. We have democracy because we are unable to see the future, so we act on evidence we have or on a hunch if there's not enough evidence. For me, there is sufficient evidence that discrimination against the poor is harmful as it puts their existence in danger. At the same time, there's not enough evidence that discrimination against those who are in a relatively good life position (Asian programmers) is harmful for the society or puts there existence in danger. My hunch is that it isn't, in fact that such a move by the administration is harmful for the society, and so I'm choosing to vote against people who want to push such policies.

Re:I'm calling bullshit.

[iMadeGhostzilla]

... I meant to say occasional, not systematic discrimination against Asian (or any other kind of) programmers.

Re:Lost wages

[Calydor]

While I do not agree with the request that people off themselves, this is essentially what I came to say.

Lost wages for a job you didn't get is like lost profit for a sale that never happened. Should Walmart sue everyone that decided to shop their weekly groceries somewhere else?

Re:Asian discrimination??

[Hognoxious]

Nope. I've never heard Turks or Arabs described as Asian. In England at least it's the superclass of Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis.

Re:Asian discrimination??

[vlad30]

We have as a policy including staff in the interview particularly staff that would eventually work with successful applicants. Once the easy question were answered we often had an idea whether the paper matched the brain then depending on whether we were busy or not depended on if we continued the interview with applicants that obviously had fake or bought qualifications and no real understanding of the topic. One of those could give you ROFL statements that could last weeks. the hardest part was not to burst out laughing in the interview, and keep straight deadpan faces. It also taught the staff compassion for those less fortunate/intelligent than themselves.

True that most of the failed applicants were asian or indian but even the asian and indians on our team appreciated the method as it meant we didn't waste weeks with someone who wasn't qualified

Re:Left field / outside the box is American cultur

[dbIII]

I suggest you look up the "the Toyota way" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Toyota_Way) to get a few misconceptions cleared up and find out where that consistency comes from.
You have to write the book first to be able to go "by the book", and it needs correction from time to time.
An attitude of stasis has you selling buggy whips in the automobile age.


Although it's now something associated with Asia that cultural thing was a continuation of the ideas of Henry Ford and others.
What we see far too much of now as "the American way" is instead to ideas of trust fund babies like Edsel Ford who were happy to coast along and relied on people below them to make ad-hoc changes.
Our manufacturing culture used to look like the Toyota way, now instead it looks like a bunch of drunken roaming bandits looking for someone who has actually got something to work to steal from.



All that said, recent Asian graduates don't really know about that either - I'm just clearing up the idea that "just going by the book" is where the success of those Asian companies came from. They get things to work well, write the book, then go by it until it's time to change it - just like some successful places in the west have done.

One in a billion

[tal_mud]

Assuming the 4 asian applicants and the 17 non-asian were all equally competent, I get a cumulative binomial distribution probability of choosing 4 asians out of the 21 applicants as 0.0036, which is more than one in 300. Where do they get this "approximately one in a billion" statement?

Re:One in a billion

[DoofusOfDeath]

Assuming the 4 asian applicants and the 17 non-asian were all equally competent, I get a cumulative binomial distribution probability of choosing 4 asians out of the 21 applicants as 0.0036, which is more than one in 300. Where do they get this "approximately one in a billion" statement?

I'm not sure DOJ hires a lot of mathematicians.

In fact, over the last 8 years, they seem to have mostly acted like well-armed SJW's.

Re:One in a billion

[Anonymous Coward]

You're assuming a 50-50 split of Asians to non-Asians, but in this case, 73% of the applicants were Asian, so the chance of picking a nonAsian's resumé at random is a bit less than 50-50.

sum(i = 0..4, Binom(21, i) * 0.73^i * 0.27 ^(21-i)) ~ 1 in 2.5 million. This is not quite the right figure, since we're sampling without replacement from a finite pool of applicants, but my combinatorics is a little rusty, and binomial coefficients with the number 130 in them are a little unwieldy at the best of times.

Re:One in a billion

[Anonymous Coward]

Bad math attempt you're very wrong. Your error comes from assuming uniform distribution for asian applicants and white/hispanic/black applicants. They are not the same.

I almost was hired there

[ShawnX]

But I'm not Asian. I just didn't make the final cut. Nice people though. I did get a nice T-shirt :)

Re:Asian discrimination??

[Crashmarik]

Spell. Where is Conan the Grammarian when you need him ?

Re:Asian discrimination??

[Anonymous Coward]

Reality hurts people's feelings.

Also bitching about it, distracts people from realizing the world is being sold out from under them.

What a crock

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, if they were really discriminating against Asians, NONE would have been hired.

Karma?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't stand Thiel,but this is EXACTLY what is happening all over Silicon Valley, in REVERSE - wit hmany Asian H1Bs getting jobs that ace out more qualified American workers.

Where is Palantir located?

