> they did actually pitch the social good use case of helping law enforcement find and arrest criminals involved in child prostitution rings.

That's sort of the crux of it - ICE wasn't supposed to be bad guys.

In fact, ICE could be heroes - they really could be, when they were breaking up trafficking and rescuing people out of criminal control.

Instead, they are tasked with tearing children away from parents and making orphans by deporting parents away.

I suspect there are people in ICE-HSI, who probably hate being lumped in together with the ICE-ERO.

The point is that the tide of public opinion on ICE would be different if the primary visible effect of them would be pulling women out of shipping containers and sending them to hospitals.

Justice might be blind, but justice without mercy has another name.

> I suspect there are people in ICE-HSI, who probably hate being lumped in together with the ICE-ERO.

This is definitely a real issue: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/6/29/17517870/i...

I had a recruiter reach out, and I actually played along with their interview process, but at every step of the way I’d inquire about the company’s ethics. Nailed all the tech questions, but in the end did not get an offer.

Maybe I didn’t do as well as I thought I did on the tech, or maybe Palantir recruiting is selecting for people who don’t ask questions.

>Maybe I didn’t do as well as I thought I did on the tech, or maybe Palantir recruiting is selecting for people who don’t ask questions.

My money is on the latter.

In "Winners Take All" Anand Giridharadas has a really good sentence where he points out how major employers usually try to find entry level hires who possess an ideal degree of intelligence and impressionability. The latter is just as important for them as the former. They want people they can mold to think and behave according to the values of the company.

In my personal experience, this is also why companies and industries that tend to have a lot of "lifers" are also often fairly toxic places to work. The people who came up and through the norms of the organization don't actually learn how to interact with normal people who don't buy into their idiosyncratic nonsense, don't seem to understand the concept of "standards" or "best practices," and often the idea that people might leave if they don't like how things are being done just doesn't cross their minds. So they take liberties with each other they shouldn't and do a poor job of forming consensus, actually caring about morale, or treating each other with professionalism or respect.

When people do leave, the narrative is usually framed as if they were too weak or soft to handle the rigorous and exacting standards of the company/team/manager rather than thinking that maybe thing are being run badly.

I definitely agree this can happen, and I've worked for a company where what you described rings all too true. However, I joined Palantir last year, and I genuinely don't see any evidence of the same kind of dysfunctional power dynamics.

During the interview process I asked a number of questions about ethics and transparency, and the interviewers responded positively and encouraged me to continue asking hard questions, which gave an impression it's a trait they valued.

After joining, I haven't seen any evidence of people fearing to express a dissenting opinion about either technical or ethical subjects. And I've personally witnessed a consistently high level of professionalism and respect, including respect and empathy for the protesters who want Palantir to sever all ties with ICE.

I don't think Palantir continues to work with HSI due to a lack of questioning, on the contrary, I think what's happened is that deeply questioning the ethical and practical implications of continuing or discontinuing contracts with HSI doesn't lead to such a clear-cut, black and white answer about what the right thing to do is.

To add another data point, I interviewed at Palantir and asked questions about ethics and transparency at every reasonable opportunity: during recruiter outreach, during the product presentation given to the group of candidates interview that same day, in my interview with the hiring manager, and with C-level person who did the final interview.

Each person I talked to acknowledged that the issues I raised were legitimate, and I still received an offer.

Ah, I never reached C-level interview. Perhaps my technical answers were not as solid as I thought. Or they’ve changed policies since then.

But people can change their opinions as new information becomes available to them. Also, organizations are dynamic and change over time. Willingness to work for someone yesterday is no guarantee of willingness to work for them tomorrow should they change for the worse.

20-30 years ago companies like Yahoo and Oracle were innovators. They had robust software engineering and R&D operations that could attract the top talent in the field. Now, not so much...

And I once had a recruiter from Axon talk about how body cameras could potentially help to hold officers accountable.

But it's good to always ask this question of any prospective employer: "who are [y]our customers?"

The customers are the ones who pay the company, and unless you're applying to work for a monopoly, they're the ones who ultimately call the shots.

I wonder if Palantir could help the FBI get a bead on Ghislaine Maxwell.

Hahah, just kidding, Palantir is for chasing down the hoi polloi, not the madams and child abducters who service the country's elite (who after all probably give Palantir a lot of its contracts).