Palantir’s accelerated security clearance plan for students(steveblank.com) |
Palantir’s accelerated security clearance plan for students(steveblank.com) |
* Restrictions and reporting requirements around international travel and contact with foreign nationals
* Restrictions on discussing work with friends and family
* Prohibition on cannabis use
* Prohibition on reading publicly leaked secret documents (from the Snowden days: https://web.archive.org/web/20211120154017/https://sgp.fas.o...)
Interns-to-be should consider carefully whether this lasting infringement on personal liberty is worth any upside of employment at a defense contractor for 3 months.
Beyond that, all your paperwork to get that clearance is in the government’s hands now. In my case that included a full SF-86 and fingerprints, which the government would otherwise not have from me. So it’s IMO accurate to describe the consequences as “lifelong”.
Truth be told, having left that line of work long ago, it bothers me these pieces of info about me are out there somewhere in Uncle Sam’s possession.
https://www.commerce.gov/osy/programs/credentialing/hspd-12-...
The fictional on-off-boarding of TV series "Burn Notice" (2007-2013), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burn_Notice & https://burn-notice.djmed.net
[1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/471...
[2] https://news.clearancejobs.com/2024/03/14/marijuana-use-and-...
Especially, if as the article claims, they want to clear college students.
When I went through this, the guidance was that pot usage was ok as long as it was in the past and not chronic usage. Just say you haven’t been near it in years, but yes you did it. They’re going to interview everyone you’ve ever known that they can find, so just don’t lie about it.
How many college students can claim this? Weed is everywhere now.
Fact is, it’s schedule 1. If you are willing to break this law, what other very serious crimes are you willing to commit?
And if Palantir refused to hire software devs who have smoked weed, that would disqualify 80% of the talent pool in Silicon Valley.
> Palantir’s accelerated security clearance plan for students
This addresses several issues with the headline as presented:
- It’s capitalized appropriately for HN.
- It clearly states that this is about students only, reducing the scope of the effort from the unstated framing: “all workers”.
- It reflects the single-company focus of Palantir in the article, improving HN submission search results for that company.
- It reuses the exact wording of the most key heading in the article with only two words added: “for students”.
I think you need to email dang <hn@ycombinator.com> to see if he'll agree to update.
> You will deal with a person who doesn’t have those clearances only from the point of view of what you want him to believe and what impression you want him to go away with, since you’ll have to lie carefully to him about what you know. In effect, you will have to manipulate him. You’ll give up trying to assess what he has to say. The danger is, you’ll become something like a moron. You’ll become incapable of learning from most people in the world, no matter how much experience they may have in their particular areas that may be much greater than yours.
Full quote: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36364006
HN ranking history for this thread: https://hnrankings.info/41238823
Just being a citizenship bar, even if it did nothing else, really complicates hiring in tech -- what you often end up doing is having as much work as possible done uncleared/commercially and then thrown over the wall to cleared people who can implement it with the client. Works well in infosec with mostly systems integrated with commercial stuff; doesn't work with jet engines or missiles as well
Clearances being handed out like relative candy to 18-28 year olds in the military (so, for someone like Manning, approximately zero information responsive to requests (as minor records excluded, and the 7-10 year lookback isn't relevant when you have far fewer adult years), extreme reluctance to suspend or revoke a clearance when granted), and ineffective reporting of incidents.
The hassle of holding a clearance to some extent depends on the issuing agency/level (DOD Secret is relatively non-hassle; law enforcement ones are more lifestyle focused on paper at lower levels; substantial travel restrictions for levels/programs come in above Secret too).
There is also the difference between official restrictions and reality -- given OPM hack and general government incompetence, it's safe to assume your info becomes public or at least known to adversaries, so even after a clearance expires, it would probably be unwise to travel to some countries for a much longer period. Also exposes your family/other contacts to hassle from both USG investigators and potential foreign adversaries.
Contractor A does everything in a closed area. All software is written, built, and tested on classified information systems. In this situation, it is impractical to move anything out, regardless if the software is actually classified. It's easy to move things back and forth between the developer's machines and the (necessarily) classified test/production system, but now you have the problem from TFA: you can only hire cleared employees or you eat the cost of them doing nothing useful for ~1 year.
