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NYPD is canceling its Palantir contract

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Re: NYPD is canceling its Palantir contract

#171

Post by throwaway825 »

svendisnigh wrote: post #13

Palantir has an outdated software stack (Java/Swing). Their genius lied in creating "mythical image" and cleverly overselling it to the less proficient government agencies (apparently NSA was smart enough to see through the ruse). And then in turn sell the "spooky/mysterious" image to bunch of naive Stanford/Berkeley undergrads and convince them to work for peanuts. Sadly in 2017, their tech stack is falling apart, t…

> Palantir has an outdated software stack (Java/Swing)

What? How is this even correlated to the value provided by the software they sell? So they're SOL because they didn't do a rewrite?

> they have no meaningful ML/AI strategy

They mostly sell software and services around data integration of disparate data sources and the ability to query that information and make connections easily. Their flagship product is a graph database with access controls built in. ML/AI is so dependent on the particulars of a given data, so I don't know how valid this criticism is. If they're able to provide value without productizing machine learning, sounds good to me.

> Finally the political environment along association with Thiel isn't helping them make any new friends.

Agreed

Re: NYPD is canceling its Palantir contract

#172

Post by CydeWeys »

mattmanser wrote: post #161
svendisnigh wrote: post #13

Palantir has an outdated software stack (Java/Swing). Their genius lied in creating "mythical image" and cleverly overselling it to the less proficient government agencies (apparently NSA was smart enough to see through the ruse). And then in turn sell the "spooky/mysterious" image to bunch of naive Stanford/Berkeley undergrads and convince them to work for peanuts. Sadly in 2017, their tech stack is falling apart, t…

Java/Swing isn't even a data format, it's the interface tech. Nor is it outdated. Like, if you'd said COBOL it might be a valid point. It's as ignorant of basic technology as saying my car runs on a particular type of rubber so I can't use batteries. Honestly, for a tech site I'm ashamed this is the top comment, just seems to be an excuse to rag on Palantir and decry not using the present FOTM.

I moved from a "sexy" NodeJS stack at my last job to a staid Java 7 stack at my current job (we can't move to Java 8 until App Engine supports it).

The code at my current job is much better written, is more thoroughly tested, and is more pleasant to continue development on. The codebase at my previous job was a rat's nest, caused primarily by lower-skilled developers, no time allocated to technical debt or refactoring, a breakneck pace of product release, lack of a good automated testing suite, lack of good continuous integration and presubmits, and the weakly-typed/dynamic nature of JavaScript itself which doesn't scale well to larger server-side codebases.

So long as a given language/platform isn't deprecated (and Java definitely isn't), I'd rather work on a solid codebase in it than a weak codebase in a more alluring, recent language.

Re: NYPD is canceling its Palantir contract

#173

Post by throwaway825 »

tp3z4u wrote: post #19
svendisnigh wrote: post #13

Palantir has an outdated software stack (Java/Swing). Their genius lied in creating "mythical image" and cleverly overselling it to the less proficient government agencies (apparently NSA was smart enough to see through the ruse). And then in turn sell the "spooky/mysterious" image to bunch of naive Stanford/Berkeley undergrads and convince them to work for peanuts. Sadly in 2017, their tech stack is falling apart, t…

I have friends that work there and say the same thing. I turned down a job there a long time ago, I did ontologies academically so I already knew they didn't work for what they were trying to do.

What were they trying to do?

Re: NYPD is canceling its Palantir contract

#174

Post by CydeWeys »

SeeDave wrote: post #156
fergie wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup- when you start thinking of Palantir as an IBM, a Cap Gemini or an Accenture, it starts making a lot more sense.

There's a lot of truth to this and they use rather unique (bordering on gimmicky) job titles such as 'Forward Deployed Engineer' as opposed to 'Solutions Engineer' or 'Technical Consultant' to add an aura of spooky government mystery and mask exactly what they do.

I think I lost some points with them a long time ago during an interview when, while trying to determine exactly what the "Forward Deployed Engineer" role that I was interviewing for actually meant, realized that it was actually just that of SWE consultant, a job which I'd previously held. So I kept referring to my extremely relevant experience from previously being a consultant, calling it as such, and that rubbed the interviewer the wrong way, because clearly FDE was much more special.

Re: NYPD is canceling its Palantir contract

#175

Post by darkr »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #160
bootloop wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.onshape.com Build by some Solidworks people offering basically the same experience but in the browser with server side computation. Very promising as it tries to solve problems which the older CAD players can't tackle with there current desktop tech.