[ruir]

Unless it is in Asia, why are we even having this discussion here? Has the world gone to a bunch of idiots and pussies in the last few years? Lets go to companies in Asia and Africa and ask them why they are not hiring a significant portion of white people, including menial tasks. Racism?

some perspective

[bnmm]

http://www.unz.com/isteve/obam...
Obama Admin Sues CIA-funded Counter-espionaged Firm Palantir for Only Hiring 44% Asians

- Palantir partner Information Warfare Monitor used Palantir software to uncover both the Ghostnet and the Shadow Network. The Ghostnet was a China-based cyber espionage network targeting 1,295 computers in 103 countries, including the Dalai Lama’s office, a NATO computer and embassies. The Shadow Network was also a China-based espionage operation that hacked into the Indian security and defense apparatus. Cyber spies stole documents related to Indian security, embassies abroad, and NATO troop activity in Afghanistan.

So, maybe, the reason Palantir gets 85% of its job applications for software engineer from Asians but only hires 44% Asian has something to do with, I don’t know, Chinese espionage?

Re:some perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

It is not just Chinese espionage. Everyone in Asia is a major target to Chinese espionage, so they would very much like to spy those spying China, so that they get to know when China is spying them.

Simple, really. Because Palantir is _not_ going to tell the japanese, or south-koreans, that they were being spied on by China (or by whomever) unless it gets a green light from the USA. That makes Palantir a worthwhile espionage target for *every* asian nation.

So there. Note that, not being an american , I would actually prefer if Palantir were throghoutly compromised and everything they find out ends up leaked for the world to know. But that's to be expected, as well.

Toyota Way: All of section 2, principles 5, 6, 8

[raymorris]

Let's do look at the Toyota Way, which is organized into four sections.

Section 2 is "The Right Process Will Produce the Right Results".

Within that, we have principles 5, 6, and 8:

Build a culture ... to get quality right the first time.
Standardized tasks and processes are the foundation ...
Use only reliable, thoroughly tested ...

Do ya think maybe they try to follow the same process consistently? Or is it a cowboy culture where everyone does their own thing?

> I'm just clearing up the idea that "just going by the book"

It's not -just- going by the book. According to Toyota, there are four overarching ideas, and the second of those four ideas is "going by by the book", consistently following the "correct" process, not whichever way *you* like to do it.

The war on terror

[Anonymous Coward]

... government agencies track down terrorists and uncover financial fraud ...

Yes, another benefit of the War on Terror: While I'm all for punishing bad employers, where's the lawsuit against employers discriminating against US citizens. There are businesses that teach employers how to do it, so it's not a small problem.

... result occurred according to chance ...

So US Labor is really complaining that Thiel didn't hire people according to a roll of the dice: Can one say politically-motivated harassment? Silicon Valley and Hollywood are famous for employing mostly white people; why aren't there lawsuits against those employers?

'Diversity' means chasing down the last...

[Anonymous Coward]

...white person...

What is the problem here? Why don't these 'Asians' want to live in their own countries, free from 'racist' whites? Simple question.

Re:'Diversity' means chasing down the last...

[PPH]

Why don't these 'Asians' want to live in their own countries

TFS didn't make it clear if these people were of Asian descent or immigrants. But there are Asians in the USA whos families have been here for generations.

Re:'Diversity' means chasing down the last...

[Anonymous Coward]

They're all gay vegan moooooooooslims, and they're going to blow up your gay nightclub! And getcha!

Work culture and education

[bradley13]

What the parent said. In my experience, there are two stereotypical problems with people from Asian cultures (as opposed to Americans or Europeans of Asian ethnicity - important distinction). Individuals vary, of course, but Asian workers tend to have two problems, from an American/European perspective:

- Too much respect for authority. They do exactly what they are told, nothing less but also nothing more. You must instruct them on every step of their task, or they stop and wait, providing no initiative or imagination of their own. I consulted briefly with an Asian programming shop, where the boss spent his entire day walking from desk to desk, issuing detailed instructions, all the way down to the level of "put that CD back in its case". Workers used to this are a lousy fit in an European or American work culture.

- Crappy education. While there are good institutions, there are a lot of bad ones. Example: I taught a beginning Java course last year to international students. One of these students has a bachelor's degree in computer science from an Asian university. Another has certificates of graduation from 9 months of Java programming courses. Both of these students failed my "intro to programming" course. TFA claims that the Asian applicants had the same qualifications - that's something you have to take with a *very* large grain of salt.

Re:Asian discrimination??

[Anonymous Coward]

Humans are part of reality, so reality can be racist.

Also, while we're stereotyping, you sound like a Northern state school educated white Englishman in his early 20s, in engineering, got a good knack for cars, and not so good at understanding things outside your specialism. Definitely Conservative, though would probably vote for UKIP because you don't understand the issues but buy the slogans.

Re:Asian discrimination??

