Ask HN: Palantir or Facebook?

I know this may come off as kind of an odd question but I am truly very confused and stressed and would love to hear your opinions. I am deciding between an internship with Palantir or Facebook and cannot bring myself to decide. I was hoping to get some insight from those of you who are more hooked into the startup scene in the Valley to shed some light and your opinions on these two companies. I am an upperclassman CS major so really what I am looking for in the internship is a chance to learn new technologies and skills and to network with people in the startup industry.

Right now I feel like I am more passionate about the work that Facebook is doing but I feel that I would learn more and gain a bigger network at Palantir, given that is has only 300 employees vs. Facebook's 2000. My dream is to one day create my own startup (possibly right out of college), so I feel like this is an important aspect to consider.

Should I even be worrying about these factors at this stage? Am I just overthinking this decision? I really appreciate any insight that you guys can give me on this.

That said, you also say: "My dream is to one day create my own startup (possibly right out of college)"

In that case, I would recommend a funded startup with something on the order of 5 employees. I've never worked at a larger company so I can't bash them, but I could say my experience at a small company still in "startup mode" helped me tremendously with my own startup.

Be careful with who you say this to. Although this probably won't be a problem with an internship, an employer may be reluctant to consider someone who demonstrates a lack of commitment.

I was told of a student who said to one of his interviewers at Electronic Arts that he "wanted to be the next Jenova Chen." (Jenova Chen left EA to found thatgamecompany.) Needless to say, the interviewer was not amused.

Both:

Have a great company culture. Have awesome smart, employees and have interesting problems to work on.

Facebook: Is a rather large company now so you won't learn as much. It does have extremely interesting problems though and does have smart people so you will learn a lot. However, facebook is most likely overvalued, so if you join facebook, it is highly unlikely you will get rich off of the stock.

Palantir: Has one of the most excellent engineering teams I have ever met. They have the best team I have seen in terms of algorithmic problem solving ability. They have an awesome company culture and great perks. Whereas facebook is the current hot place to work, I could see Palantir being the next hot place to work.

The one major downside of Palantir is that they work on enterprise software and thus, the product isn't as cool to the general consumer. Most of the people on this thread have no real idea what Palantir does and just assume that since they work for the government, their work isn't interesting. You'll have to deal with this because truthfully, their work isn't well understood and isn't as sexy as facebook.