i'm stunned by the fact that people here seem to think that working for a national security agency seems to be the worst thing to do moraly. i remember a time when being a spy was probably the coolest thing ever.
one could argue that "spying" on people for the sake of saving lives is a much more noble cause than doing it purely for commercial purposes.
ps : i am not naive,and i am aware of the recent privacy issues raised by the snowden case. And i am a lover of private liberties. i'm just stunned to see such a large conscensus.
i'm stunned by the fact that people here seem to think that working for a national security agency seems to be the worst thing to do moraly. i remember a time when being a spy was probably the coolest thing ever. one could argue that "spying" on people for the sake of saving lives is a much more noble cause than doing it purely for commercial purposes. ps : i am not naive,and i am aware of the recent privacy issues r…
> one could argue that "spying" on people for the sake of saving lives is a much more noble cause than doing it purely for commercial purposes.
I guess that's why people don't buy it. The surveillance state is not for 'saving lives'.
I would suggest that you go to Facebook. Why? Being an SV company, they will generally treat developers better than say Palantir. Being treated as a valuable member of the team and not a cost center is very important for job satisfaction. (And those free lunches/snacks will definitely help you save some money in NYC) To start your career at a place where one has to solve huge scaling issues will really do you good. Y…
Palantir is an SV company too. It was founded by Peter Thiel (et al) and its HQ is in Palo Alto.
One unique advantage Palantir would have over Facebook is that if you get the itch to travel, Palantir casts a much wider net throughout the world (assuming you'd be willing to work as a forward deployed engineer, which in Palantir's case is genuinely not a sales role). Tough call, but a nice problem to have, congrats!
> Palantir casts a much wider net throughout the world
i'm stunned by the fact that people here seem to think that working for a national security agency seems to be the worst thing to do moraly. i remember a time when being a spy was probably the coolest thing ever. one could argue that "spying" on people for the sake of saving lives is a much more noble cause than doing it purely for commercial purposes. ps : i am not naive,and i am aware of the recent privacy issues r…
> one could argue that "spying" on people for the sake of saving lives
And what lives do you think we are saving? When in the last 20 years has anything we've done saved any lives?
You shouldn't be stunned. People might tolerate our military-security industrial complex because they have resigned themselves to be powerless to do anything about it, but that doesn't mean they want to join it. I would never work for Palantir, just like I would never work for the NSA, or Raytheon, or any of these horrible, destructive organizations. I wouldn't fit in anyway, the people that work at these places come from a different political and ideological spectrum than I do.
i'm stunned by the fact that people here seem to think that working for a national security agency seems to be the worst thing to do moraly. i remember a time when being a spy was probably the coolest thing ever. one could argue that "spying" on people for the sake of saving lives is a much more noble cause than doing it purely for commercial purposes. ps : i am not naive,and i am aware of the recent privacy issues r…
> one could argue that "spying" on people for the sake of saving lives is a much more noble cause than doing it purely for commercial purposes. I guess that's why people don't buy it. The surveillance state is not for 'saving lives'.
Exactly. Although you can never (for fairly obvious reasons) see a full cost-benefit analysis of these things, the sheer volume of cash, resources and legislative power being shovelled towards the Surveillance-Industrial Complex (it's actually a thing) is astonishing, and it's not about dealing with those edge cases; it's mainly about the expansion of 'oh, that's useful, maybe we should let another agency lower down the intelligence chain have it just in case', and on it goes. It's about control, not saving lives, and hasn't been for a long time.
I spoke to a Palantir recruiter once, if you aren't in the Bay Area you'll be doing customisation for customers - not the core engineering stuff that's really cool. Do you know what team at FB you'd be working with? For me the job itself is the most important thing: I wouldn't want to sling PHP, but FB has amazing teams who wrote Hive, Scribe, Presto, HHVM, etc.
Worked for Palantir from 2010-2012. Palantir will push you hard (if you let it, and are interested in doing so); it's the highest-performing team I've ever worked with, and I learned a ton both technically and culturally (how to interview, how to hire, how to productively have high expectations of your colleagues) that has served me well in the other roles -- even though it wasn't immediately obvious what I was learn…
The way you describe palantir seems like the going to the military or something, without the added value of making lifetime friends. Sounds good for short term, bad for long term.
OP, I'm a FDE at Palantir (not in NY) and I'd be glad to chat with you about the life/work/impact we have. I've been at several different tech companies with a variety of bizarro cultures (though not FB!), so maybe I can offer you a point of comparison on that as well.