[flogistic]

I am European and have lived in three of the countries you mention above (not Italy) and I think you are making a very broad and incorrect statement about what Europeans mean by Asian. In most places, Asian means primarily what it does in the US, that is the subgroup formed of Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese (to some extent). In some places, the UK, but only in more formal conversation, Asian is considered to include people from the Indian sub-continent and greater South-East Asia, but even there the term Asian is rarely taken to include the Middle East. Germans do not refer to Turks as "Asians", but mainly as Turks. Even the geographical separation between Asia and Europe is widely contested, especially around Turkey.

And no Frenchman that I know would refer to Tunisians, Algerians or Moroccans as "Asian". All three of those countries are in Africa (and the term "African" is indeed used).

The only major mistake made by most Europeans that I have noticed is the tendency to refer to all Muslims as Arabs.

Thiel is a hypocrite

[Anonymous Coward]

and almost as incompetent as Trump

Hiring is not done by "chance"

[Anonymous Coward]

"The likelihood that this result occurred according to chance is approximately one in a billion,"

The likelihood is actually zero, because nobody just selects random resumes out of a pile and hires them with no screening.

Consider who Palantir's major customers are. . . .

[Salgak1]

. . . hint: most are Federal "three-letter-agancies". Which means, to get hired, you not only need the skills, but the ability to obtain a high-level security clearance.

That means, first, US Citizenship, and preferably by birth, just because of the logistics of a clearance investigation. Secondly, the more ties of blood one has to people in non-US countries, the harder it is to get the required clearance. . . .and third, depending on background and origin of those blood ties, some nations (China comes to mind) are far more problematic than others. . .

Re: Asian discrimination??

[Anonymous Coward]

Aint he that gay Trump supporter feller? Let's git 'im!

Re:Asian discrimination??

[EEPROMS]

nice try but you are miles out, btw I have been happily married to an asian wife for 23 years. And if you think I'm bad you will spit out your lunch, dinner and tea after learning every asian culture have even worse stereotypes for each other than anything I could drag up.

Re:Asian discrimination??

[merky1]

Like how filipinos are not considered asians by other asians? Yeah, stereotypes get funny.

Re: Left hand, right hand

[Anonymous Coward]

Whereas the conservatives turn a blind eye to racism or actively promote it.

Re:Asian discrimination??

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, I got only the age wrong then.

I am Asian, you tart. Neither being married to an Asian nor being Asian stops a person from being a closed-minded, stereotyping, grumpy little shit. A bigoted white woman married one of my cousins and as far as I can tell what brought them together is that they both share the view that all 1.6 billion Muslims are evil.

Re: Asian discrimination??

[Anonymous Coward]

Only Asians can discriminate against asians

Re: Asian discrimination??

[Anonymous Coward]

I see your user name is EEPROMS - guess that makes you read only. Is that better than wrote only? How?

Re:Asian discrimination??

[Anonymous Coward]

When Germans say Asian they mean East or Southeast Asian, not Turkish (nor Arab, Indian, Russian, Israeli etc). Turkish people they call Turks. Most Germans probably have no idea that most of Turkey is in Asia. Döner is not Asian, noodles in boxes are.

Re:Left field / outside the box is American cultur

[Anonymous Coward]

it looks like a bunch of drunken roaming bandits looking for someone who has actually got something to work to steal from.

Are you talking about Bender?

Who gets the money?

[RogueWarrior65]

Say the government wins or Palantir settles. Who gets the money? The aforementioned harmed Asians? Highly doubtful. The government has become an extortion racket.

Re:Who gets the money?

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Fines are punitive. For that matter, so are punitive damages. They are not designed to make up for the pain/damage caused by ones actions, but to discourage similar actions in the future.

Gooks

[Anonymous Coward]

Fucking gooks, always causing problems

Re: Asian discrimination??

[Anonymous Coward]

Also applies to being white and trying to get a job in a western company team that is all one Asian ethnicity(Intel, Cisco, etc etc) . Apparently it is ok to hire from only a very limited ethnic group if it is not white.

This lawsuit has bad math...

[Timothy2.0]

"The likelihood that this result occurred according to chance is approximately one in a billion,"

The problem with this statement is that no company bases its hiring process on *chance*.

So what if 73% of the 130 applicants were Asian? That leaves 27% of applicants that were not. Simply "being qualified" doesn't ensure you the job, especially one connected to government agencies. From 2010 to present, they hired 17 "non-Asian" and four Asian employees? What their hiring been like? Is this just at the Palo Alto HQ, or across the company's 13 other offices across the US and the globe?
br/? There is so much of this story that we're not getting. Honestly, unless they have an insider that blows the whistle on clearly discriminatory practices, I don't see much of a case.

Re:Asian discrimination??

[johanw]

> The only major mistake made by most Europeans that I have noticed is the tendency to refer to all Muslims as Arabs.

Well, that's where that particular form of superstition came from. Anyway, as long as they refer to all muslims as "enemy" it is OK with me.

Math time...

[MitchDev]

4 out of 21 hired were asians.

That's almost 20%, sounds pretty damn good to me.
What are the qualifications of the 17 non-asians that were hired vs. the asians that weren't, and what sort of demands did they press in the job negotiations?

