Is Palantr discriminating against Asians?
money.cnn.com
money.cnn.com
Context #1: I am Asian.
It was during intern recruiting season, at a campus recruiting fair, when I talked to Palantir. I felt the 'interview' with the campus rep went well. In the ensuing weeks, I receive 'real' follow-up interviews from every other company present at the career fair that I made an active effort of applying for. By that, I mean research the company's financials, history, products and culture, then writing catered personal statements and resumes. Every company except Palantir. I, being young and conspiratory, just assumed Palantir, being an enigmatic blackbox analytics engine, ran my resume through a government sponsored quantum computers and decided I wasn't a fit. And that was okay.
Context #2: The CS department I attended is well-regarded. (If selectivity is any indicator, whether causally or correlational, the average underclassmen GPA to get admitted into the major is around a 3.8. US News ranks the department in the 'top 10' CS programs, albeit that's also a proxy since these rankings are based on graduate programs). Not to rest on these laurels, but my resume also include things beyond school: student organizations, volunteering, personal projects, etc.
After college, I left my carefree internship days behind for a 'real job' at FinTech company doing BIG DATA and Data Science, wooooo. Again, I applied to Palantir.
Context #3: I've received job offers from big four tech companies, startups, as well as financial institutions in Chicago / NY / Hong Kong / Singapore / London. This is not intended to brag or show that I am exceptional. To the contrary, this reflects that I am the very antithesis of an aberration, insofar that I fit the job qualifications that employers seek.
At least I got an automated response from Palantir this time. Yay, I exist.
We regret to inform you that we do not have a position which currently matches your background and experience at this time
Let's not presuppose Palantir uses a machine to select candidates. Assume Palantir has some statistical / classification / decision model in the abstract, which could be implemented in the form of human recruiters, company culture / managerial, or an actual machine.
What would Palantir's preference for the false-positive versus false-negative rate of this model be? I currently work at Google which is notorious for its high false negative rate (turning many suitable candidates away). Is Palantir's false negative rate so high such that I can land a job at Google and many other places, and not even get a phone screen at Palantir? Palantir makes software for counter-terrorism, surely they are cognizant of the implication of these Type I, Type II errors. Landing a job at a company X, and a company Y, are not statically independent events. So this outcome is just odd to me. Maybe I'm on a terrorist watch list?
Context #4: In my Software Engineering capstone during college, I was (assigned) to a group of 7 students, including myself. We were supposed to work on a quarter-long project. Everyone got along. Everyone contributed. Everyone was willing to compromise. Except for one person. This person contributed zero lines of code. They bossed everyone around. Where the rest of the team were vectors moving in relatively the same direction, this person was a drag force. This designated, errr, assigned "leader" constantly derailed the team's direction. Halfway through the quarter, this person dropped the course and didn't inform anyone on our team. I had to fill in for this person's hand-wavy role (mostly bureaucratic requirements the course instructor set forth to make sure people were working: a student managing another student and writing reports about it....). I've worked with a hundred people over the years, but this was the first and only time I've met someone who added negative value. I was STUCK in a handful of courses with this person, aswell. They would constantly ask selfish questions during lecture just to show off how smart they are. They cheated on the exams, too. This person went to work at Palantir right after college.
What features / variables / factors does Palantir select for in Software Engineers? CS Degree? A good school program? Relevant work experience? Last name? Treating me as a data point, there must be some other factor that far negatively outweighs the positive points on my resumes. Whatever this scarlet letter was, my irresponsible selfish classmate did not possess this. This classmate was not Asian (this isn't too important of a detail to me , but I anticipate someone to ask a follow-up question on this). I'm not even that upset about the accusations of racial discrimination. I'm more personally irked by the fact that companies have this veil of stupidity in their hiring process where many qualified people do not make it through for whatever reason while dishonest, selfish, incompetent, irresponsible, non-team players slip through the HUGE cracks.