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Inside Palantir

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Re: Inside Palantir

#131

Post by ryandrake »

n00b101 wrote: post #95
tlogan wrote: post #61

The problem with Palantir is the following: Three letter agencies are paying and will continue to pay for Palantir consulting and products. However Palantir has been unable to fully productize their solution (it is still pretty much consulting). Thus they have hard time convincing Fortune 500 companies to pay due to the costs and depending too much on human interaction.

> unable to fully productize their solution In my experience with this type of problem, it happens due to a failure of vision and leadership. The software company focuses a vast majority of resources on POCs and "consulting" revenue (really, rent-a-coder revenues) and these "consultants" end up failing as product innovators (i.e. they contribute practically nothing to the productization or even harnessing of institut…

> The software company focuses a vast majority of resources on POCs and "consulting" revenue (really, rent-a-coder revenues) and these "consultants" end up failing as product innovators (i.e. they contribute practically nothing to the productization or even harnessing of institutional knowledge) and they also fail as true consultants (i.e. they do not have deep industry experience or management consulting prowess to be able to deliver unique value and engage with clients). Ultimately, this happens because leadership neglects product and becomes too caught up chasing deals and burdening the organization with custom development work to close the gap between the existing product versus market needs.

Wow, that's a good summary. It's a trap that companies fall into and can never get out of:

1. Company has Product X and a bunch of smart engineers excitedly working on it.

2. The sales process ensues. No customers actually want Product X, but a few whales say "We don't want that, but you have smart people, we will pay you for this sorta-related ABC custom solution for us!"

3. Company tries to stuff ABC into Product X. They think they are improving their product AND getting the customer to pay for all the NRE! Woohoo! But in reality they've just turned into a contract engineering company and don't know it.

4. Steps 2 and 3 repeat until Product X is a franken-product that has so many features in it, nobody knows what it is supposed to do, customers still don't want it, and the engineers eventually realized that they are no longer working on the product they were so excited about.

Re: Inside Palantir

#132

Post by CydeWeys »

linkregister wrote: post #125
freyr wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You hear quite a bit about Bay Area companies paying top dollar for fresh CS graduates from top ranked schools. I wonder what compels a Stanford CS grad to take a job doing non-exciting work with a company that prides itself on paying below market rate. Maybe it's the code names?

The offer letter includes the stock/salary options based off of the current and projected valuation of the company. It's hard not to be impressed when you see the eye-popping values of stock options after they vest (4 or 5 years). At least that was my experience in 2011. Had I taken the offer I would have had no problem affording a Bay Area house today, given Palantir's current valuation. That also assumes a liquidit…

Do you regret not taking that job? (Granted it's hard to answer without having all the information available, such as how happy you would've ended up being there over the past five years.)

Re: Inside Palantir

#133

Post by CydeWeys »

willalden wrote: post #121

Hi all -- I wrote the Palantir article. It's really awesome to see all this discussion about it. As I say in the post, please don't hesitate to contact me if you'd like to chat confidentially. I am always eager to hear any tips or new information. Find me on WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, or encrypted email. Contact info here: https://www.buzzfeed.com/williamalden/inside-palantir-silico...

Do you have your PGP key fingerprint on your business card? If not, you should.

Re: Inside Palantir

#134

Post by p4wnc6 »

Cacti wrote: post #117
palantir_intern wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In addition to building dashboards, integrating data and maintaining a data pipeline made up most of what I did as a commercial Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE) intern. From what I've seen, this is what most FDEs do. Software engineers, business cultivation engineers, and people in other positions do other things, and I don't know what FDEs outside of the commercial umbrella do. I think your assessment is correct,…

What the hell is a "forward deployed engineer" and "business cultivation engineer"? You mean support and sales?

It's what happens when libertarian brogrammers who get off on Axis & Allies make a company and spend more time nerding out on what position titles to create than how to have a humanity-affirming company culture.

Re: Inside Palantir

#135

Post by Griever »

ethanbond wrote: post #68
jnpatel wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any recent pictures of the products?

You can find some public stuff here: https://dribbble.com/palantir I don't have anything else to point you to unfortunately.

I have to say, this does look pretty clean. Well done!

Re: Inside Palantir

#136

Post by willalden »

CydeWeys wrote: post #133
willalden wrote: post #121

Hi all -- I wrote the Palantir article. It's really awesome to see all this discussion about it. As I say in the post, please don't hesitate to contact me if you'd like to chat confidentially. I am always eager to hear any tips or new information. Find me on WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, or encrypted email. Contact info here: https://www.buzzfeed.com/williamalden/inside-palantir-silico...

Do you have your PGP key fingerprint on your business card? If not, you should.

I don't! Good call.

Re: Inside Palantir

#137

Post by jrbapna »

huac wrote: post #118
callmeed wrote: post #60

My understanding is that Palantir is running an engineering mill/sweatshop using fresh out of school CS grads (particularly from Stanford). That much of their time is spent simply writing client-specific code that imports and cleans up data from disparate enterprise systems. That its not challenging, innovating, or exciting. Of course this is all anecdotal based on what I've heard from friends and a Palantir engineer…

Note that that work doesn't require a top CS degree. Palantir could easily achieve 97% of their results with tier 2 grads, but because they only take Stanford/Princeton/MIT/etc, they can justify their high prices to clients. It's classic consulting - McKinsey/Bain/BCG could achieve 97% of their results with tier 2 grads instead of Harvard/Wharton grads at lower salaries, but you gotta wow the clients to win the jobs.

What strikes me is when the clients know this to be true, but don't actually care. They have a budget and they need to spend it! Looking forward to the day when the market catches up to them.

Re: Inside Palantir

#138

Post by CydeWeys »

willalden wrote: post #121

Hi all -- I wrote the Palantir article. It's really awesome to see all this discussion about it. As I say in the post, please don't hesitate to contact me if you'd like to chat confidentially. I am always eager to hear any tips or new information. Find me on WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, or encrypted email. Contact info here: https://www.buzzfeed.com/williamalden/inside-palantir-silico...

By the way, your PGP key has no signatures on it. It could trivially be swapped out on your webhost if the server was compromised and no one would know the difference. You should go to a PGP key-signing party. I would offer to sign your key, but you aren't in the NYC office like I would've assumed. Fortunately there's no shortage of people to sign your key in SF!

Re: Inside Palantir

#139

Post by askafriend »

untilHellbanned wrote: post #126
askafriend wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a similar experience as well. They put me in a very fancy hotel and let me charge anything to the room (don't worry, I absolutely did take advantage of this). On top of that, they sent an S550 to pick me up on the day of the interview...

So gimmicky and shallow, can't believe this works.

Yeah but I was a Sophomore or Junior in college and I remember feeling super awesome and important.

These kinds of things play with your ego especially if you're not mature enough to have ever experienced something like it before.

Re: Inside Palantir

#140

Post by CydeWeys »

superuser2 wrote: post #21
akhilcacharya wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even Gawker writers take PGP-encrypted email these days.

Could a publicly traded newspaper company legally allow its employees to use end-to-end encryption? I would guess not, given the email retention requirements in Sarbanes-Oxley. Some companies even block webmail providers to ensure only the centrally-archived corporate mail server can be used for company business.

Remember that emails can be encrypted to N recipients. So long as one of the recipients is a public key corresponding to the legal team at your company, it should be fine, as they can decrypt and read anything they would need to. They would also keep their private key in high security offline storage. You'd just need to configure your PGP mail plugins to always also include the legal team's key as a recipient.
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