So sick of this stupid cry of "racism" and "discrimination" where there is none....

Re:Left field / outside the box is American cult

[lucm]

Am I the only one who read "Asian" as a politically correct version of "Indian" in this story?

Anyone who does hiring in IT can tell you about the massive amount of "qualified" Indian candidates with 25 certifications who somehow can't answer basic questions. I am not surprised by those numbers.

Statistically asian

[sjbe]

All Chinese are Asians? No shit, Sherlock, but (1) Not all Asians are Chinese.

Statistically, it's as close as makes any difference.

The billion+ people in India might dispute that statement.

Re:Statistically asian

[Hognoxious]

In this context they aren't Asians.

Re:Statistically asian

[unixisc]

Does context here mean that Palantir was unwilling to hire only Chinese, but willing to hire Indians, or that there were no Indians either applying nor being considered for such jobs?

Re:Statistically asian

[shutdown -p now]

There's no context in which Indians aren't Asians, except ignorance. Contrary to what some people believe, India is not an "African country in Asia".

Re:Statistically asian

[Hognoxious]

There totally is a context. It's called the USA in the 1990s. I was working there and Asians meant Chinese, Japanese, Koreans etc. What in Britain would be referred to as "Orientals".

Indians included Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, not that there were so many there then.

I didn't mention Africa. Was that an intentional strawman or was that you going off at half-cock without having a clue what you were talking about? Fail either way.

Re:Statistically asian

[shutdown -p now]

So what you're saying that Americans were ignorant about political geography en masse back in the 90s - what else is new? They still are today.

Re:Toyota Way: All of section 2, principles 5, 6,

[funwithBSD]

The funny thing is that an American wrote "the book", W. Edward Demming that the Japanese companies used to out compete us.

There is a definite advantage to the model, which makes small incremental changes that consistently improve the process.

However, it does not tend to produce memorable products.

I doubt the hight point of Japanese car innovation, the Toyota Camry, will be gracing future Concours d'Elegance Auto shows.

The Camry is the perfect blend of the vibrancy of beige and the intensity of gray all rolled into a family sedan.

Re:Asian discrimination??

[funwithBSD]

Well most Turks are Asian, seeing how only one little part of the country is in Europe, but the bulk is in Asia.

Re:Left field / outside the box is American cultur

[liquid_schwartz]

Obviously nothing about being American is genetic - we're a genetic soup, but we have our own culture. Less so now than 40, 60, or 100 years ago

Not only less so than 46, 60, or 100 years ago but diminishing rapidly. Culturally my grandfather would probably not have recognized the US and my dad might not have. There are numerous times I hardly recognize the place. With regards to the topic, it's just the usual blame the white guy. I've seen *far* too many cases of all Asian companies to give much weight to this. When they get some pressure to change then I'll take this complaint seriously. Until then it fits in the bucket of "it's only wrong when a white male does it".

Sheldon Cooper is that you?

[sjbe]

Basketball is hardly a complex game. It's a tiny court with few guys and ball through a net. That's the hardest part of it but with practice it's easy.

Sounds like the assessment of a nerd who grasps the basic concept of the game and falsely presumes the remainder of the game is just a trivial extrapolation. If it is so "easy with practice" why aren't you making millions playing in the NBA?

Re:Sheldon Cooper is that you?

[stealth_finger]

Basketball is hardly a complex game. It's a tiny court with few guys and ball through a net. That's the hardest part of it but with practice it's easy.

Sounds like the assessment of a nerd who grasps the basic concept of the game and falsely presumes the remainder of the game is just a trivial extrapolation. If it is so "easy with practice" why aren't you making millions playing in the NBA?

Sorry, did I offend your favorite sportsball game? Getting the ball in the net is easy with practice. Obviously there's a little bit more to it and the game has nuances but it's basically get the ball in the net more than the other guys. Pass it around a bit move close then have a go? Is there more to it or just a variation of the basic premise of sportsball? No? Didn't think so. Why aren't I making millions in the nba? Same reasons you aren't probably, chief of all is not enough practice, not being fit enough or tall enough secondarily and not being black or american as optional thirds.

Re:Sheldon Cooper is that you?

[Wulf2k]

Clearly, because he lacks the physical prowess.

Were you trying to make a point?

Re:Sheldon Cooper is that you?

[Rakarra]

Sorry, did I offend your favorite sportsball game? Getting the ball in the net is easy with practice. Obviously there's a little bit more to it and the game has
nuances but it's basically get the ball in the net more than the other guys. Pass it around a bit move close then have a go?

Programming is basically moving a few bits around between registers and devices.
Filmmaking is basically pointing a camera at stuff happening.
Editing is basically putting some clips together and trimming off the ends.
Electrician is basically plugging in wires.
Being a successful politician is basically doing what constituents and/or lobbyists tell you to do.
Plot for Citizen Kane: Newspaper owner comes to power, but dies yearning for childhood memories.
Plot for Donnie Darko: Boy is warned by his future self to avoid accident, but has to die anyway to avoid time loop.