Contractor B has arranged things so that the work that has to be done in a closed area is only on the specific information that _must_ be classified as described in the security classification guide for that program. Depending on the program this could be a small software library or even a configuration file. Interns and first-year employees can work on the majority of the system with dummy/stub libraries and fake data, then hand their work over to cleared employees for further testing in the closed area (if that is even necessary for the work at hand). It is not very hard to move software from an unclassified to a classified area. It is harder to move test results from a classified to an unclassified area. A description of what happened when an unclassified piece of software runs in a classified environment _can_ be sanitized and still leave all information necessary to continue work outside. Aside from the situation described in TFA, this also reduces the "it is miserable working in the SCIF" retention problem.
It requires work to arrange things in this way, but not much more work if the software is written using best practices. Maybe this strategy only applies to software development. There are other professions out there I've heard. :)
I would be curious why Steve Blank (who's pretty sharp otherwise) and Palantir are presenting this as something novel.
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?
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've had SC clearance twice in the UK, which isn't too bad, just a couple of months or so. Even so, I saw people sit around waiting for their clearance, unable to do anything, and then leave before they had managed to do anything.
One job I applied for needed a DV clearance, and that takes a really long time. They advised me to get another job in the meantime, but it was just too much hassle, so I passed on it.
oh so that is why there's always that crap on the news?
Man I miss when they lured smart kids with the false promises of moon rockets
It's not for everyone, but for plenty it's not a huge burden. Even if their family hasn't been "in that line of work" for several decades.
And it unlocks the ability to work on certain things that simply don't exist elsewhere (no, not just weapons).
Do you have ethical reasons? Or practical?
As for ethics, clearances go hand in hand in working with intelligence agencies, the department of defense, federal law enforcement or a few other departments either as a contractor or government employee. So if you are fundamentally opposed to what these groups do, maybe a job requiring a clearance isn't the best fit for you. There is another clearance called public trust that is very mild that may be required at places like the Treasury or NASA. Basically if you don't want a clearance, avoid working for the government.
Don't be around people in possession of illegal drugs. Ok, well grandpa died and I know for sure his oxy is in his medicine cabinet. Grandma hasn't thrown that away. You're not really allowed to do that, ya know?
I understand why the rules are the way they are. I understand that they would not care about that situation. The FBI agent asked rather pointed questions about, am I the kind of person who follows the rules when no one is watching. I feel pretty comfortable saying I do. I feel pretty comfortable believing they do not.
There are plenty of smart hardworking people with clearances. I believe in them and I believe they're generally trustworthy, but are held to an impossible standard so they can be fired at any time. I get it, but I can't accept that, so I don't.
Also the the OPM breach was cool.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20556201#20557382
Being subjected to pseudoscientific security theater isn't really that appealing.
What they want to see, above all else, is someone who can't be easily blackmailed. (Which is one reason why homosexuality was a dealbreaker as late as the 1970s.)
Unfortunately, that's not what I was directly told when I inquired, at least for the jobs here in Aus. Perhaps they were just being conservative about it
(Now, that said, holding a clearance can be a pain for other reasons already detailed in this thread. A lifetime ban on talking about some things can be an annoying cognitive burden to carry, also.)
Of course, if you don't believe in any of the causes you might need a clearance for, it doesn't matter, but don't be too quick to make that assumption either. A lot of stuff gets classified by the government, and not all of it is morally noisome.
The dominant perception among tech talent is the law hasn’t kept up with the times.
Drawing conclusions about one’s choice to use or try marijuana is perceived as unacceptable cultural behavior that is not currently within the modern scope of what we could refer to as "Overton’s window".
However, like many others here, I’m authentic in disclosing this awareness of perception and not deterred from doing it simply because it is not normal.
In a world where outliers are red flags, everyone is dripping in sweat to be perceived as not only normal but qualified. That’s enough to send electro-dermal activity through the roof imo.
A truly authentic person should be able to sit in that chair and comfortably tell the hard truth.
That should be the real test.
The rule is clear and explicit. There are rules that are written down, that you agree to abide by.
There is a second set of rules, that is not written down, that is the actual standard you're held to.
I don't know how to do that. so I didn't.