> ...the employees of Random House don’t need to be paid as much as the employees at Palantir, because Random House is perceived (by its employees) as fundamentally good, something that serves humanity, while Palantir designs software that the government uses to find targets for drone strikes. Jobs at Random House are much harder to get than jobs at Palantir, even though jobs at Random House are paid much more poorly.

An interesting take, particularly the assertion that "jobs at Random House are much harder to get than jobs at Palantir." I'd be absolutely 100% shocked if that were true.

Generally, the more a job pays, the harder it is to get hired. These are generally correlated with job-obtaining-difficulty:

* high pay

* required certifications / licenses (law, medical, etc.)

* (low) supply of workers with desirable experience

Given the above, it seems that Palantir jobs would be much more difficult to obtain.