When you remove detail, pretty much everything can be boiled down to a summary that is incredibly simple and often wrong in its simplicity.

Why aren't I making millions in the nba? Same reasons you aren't probably, chief of all is not enough practice

Because you're not good enough. You could practice for a hundred years and not be good enough to be an NBA player. Sports is the segment of society that most clearly requires certain sets of skills that few people are able to require. Sports team owners tend to be good businessmen (otherwise they wouldn't be able to extort those stadium deals). It would be in their best interests to be able to pay athletes 1/10th of what they currently do. If others came along who could do it as well, the expanded pool would lower salaries, since availability of talent and demand for positions is what drives salaries up and down. Yet an average person just can't do what Kobe Bryant or Bryce Harper or Michael Jordan or Jerry Rice could do. They can't.

Re:Left field / outside the box is American cult

[cayenne8]

Am I the only one who read "Asian" as a politically correct version of "Indian" in this story?

Ok..that clears up some of my confusion.

When I hear Asian, I think of Oriental type folks (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc)....and I was wondering why they were having problems with them, as that they are often some of the more brilliant folks I've worked with.....

But yes, with the Indians (dot)....I find they they indeed are of the model where they are generally ok following rote procedures, etc, but they do not seem to have much imagination on solving new problems or coming up with innovative ways to do things at the job.

And I know my ears are getting older, but man, I just can NOT understand some of them when they try to speak English. Not only is the accent so thick, but so often them speak so softly that they are almost mumbling, especially on teleconferences.

Payback from the regime

[Anonymous Coward]

Obama uses the government to kill dissent. Suit is without merit, but a partisan judge appointed by the regime will find him guilty, and fine him trillions

Sometimes it's not only the qualifications

[teknosapien]

A lot of time it's about the person and how well they'll fit in with the current team.
Ability is important but the ability to get along with the team in place is sometimes more important. Skills can be learned

Re: Asian discrimination??

[dgower2]

Isn't the EE is electrically erasable? Meaning that it can be erased and rewritten to. Or doesn't that count?

Sometimes works in reverse

[phorm]

On the other hand, sometimes this works in reverse. I've had people who don't think much of workers from their own race, as they come with a lot of baggage and bad history. It's kind of odd to think that you'd have a Chinese manager who doesn't hire Chinese, or an Indian manager who doesn't like Indian workers, but it definitely can happen.

In most places where I've seen people of a given origin clustered, it's often a communication thing where side-conversations are often in a non-english language that they all share. This effectively excludes people from other languages/cultures, which I suppose some could find frustrating. Never bothered me though as generally such conversations are not work-related.

Russians

[Anonymous Coward]

East european recent immigrants as in the other spy network, the one for Putin.

fake resumes

[Anonymous Coward]

A friend of mine who works at capital one was reviewing resumes and found that out of 10 resumes she received from some 1st generation Asian-American applicants...

10 were fake.

She had a way of checking them out: she had contacts from linked in at nearly every company (including me) and I could look up people in my own company's email system to see if they had previously worked here. They used contracting agencies to cover their tracks to claim they would work at a particular company and give good references. Finding that the applicants hadn't actually worked at the companies they "contracted" to, she rejected all 10 applications and blacklisted the contracting agencies.

Apparently, you can buy a pretty good rssume (and even degree) now online for a little money. Even pass a security clearance.

Re:fake resumes

[PPH]

Even pass a security clearance.

Maybe fake the resume and degree (until someone checks). But security clearances aren't portable that way. Having one at a former company might be an indication that you can get one again (no flags in your file). But your next employer will have to run you through the process again. And if you lied about having one in the past, that pops up pretty quickly.

Re:Asian discrimination??

[Anonymous Coward]

The second issue is "wrote only skills",

The word is actually "rote" as in "rote learning" i.e. memorization through repetition.

you ain't gonna tell me who to hire!

[Anonymous Coward]

because fuck you thats why! its america here.

Re:Left field / outside the box is American cultur

[Dread_ed]

Until then it fits in the bucket of "it's only wrong when a white male does it".

Looks like the ante has been upped and the phrase should be amended to reflect the new reality: "it's only prosecutable when a white male does it"

Seen through that lens it may reveal the prevailing winds of racism in this country.

Re:Asian discrimination??

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot to say "humans are never going to space"

Re:Asian discrimination??

[Maritz]

What you see as "reality", others see as a gross oversimplification of reality. You know, on account of how you're incapable of nuanced thought.

Call me prejudice

[Anonymous Coward]

But I can't tell one spy from another.

It's interesting, the likelihood that this result occurred according to chance is approximately one in a billion and that's just the same number of Chinese there are in our military-adversary cum spy-factory, Communist China ..

I wonder what the odds of THAT are.

I love it. The ChiComs are using our EEOP process to force infiltration of their spies into our most sensitive corporations. Can't say they can't sniff out a vulnerability.

