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Comment by onmatest | Hacker News Reader

I would guess for the second part that the government prohibits it because it could result in unequal opportunities for job seekers based on race. While referrals are more acceptable in non-government-sponsored companies, government-sponsored companies are held to higher standards because that is where taxpayer dollars are directly headed.

If the applicant pool was overwhelming black and Palantir hired more white people because of referrals, there would be more uproar.

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

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The general form of this question is: do we care more about government departments in their role as equal-opportunity jobs projects, or do we care more about the government being "effective", doing the most it can with each tax dollar?

In this case, I can see how "increased cohesion"—although decreasing the "jobs project" value—would be extremely helpful for increasing tax-dollar ROI.

Tax dollar ROI for whom?

Part of the benefit of ensuring a diversity in government roles is aiding governments to better provide services for all aspects of society, not just the minority who hold those roles.

Tax dollar ROI for taxpayers (since they are the "investors").

The government isn't a corporation.

Stop that. Stop that shit right now.

You are not an investor. You are not a consumer of services. This is not a business, and we don't need a CEO.

You're a CITIZEN of one of the most powerful nations on the planet, and don't you dare forget it.

>Stop that. Stop that shit right now.

Why are you trying to shut down debate? It's a good point. I want my tax dollars to be maximized and not used to somehow enforce your idea of racial justice.

Eh, I sure hope My situation is more like an investor with a vote, because I have very little ability to boycott the US government. Even if I go to the trouble of choosing a competing "product" by getting citizenship somewhere else I will still feel it's influence!

Stop that. Stop that shit right now. This is not a business, and we don't you acting like a jerk CEO and yelling at people.

I guess you didn't get downvoted because people agree with you. I agree with you also. And yet, being right is not an excuse for the overly antagonistic way you made your point.

tax dollar ROI is less important to politicians than an equivalent of voter ROI. It cost them nothing to turn out an inferior program, project, expenditure, or whatever, provided the political points are accounted for.

seen companies at local airport bidding contracts who have minorities who are merely paid to be on the board so they qualify for the contract.

want to know one reason the government is so large, intrusive, and inefficient, look no further to rules that enforce everything but efficiency.

How do you know why those minority employees were hired?

my guess is it's...

simple math

YYYEEEEAAAAAAAHHHHHHH

I'd say that in this case, providing job opportunities to diverse groups of people is part of the ROI (to a certain extent)

In terms of tax dollars, I'm disappointed that I had to pay for this to begin with. It's a waste of money.

I highly doubt Palantir did any kind discrimination based on race.

The initial demographics of the founders and the early team has a large impact on the rest of the hires in my experience at previous startups. Main reason being that the early people are more prone to hire from referrals in their network of people they know.

Some things to consider:

P(qualified | referral) > P(qualified | all applicants)

P(same race | referral) > P(different race | referral)

and thus:

P(hire | referral applicant) > P(hire | all applicants)

I don't see any evidence of malicious or specific racial discrimination.

Governments are not businesses, and should not be run as such.

There are a lot of things that a government does that can't be measured as a direct monetary benefit.

I wasn't suggesting monetary ROI; rather, effectiveness at achieving whatever goal is in the department's charter to achieve, by whatever metric that goal is measured: QALYs for the surgeon general, victories for the army, average time-to-destination for the Department of Transportation, etc.

Currently, we seem to just think of the government as a machine that turns dollars into achieved consensus goals at some fixed (very low) efficiency. We never seem to say "what if we measured [metric] out per dollar in, and then tried to make that ratio increase?"

I would assert that its not a higher standard, but a less-informed one. If I have people I trust sharing their knowledge with me, its not immoral to leverage their judgment.

And that's part of the problem with government doing things. It does not handle intangible considerations very well.

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