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Comment by vineyardlabs | Hacker News Reader

Not sure why this article (or Palantir) is trying to paint this as a new thing. I started at a legacy defense contractor immediately after graduating from undergrad. I was hired and had my security clearance process initiated during the fall of my senior year. Unfortunately this was during the great backup of ~2016 so I still wasn't cleared by the time I started, but they still had unclassified work I could do.

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This was also the case for several of my college classmates and I graduated in the late 2000's.

I would be curious why Steve Blank (who's pretty sharp otherwise) and Palantir are presenting this as something novel.

You should never submit an SF-86 before your first day of work. That is used to trick you into an interim clearance review that can lead to the job being revoked before you report for work. Once you're an official employee you can't be fired for denial of clearance, though an effort at constructive dismissal will likely ensue if they can't find an uncleared role for you.

That wouldn't have mattered for me. The contractor I worked for (and most that I'm aware of) required me to complete a questionnaire that they used to assess my likelihood of getting a clearance before extending me an offer.

Not trying to doubt you, but I find the idea that a company can't terminate an employee for failing to get a clearance for a job that requires a clearance to be tough to believe. You have a source?

Is there a law that prevents a company from firing you if you can't get a clearance?

I've seen job postings with something like "the ability to acquire and hold a [Top] Secret security clearance is required for this position". Is this illegal or necessary to be able to fire someone because they couldn't get or lost their clearance?

I think companies can fire you for pretty much any reason (or no reason) in America, other than discrimination.

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