I can see the SJWs massing outside Palintir from here.

Obama Retaliates against Thiel

[Anonymous Coward]

This is nothing more than Obama doing what he does best - using government agencies and resources to retaliate against Thiel's support of Donad Trump. For the record, I'm by far not a DJT or HRC fan. This type of repeated behavior by the currupt Obama administration is getting a bit old and tiring. If the two presidential candidates is the best America has to offer for the next four years, God help us all.

Re:Asian discrimination??

[sexconker]

As someone who has gone through several rounds of hiring and reviewing applications and interviews, I can confirm. The vast majority of applications are trash. Certain groups tend to have trash or bogus degrees / credentials. Additionally, when the grammar and spelling in your resume is only a half step above a tweet you don't stand a chance. Language skills are also a huge issue if you do make it to an interview.

Palantir

[Anonymous Coward]

Palantir, huh? Well they didn't spot that coming so maybe they should rename it. Or was it just that no-one in HR asked: "Palantir, what will happen if we discriminate against Asian people?"

Re:Asian discrimination??

[Anonymous Coward]

And you're just as racist as they are.

Re: Asian discrimination??

[Anonymous Coward]

And therein lies the problem. It's ok and even encouraged to discriminate against whites, especially white males. I cant count the number of times recently I've heard peoples' opinions dismissed on talk shows and podcasts because 'he's just a white guy'. Insert 'old' in there and you've got the trifecta.

Say any of that about any other race/gender let alone all of it and the world will go crazy, but white males are expected to just take it with zero resentment and of course zero comment.

Re:Left field / outside the box is American cult

[execthis]

Even if they straight-up don't want to hire them, what's wrong with that? I find something very wrong with the government doing a shakedown of a private company because of its internal activities which, basically, should not be the government's business.

Also, there are way to many "asians" in Silicon Valley. Deport them all. All companies in America should have an Americans first policy. H1B immigrants, illegals, and their offspring should not be considered the same as natives. They need to undo the damage of appalling government policies before they can restore something that is even close to a normal balance in that area.

The likelihood that this result occurred according

[fish_in_the_c]

2 problems.

1) statistical likelihood of an event , while being good enough to reasonably prompt an investigation and perhaps require defense against an accusation, is not proof. So the chances are 1 in a billion, that that doesn't constitute proof it didn't happen. I bet I could find at least 1 lottery winner who bought only a few tickets in there lifetime.
2) More likely though there is a problem with selection criteria. How about , 'no family members who are members of the communist party'? Or no immediate family members who are citizens in foreign country? while not being normally reasonable criteria, those kinds of requirements might be perfectly reasonable if you are talking about wanting greater security than normal Top secret clearance.

Now that I look back

[sentiblue]

Several years ago when I thought the company I worked for was gonna go bankrupt... An old colleague of mine who already worked at Palantir got me an interview at this company. I was very grateful for my friend's introduction. He is a good friend.

I got through phone interviews just fine. But when I showed up for the team interview, I got through a few of the teammates just fine until I got to the last guy. He literally tried to derail me. He asked me a question that could have lots of answers (How do you troubleshoot a webserver's error 403). He chatted on his laptop at the same time... and kept saying "that's not it... try again" like several times.... and then he started laughing outloud with whoever on the chat with him.... I thought he was impolite.. but now it sounds more like deliberately not wanting me to pass.

I thought it was not necessary to continue with the interview, but I kept myself cool... I said I didn't have anymore to offer on the question... and we left things there. I left Palantir and got a "no go" result from HR. If the guy really tried to derail me just because I was Asian... he sure was a racist.

Re:Lost wages

[Rakarra]

Lost wages for a job you didn't get is like lost profit for a sale that never happened

It works for the music companies!

Palantir smackdown

[Anonymous Coward]

I can think of a reason this is happening, other than actual discrimination. It stretches back to a pretty egregious astroturfing campaign designed to humiliate the DoD and pressure elected officials into giving business to Palantir. Payback is a bitch.

PS: Politico did a write-up on Palantir's long reach-- http://www.politico.com/story/...

Re:Asian discrimination??

[Anonymous Coward]

What Germans call Little Asia starts in Turkey.

Re:Asian discrimination??

[Anonymous Coward]

Last time I looked, Western Asia included Arabia.

Another SJW in the govt ranks

[Anonymous Coward]

All you need to know about this suit can be found here: https://www.dol.gov/ofccp/about/patricia_shiu.htm (the official who brought the suit), where you can read that she received "the Pacific Asian American Women Bay Area’s “Woman Warrior Award.”"

Re:Asian discrimination??

[mrchaotica]

French Asians are mostly Tunisian, Algerian, Moroccan, etc

LOL WTF? Those countries are in North Africa. (Hell, they don't even count as the "Middle East" either, because they're as far west as France is itself.) No way is the average French person that ignorant about geography!

