Inside Palantir • Hacker News Board

Re: Inside Palantir

#261

Post by devonkim » Sat, May 07, 2016, 3:44 PM UTC

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?

The impression I got after talking to Palantir on a number of occasions and talking to different engineers is that a FDE is a cross between a contracted engineer needed for staff augmentation and a software integrator. These are both jobs that are typically bid really low (most system integrators in the DoD space pay pretty poor salaries compared to the vendors of the products that are being integrated) and are not all that different in function from a role like a classic SAP consultant.

This approach really doesn't scale very well but given that the customer base really, really does not like to just take off the shelf software and wants to pay boatloads of money to customize software to their specifications, the software product is just a means to reduce friction and to lower the cost of integration compared to, say, building your own huge data pipeline with open source products from the ground up like oh... DCGS-A and its rebranding as ICITE http://nypost.com/2014/10/27/army-spent-5b-on-failed-technol... https://fcw.com/articles/2015/03/03/icite-faces-resistances....

Re: Inside Palantir

#262

Post by markeroon » Sat, May 07, 2016, 3:47 PM UTC

KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #175

desdiv wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. Do we actually have any data on Palantir's hiring practices? Because my personal anecdata is that I have a friend working there and he's from a tier 2 school (University of Toronto, maybe even tier 3?).

How can I determine which school belongs to which tier? I always thought of University of Toronto as a top school based on the fact that it employs some of the best computer scientists in the world (Geoff Hinton is practically a celebrity nowadays). Apparently they were a third-world diploma mill all along and I never knew.

Yeah really, I was going to make the same comment. UofT is outstanding.

Re: Inside Palantir

#263

Post by atmosx » Sat, May 07, 2016, 3:53 PM UTC

Lxr wrote: post #44

> “One of the things we did well early on was to recognize and invest in the unique talents of each Palantirian” I find it a bit weird how tech companies make up names for their employees now. Googler, Palantirian... does this make people work harder because they feel like they belong or something?

Internal reports are always written in Clingon!

Re: Inside Palantir

#264

Post by devonkim » Sat, May 07, 2016, 3:54 PM UTC

zeemonkee3 wrote: post #246

crdb wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

McKinsey flew me and a few other fresh grads to Dubai for a week because I was helping run the entrepreneurs society. 5* hotel, mock case study for 1/3 of the time and the rest tourism. It was a holiday for the McKinsey guys running that thing as well, they appreciated being paid to go waterskiing and BBQing on the beach. For me it was luxury unlike anything I experienced until then - the rooms were so big we had to…

> So by the third time they tried to headhunt me, I just told them upfront that their system/HR would reject me because of my grades and it was not worth our time continuing the discussion. One wonders how a company as rich as McKinsey could have such piss-poor data management. Why not, I dunno, check that the person you're headhunting is already in your database?

Data privacy issues can keep head hunters from accessing such databases. Secondly, many, many recruiters (and consultants, too) are given company e-mail addresses to give the appearance of being an employee but are actually contractors that might as well be external recruiters.

Big, cash-loaded companies tend to enact policies more about protecting their wealth and reputation than to actually grow a company or even to keep it efficient. "Good enough" growth and revenue projections are enough to keep people happy and the bonuses coming in. Nobody goes into Big Four style consulting trying to actually change the world unlike at least a fair share of entrepreneurs globally.

Re: Inside Palantir

#265

Post by JoeAltmaier » Sat, May 07, 2016, 3:55 PM UTC

Lxr wrote: post #44

> “One of the things we did well early on was to recognize and invest in the unique talents of each Palantirian” I find it a bit weird how tech companies make up names for their employees now. Googler, Palantirian... does this make people work harder because they feel like they belong or something?

Is it an American thing? We name folks from counties and states with nicknames too - Hoosiers from Indiana for instance. And folks from Cedar Rapids are Cedar-Rapidians around here.

Re: Inside Palantir

#266

Post by cdcarter » Sat, May 07, 2016, 3:57 PM UTC

yyin wrote: post #255

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…

Questions: What language are they using for cleaning up the data for import? Is there a market for a middleman (i.e., something as a service) that cleans up enterprise data, using customized solutions if necessary, for import into different databases? If this type of company already exists who are some examples? This is very unsexy work which I happen to enjoy. Its the phase that routinely comprises 80% or more of an…

> If this type of company already exists who are some examples?

Palantir.

Re: Inside Palantir

#267

Post by bane » Sat, May 07, 2016, 4:05 PM UTC

linkregister wrote: post #201

gaius wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would have been a very big assumption http://www.cnbc.com/2014/03/19/free-advice-dont-go-public-sa...

I think Palantir has been overtly committed to avoiding an IPO for a while. Yes, the "liquidity event" mentioned in the article is extremely vague. I'll reach out to my colleagues that are still at Palantir to find out what that actually meant.

I don't think they've been that overt.

Here's one of the founders a couple years ago https://www.quora.com/When-will-Palantir-go-public?share=1

They've been signalling that an IPO is imminent for a long time.

Re: Inside Palantir

#268

Post by yummyfajitas » Sat, May 07, 2016, 4:10 PM UTC

sgnelson wrote: post #171

desdiv wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. Do we actually have any data on Palantir's hiring practices? Because my personal anecdata is that I have a friend working there and he's from a tier 2 school (University of Toronto, maybe even tier 3?).

Does anyone else find it a bit ironic that the same guy who wants to pay people to drop out of college is also the guy who only wants to hire from the "Top schools." I'm old enough now to know where you went to school doesn't correlate to who you are as a person and your level of intelligence (however you may wish to define the different types of intelligence). That and I've met way too many people from "Top Schools"…

It's ironic that the guy who says college isn't best for everyone finds it a useful probabilistic filter, and a useful way to sell brand to clients?

Re: Inside Palantir

#269

Post by jsprogrammer » Sat, May 07, 2016, 4:22 PM UTC

deprave wrote: post #231

_tpzm wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it's consulting. Palantir has done an amazing job branding itself as a product company even tho it's mostly not, and for a long time, up to ~1000 employees in 2012, branding itself as a startup. A surprising number of my friends and classmates (Stanford '12/'13) ended up working there. Stanford emails out a jobs summary for each graduating class. For 2013 graduates the #1 most common job title was Forward Deploy…

On one hand I agree with you that borrowing a term like "sweatshop" to describe Palantir is ridiculous. The abuse of language not just in this instance, but overall, is ridiculous to both extremes. Having said that, I think the intention was to describe Palantir in relative terms compared to other companies in SV. With that in mind, then yes, Palantir is one of the worst places to work at among companies of the same…

According to the arguments in this thread, Palantir is not a startup, so it cannot be placed in that type.

Re: Inside Palantir

#270

Post by CydeWeys » Sat, May 07, 2016, 4:33 PM UTC

aestetix wrote: post #228

CydeWeys wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Or he could post his key signature on multiple media, provide links to them, and not expose his social network ;)

There's not particularly any connection between your social network and your PGP key signatures. That's what key-signing parties are good for: You get your needed signatures from people who are strangers, who are validating your identity through other means, such as access to your email account, physically matching photos that are associated with your various online presences, and possession of government-issued photo ID.