God, I have such mixed feelings after viewing the product overview video on their site. On the one hand, you can't deny the wins that comes from bullshit-free operations - no installing, no permissions, no need to deal with sysadmins to approve a new program[0], and updates do themselves. Files are backed up and trivially shared across devices. On the other hand, you're now locked in to a vendor system, with vendor s…

You guys all have kill cords attached to your wrist, right? https://github.com/hephaest0s/usbkill

Re: NYPD is canceling its Palantir contract

#176

Post by bane »

egwor wrote: post #124
tp3z4u wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have friends that work there and say the same thing. I turned down a job there a long time ago, I did ontologies academically so I already knew they didn't work for what they were trying to do.

What's 'ontologies academically'?

My guess would be "knowledge models".

Re: NYPD is canceling its Palantir contract

#177

Post by itcmcgrath »

CydeWeys wrote: post #172
mattmanser wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Java/Swing isn't even a data format, it's the interface tech. Nor is it outdated. Like, if you'd said COBOL it might be a valid point. It's as ignorant of basic technology as saying my car runs on a particular type of rubber so I can't use batteries. Honestly, for a tech site I'm ashamed this is the top comment, just seems to be an excuse to rag on Palantir and decry not using the present FOTM.

I moved from a "sexy" NodeJS stack at my last job to a staid Java 7 stack at my current job (we can't move to Java 8 until App Engine supports it). The code at my current job is much better written, is more thoroughly tested, and is more pleasant to continue development on. The codebase at my previous job was a rat's nest, caused primarily by lower-skilled developers, no time allocated to technical debt or refactorin…

FYI, Java 8 is now in beta for App Engine Standard: https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/standard/java/quicks...

Re: NYPD is canceling its Palantir contract

#178

Post by pyre »

CydeWeys wrote: post #172
mattmanser wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Java/Swing isn't even a data format, it's the interface tech. Nor is it outdated. Like, if you'd said COBOL it might be a valid point. It's as ignorant of basic technology as saying my car runs on a particular type of rubber so I can't use batteries. Honestly, for a tech site I'm ashamed this is the top comment, just seems to be an excuse to rag on Palantir and decry not using the present FOTM.

I moved from a "sexy" NodeJS stack at my last job to a staid Java 7 stack at my current job (we can't move to Java 8 until App Engine supports it). The code at my current job is much better written, is more thoroughly tested, and is more pleasant to continue development on. The codebase at my previous job was a rat's nest, caused primarily by lower-skilled developers, no time allocated to technical debt or refactorin…

It seems that the largest issue with your previous job is a lack of coding standards/discipline. I think that this point:

> the weakly-typed/dynamic nature of JavaScript itself which doesn't scale well to larger server-side codebases

has less to do with it.

Do you really feel that your strongly-typed Java job would be so great if all of the other poor practices of your previous job were in place?

Re: NYPD is canceling its Palantir contract

#179

Post by CydeWeys »

linkregister wrote: post #66
obmelvin wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not silly to want to use tech stacks that are commonly used instead of learning a stack that won't transfer elsewhere, I.e epic

It's absurd to compare MUMPS with Java. Java is very much used by modern companies on the backend and for desktop applications. You can still make your SV rockstar programmer salary writing code in Java. Don't they still use it at Google?

Java is still the language of choice for many new projects at Google. Your options for new large server-side projects are, realistically, C++, Go, and Java, arranged in order of how high-level the language is. Java is a perfectly rational choice even today given those options.

Re: NYPD is canceling its Palantir contract

#180

Post by CydeWeys »

sgift wrote: post #118
warent wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly is "buzzwordy" about "software stack" or "ML"? This is legitimate jargon that means specific things. We use these terms routinely at Google internally.

In context with 'strategy' it implies you need a "ML strategy" to somehow deliver value to customers. That's buzzwordy.

In the context of the business area that Palantir is in, though, they absolutely do need machine learning to maximize the value of their product. Imagine trying to build a program to beat AlphaGo, or a search engine better than Google, or a best-in-breed image classifier, without using machine learning. You can't do it. Machine learning is a critically important technique that can solve problems better than anything else can. Palantir's work contains many such problems. Not using the best tool for the job, and not even having a roadmap to do so, means they're ripe for disruption by some other company coming along doing the work better.

Machine learning isn't just some buzzword used to attract VC money. It really, truly, does work.

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