The "right" (but slimey) way to discriminate:

[davidwr]

Insist that because future projects "may" require a security clearance and that the company wants flexibility to move people around, all applicants must be able to pass the "initial gate-keeper" steps of getting a security clearance, including "must be a US citizen or demonstrate ability to get a security clearance despite not being a US citizen."

This will weed out most people who were neither born here nor have been here long enough to get citizenship, including disproportionate numbers of people of Asian descent.

Is this legal? Very likely. Is it slimey? Assuming it's a cover for discrimination and you really aren't going to need a workforce where everyone can get a security clearance in short order, yes.

What are Asians?

[unixisc]

All Chinese are Asians? No shit, Sherlock, but (1) Not all Asians are Chinese.

Statistically, it's as close as makes any difference.

What exactly is being referred to here? While technically, Asians mean people from Asia, the term is rarely used to describe, say, Japanese, since Japan is pretty much a first world country. If it's used racially for Mongoloid peoples, then they will include Chinese, Koreans, Vietnamese, Mongols, while excluding people from the Indian sub-continent and a good part of South East Asia, leaving their racial definition nebulous as far as the census people go. Also, the term rarely includes the Muslim western half of the continent, since the Arabs are spread across West Asia and North Africa and the Turks like to think of themselves as Europe (both Turkey and Kazakhstan defining themselves as Eurasian countries). And usually, the Iranians get bunched w/ the lot, and the Pakis are culturally closer to the Arabs and Iranians than to the Indians.

Staggering fact that contradict gov't claim

[Anonymous Coward]

"The government does not even bother to claim that Palantir deliberately excluded Asians. Rather, it argues that since only 44% of Palantirâ(TM)s software engineers are Asian, but 85% of the applicant pool was Asian, Palantir must, statistically, have discriminated against Asians."

Apparently Asians represent 85% of the population? Why else would the gov't argue that 44% of software engineers being Asian is 'proof' of discrimination?

I'm surprised they aren't being sued because their workforce isn't 120% African-American and 90% Latino!

Re:Consider who Palantir's major customers are. .

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone has never tried getting security clearance. Every thing you mentioned are the easiest parts, checking documents already at the hands of government agencies. The extensive background check is where people fail. As in, one person slips you've done a drug once two decades ago, no clearance for you.

Language requirements are legit

[unixisc]

I've never seen those. Can you post an example? Not questioning your claim, just legitimately curious. I wonder if it's related to being able to read datasheets.

Not datasheets. Mandarin is a legit requirement if your company does a lot of its business in China or Taiwan. Like my ex employers did. They had assembly and test facilities in places like Suzhou, as well as sales offices in Taipei. So if you want to hire somebody to cover that region i.e. talk to customers there, or co-ordinate activities w/ the factory there, it's legitimate to require that they speak Mandarin.

Just like any company that wants to open up Latin American markets usually requires the candidate to know Spanish (and/or Portugese, in case Brazil is covered)

Deport them all

[execthis]

Deport them all. Deport all H1B. Deport all illegals and their "dreamer" kids who steal opportunities from Americans.

If you're American, don't miscegnate with invaders.

Fuck the Obama administration.

Why do Asians want to work there so badly?

[Anonymous Coward]

Me thinks there's something fishy going on.

What race/nationality is "Asian" again?

[Anonymous Coward]

All Asians or just a specific subset? Mongolian? Sri Lankan/Tamil?

Re:Left field / outside the box is American cult

[lucm]

Here's the thing about any demographic group: just like wih bomb threats, even if a large proportion of calls are pranks, you can't take a chance and ignore them all. You may have to suffer through a long list of unskilled Indians who only learned a few buzzwords and got their certifications from a relative or subcontractor, but at some point you're bound to find a real gem. The trick is to find ways to discard incompetents quickly.

For instance, you have to ask the HR drone who does the phone screening to remove any question that can be answered with "yes", "no", "I'm certified" or "I have plenty of experience". It takes a while to tune the questionnaire but it's worth it. Somewhere amid the garbage there's gonna be a rock star, that's almost always the case.

Bullshitting their way to a job interview has long been a typical Indian move, but more and more I've started to notice this pattern emerging from other groups (East Europeans, North Africans and Chinese mostly). I will never understand the strategy because there's just no way it can lead to a great career, but until this signal-to-noise issue is resolved, recruiting will remain a nightmare, and those public employees and/or SJW who come up with racism accusations very very quickly when they don't understand the reality are making it even more difficult.

To anyone who contributed to these accusations against Palantir, fuck you.

Re: Asian discrimination??

[Anonymous Coward]

Meh. Fuck em and go kitesurfing

Re:Left field / outside the box is American cultur

[Anonymous Coward]

I suggest you look up the "the Toyota way" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Toyota_Way) to get a few misconceptions cleared up and find out where that consistency comes from.
You have to write the book first to be able to go "by the book", and it needs correction from time to time.

