How Silicon Valley's Palantir Wired Washington • Hacker News Board

Re: How Silicon Valley's Palantir Wired Washington

#111

Post by dredmorbius » Mon, Aug 15, 2016, 9:06 PM UTC

whamlastxmas wrote: post #110

dredmorbius wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not an ad hominem attack, it's a statement based on reputation. Ad hominem, properly, is based on an irrelevant characteristic of the person being attacked. "I won't work for a Peter Thiel startup because he wears white shoes after Labour Day", or "... because he mixes stripes and solids". Stating that he's got a track record of founding and backing ventures with a net-negative social value, or which simply wa…

>founding and backing ventures with a net-negative social value According to his Wikipage, the major things he's done: Paypal, Facebook, Y Combinator, and a couple investment/VC/Angel ventures. None of these are net-negative social value in my opinion, or at least not any more so than virtually any other big business on the planet. He's also backed an impressive number of philanthropic endeavors. Your comment comes a…

The factual value of whether or a relevant comparison is justified or not is open to question. That would turn the attack into an unjustified one.

But not ad hom.

I'm not convinced of PayPal and Facebook's net social value. They're quite mixed, though I'll allow transformative.

Re: How Silicon Valley's Palantir Wired Washington

#112

Post by argonaut » Mon, Aug 15, 2016, 10:04 PM UTC

bazqux2 wrote: post #103

argonaut wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have core tools, but obviously the majority of their code is bridging the core tools and their client's services. Are you kidding me? If that extremely-slick dashboard (I hadn't seen it before) is representative of the quality of their UI for all their products (I actually doubt it is), as an enterprise/government company I am shocked they have not yet annihilated their competition . If it is representative, we…

Their competition isn't dashboards it's modelling. Customers want dashboards and Palantir provides excellent dashboard tooling. Dashboards make people feel smart and feel like they are learning something. But dashboards are not as useful as people think and usually fail to return enough value to cover the cost. As Palantir is so expensive the bar is higher and often not met - hence the losing of customers. Customers…

How do you know the government has such shitty tech that even a dashboard of metrics isn't a huge improvement for them?

My bet is Palantir knows more about their customer's needs than you do.

Re: How Silicon Valley's Palantir Wired Washington

#113

Post by erikpukinskis » Tue, Aug 16, 2016, 5:30 PM UTC

jomamaxx wrote: post #45

erikpukinskis wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people in most startups are not "working on what they want to work on" they are working on what their boss wants them to work on. Heck, I would wager that >50% of startup employees are not even doing the work they think is most important for the success of the startup . They are doing the work their boss (who by definition is further removed from the facts) thinks is most important. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised…

"their boss (who by definition is further removed from the facts)" While I agree that poor leadership is common, I strongly beg to differ with the reasoning that leadership is removed from the facts. Friend - 'Engineering' is not 'the facts', or not usually. Customers, business opportunities, markets, investors - these are usually the 'facts' in a business, and sometimes it means doing things that don't seem obvious…

> Friend - 'Engineering' is not 'the facts', or not usually.

Not sure why you're referencing engineering? I didn't say anything about that. Not all startup employees are engineers.

> Customers, business opportunities, markets, investors

Customer support is going to have more facts about customers, investors are going to have more facts about investment terms and opportunities, marketing team is going to have more facts about markets, biz dev is going to have more facts about business relationships.

Management is not going to have more facts in any area than anyone really. Their job isn't to understand what's happening in detail, it's to maintain the structure of communication which allows different parts of the company to make good decisions.

If management starts thinking they know more than their employee on a topic, something has gone terribly wrong. They hired someone who doesn't know what they are doing, or they are preventing information from flowing to where it is needed, or they are just being hubristic.

Re: How Silicon Valley's Palantir Wired Washington

#114

Post by somenomadicguy » Mon, Aug 22, 2016, 11:40 AM UTC

manigandham wrote: post #14

somenomadicguy wrote: post #5

Thus the reason I hang up on startup recruiters the moment they say "A peter thiel funded start-up". I'm not sure what is a sadder waste of this amazing braintrust we have in the United States today, all of the advertising start-ups, or sociopathic dreck like Palantir.

This is the wrong attitude - there is no "waste" of braintrust. Innovation doesnt work like that, it comes from all over by people working on what they want to work on. What's wrong with advertising startups? Some of the most valuable companies on this planet are advertising companies because it's an essential part of success for any business.

I guess I look at waste because of the motivation. The only motivator in the Silicon Valley, in the end, is greed. Even if it begins with wanting to change the world, or wanting to work on cool challenges, $3k/month rent inevitably leads to "omfg, gonna be homeless, gotta make lots of money".

My time in refugee camps teaching Syrian music to Syrian refugees had more of an impact on the world than any of the companies where I've worked.

When you were a little boy, did you ever say "Mommy, when I grow up I'm going to sell banner ads?"