Palantir settles bias suit
Palantir Technologies entered into a consent decree with the Department of Labor Tuesday to settle charges that it discriminated against Asian job applicants.
As part of the settlement, the Palo Alto computer software company will pay $1,659,434 in wages and other monetary relief to eight Asian applicants for software engineering positions. The compensation includes the value of stock options they would have received if hired. It also extended job offers to these candidates, who applied for jobs between January 2010 and June 2011.
The company was co-founded and funded by prominent venture capitalist Peter Thiel, who is now an adviser to President Trump. Palantir makes powerful data analytics software used by the U.S. military and intelligence agencies. Some attribute the capture and killing of Osama Bin Laden to the company’s software.
As a government contractor, Palantir is prohibited from discriminating on the basis of race. Palantir routinely eliminated Asian candidates during the hiring process “despite being as qualified as white applicants,” according to the government’s complaint filed in September. The company denied the claims, saying the study was based on a small sample size.
On Tuesday, Palantir maintained its position.
“We settled this matter, without any admission of liability, in order to focus on our work,” Lisa Gordon, a company spokeswoman, said in a statement. “We continue to stand by our employment record and are glad to have resolved this case.”
This lawsuit comes as Silicon Valley faces criticism for its lack of diversity, particularly in its companies’ engineering ranks. However, the Palantir lawsuit was distinctive because critics usually charge the valley’s tech companies with not hiring enough black and Latino engineers in favor of white and Asian employees.
Other big tech companies, such as Apple, Google and Facebook, have all released diversity numbers over the past few years. Palantir, however, has been notably tight-lipped about its diversity numbers. The company declined to comment on the current ethnic makeup of their workforce. It must, however, report data about the makeup of its workforce to the government. Trisha Thadani is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: tthadani@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @TrishaThadani