I heard of a funny "by the book" example. With high-speed trains developed in France, they had the problem that the overhead lines in Japan wore out a whole lot more than in France. They finally traced it down to "going by the book": when Japanese workers were told to put up masts every100m (or whatever it was), they used laser distance measurement to put up masts every 100.00m, giving the whole overhead line some perfect oscillation modes to work with. The French workers took distance much less serious, so their lines were not subject to the same large-scale oscillation.

So for the Japanese, they had to write a careful system varying the distance of the masts into the book.

Re:Toyota Way: All of section 2, principles 5, 6,

[dbIII]

The funny thing is that an American wrote "the book"

That's kind of my point.
It's not an "Asian cultural thing" but instead a good idea.

Re:Left field / outside the box is American cult

[dbIII]

Am I the only one who read "Asian" as a politically correct version of "Indian" in this story?

Probably.

Re:Toyota Way: All of section 2, principles 5, 6,

[dbIII]

It's not -just- going by the book

Indeed - success was from a lot more than "the workers consistently follow the specified procedure".
The cultural differences that you are crediting are neither so simple or even something that originally came from Asia.

The differences today really come down to a changed idea of who can be a manager and how to do it - the irony of the "born to rule" attitude infesting US management would be funny if it wasn't so tragic. Henry Ford and Thomas Edison were not born to rule.

Re:Consider who Palantir's major customers are. .

[Salgak1]

Actually, someone has had clearances since the early 1980s. Agreed, the DOCUMENTATION parts are simple, and mostly automated for US Cits.

The Logistics issues are the actual footwork involved in the background investigation. The more people you have to talk to who are NOT in the US, the harder and more costly it becomes.

And document searches overseas can be difficult, especially if language issues are involved. Not a lot of OPM investigators who read, for example, documents in "pinyin" Chinese. . .

Re:The likelihood that this result occurred accord

[david_thornley]

1) What the Labor Department is doing is accusing Palantir and continuing its investigation. Once the lawsuit is filed, the government has more scope in investigating. There's no question of proof yet, as that will be determined in a court of law or settled between the government and Palantir.

2) The Labor Department very likely considered other bona fide hiring criteria. If not, it should be easy for Palantir to defend itself. Your proposal is nothing but baseless (if plausible) speculation, and doesn't provide any evidence that the Labor Department is doing anything wrong.

Re:Left field / outside the box is American cult

[david_thornley]

So you're against anti-discrimination laws? That's a valid position, although one I think wrong, and I'm not sure you've thought this out thoroughly. In that case, your proper course of action is not to criticize the government for trying to enforce the law, but to criticize the government for having such laws. Your beef is not with the Executive Branch but the Legislative.

You also seem to be assuming that Asians are noncitizens. The Labor Department classification is not based on citizenship, but rather on how people look, or are normally classified socially. They will count someone of Chinese ancestry whose parents were born in the US. You're making some unsupported assumptions there.

Just goes to show

[Anonymous Coward]

that there are probably Chinese spies in the Labor dept. who are pissed off for not getting a job there.

Sauron is watching.

[GaryHayman]

With a name like that, how could this be a surprise?

Oh come on

[MooseMiester]

This is retaliation for his speech at the RNC convention, duh.

Re:Toyota Way: All of section 2, principles 5, 6,

[funwithBSD]

Well, depends on what "good" is for you.

If it is innovation, then Demming is not your model.

If it is the perfection of a process, then it is.

Chinese are for the most part spies

[Anonymous Coward]

I see absolutely no reason why we should not discriminate against them.

Re:Toyota Way: All of section 2, principles 5, 6,

[dbIII]

I was sort of taking that as read but since various people have attempted to apply "quality assurance" with strict processes in areas that are reactive by nature then I suppose I can't.
You don't want your R&D to be under strict process control. They are the ones finding out what you want as an end result and sorting out viable new processes after all.

I've seen it implemented at a mechanical testing lab - a good fit there - but for something like component failure investigations there is a point at relatively early stages where there is no "book" to go by. You would end up with massive decision trees that would have newly developed options available nearly every time you get to some branches.

Tolkien

[blivit42]

Something is wrong with Slashdot! Not a single post at moderation 3 or above questioning if the Tolkien estate can or should do anything about the use of the name Palantir.

The dour truth of the matter is...

[Anonymous Coward]

...what makes Asians what they are is not necessarily visible and immutable characteristics alone, but those that are constructively immutable. I speak of worldviews. Any time someone sees their reflection, there is a conversation that occurs within oneself that says to the effect: "I come from X. Even though I am not in X-land at the moment, I am reminded by my reflection that there are only X ways." or "My ancestors came from X. I was born here. I appear different from the majority which reinforces that identity originating from X. Therefore there are only X ways."

Reality is racist. Get over it. Getting rid of the Blue Eye would make humanity unfit for continued existence.

The dour truth of the matter is...

[Anonymous Coward]

... the best guarantor of security clearance is someone whose ancestry does not qualify for any citizenship, landedness and/or residency in the nation(s) of said individual's ancestors or any nation whatsoever. Soil born, non-different appearing and stuck here. It is called "YANKEE WHITE".