Comment by stevezsa8 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by stevezsa8 | Hacker News Reader

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I interviewed at Palantir London about 10 years ago.

I am based in Europe and one of the younger interviewers let-slip that they will all be working during the local public holiday. lols. No thanks.

Also, I grew up in a mixed ethnic environment. For the last few decades there has been a focus on trying to make society more inclusive. Such that my school exam papers would have questions like "Susan has 6 apples and gets 6 more. How many does she have" or "Rohit is travelling at 50mph ...." So a variety of names and genders etc to reflect the people who live here.

Well, my Palantir interview information was about "networks of people that need to be tracked"... all Muhammads, Omars etc. These names were my school colleagues and friends, so this didn't sit well with me (just to be clear, I didn't want to work somewhere that seemed to be making software to track entire groups of people).

They really should have sanitised their material and made it about helping Susan and Rohit track financial crime or some such. Instead I got vibes of that tv show Homeland.

Cynically, it sounds like their interview process worked pretty well for selecting people who were quite happy to work public holidays and had no issue with tracking "people that need to be tracked"

I don't think cynicism is even needed. Public holidays are surprising - there's no legal way in Europe[1] to force someone to work during a holiday. And trying is a lawsuit waiting to happen. But tracking Muhammads? If someone has moral problems with that, they better resign before being employed. Because at best they will resign soon after joining, at worst they will become a whistleblower.

[1] I know Europe is big etc, but I used to work in UK on particular and everyone took bank holidays seriously.

There is a simple legal way, hire immigrants, they cannot sue if they are no longer resident.

Simply enough, I am a Blue Card holder currently, haven't filled my 5 years hence it is on the temporary state for now. I have been working many weekends/public holidays & whatnot. This was not even part of the original contract. I was presented an "addendum" roughly after 1 month into starting of work. This being moved from another country, including your family and home, and now either you sign or mutual termination of contract because this is the business needs situation. Not to mention the requirement to pay back _all_ relocation expenses (including their taxes).

If I didn't sign, I would be terminated with a notice of 2 weeks. I have to leave within 3 months of that (of find a new job). Even if I sued, I doubt my first hearing will be within that period... (And again, this is a new country, no contact, no lawyer and haven't been part of an union)

So, it is certainly possible to _force_ people to work on holidays. Larger the company is, higher the leverage... (ie. making the process longer so you'll run out of time)

The Netherlands is a culturally diverse country and there are plenty of people willing to work on Christmas!

> Well, my Palantir interview information was about "networks of people that need to be tracked"... all Muhammads, Omars etc.

I can't begin to describe how sick this makes me feel. At the same time, I'm happy that your upbringing resulted in you making the right choice of not pursuing such a horrible company.

I on the other hand was contacted by Helsing, which at the time sounded cool to me (????) (secret agent vibes???). The recruiter however failed to appear at the screening call 2 or 3 times, which I interpreted as a strategy on their part to select for persistence/yes-men (Occam's razor on the other hand is that the recruiter was overworked and/or shitty).

I told the recruiter off.

Only after a while I realized that it really, really was not a good thing that I even considered working for a company that in the end just kills people for money (I know, european defense yadda yadda). I have enough trouble sleeping as it is.

I'm curious what names did you expect for an intelligence op in Afghanistan or Iran? Generally the police take care of things like financial crimes, so not sure why you expected this from a service provider to US three letter agencies

He said he expected Susan;)

No-one expects Susan. No wait, the Spanish Inquisition.

> They really should have sanitised their material

No they shouldn't. I prefer seeing the beast as it is, not as how it would like to be seen.

You do in fact see it as it would like to be seen. You’re just not part of the group that they are marketing to.

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