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Inside Palantir

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Re: Inside Palantir

#151

Post by desdiv »

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.

>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?).

Re: Inside Palantir

#152

Post by askafriend »

ktamura wrote: post #145

"The company, based in Palo Alto, California, is essentially a hybrid software and consulting firm, placing what it calls “forward deployed engineers” on-site at client offices." This says everything about Palantir, and depending on your perspective, their valuation is (not) justified. It's justified if you think of the equation Palantir = McKinsey + IBM. On the other hand, no consulting firm should have 20x revenue…

I've often heard the Palantir narrative where they talk about a core platform or product that they build independent of the consulting work. That might explain the optimistic 20x revenue multiple. However, I don't think that platform has really come to fruition and they're still relying primarily on consulting to fuel themselves. Someone else here mentioned that they hadn't fully productized their solution, which prevents them from closing large clients outside of government contracts.

Re: Inside Palantir

#153

Post by rdtsc »

linkregister wrote: post #122
rdtsc wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also like to recruit from around Washington DC area schools (Univ. of Maryland for example). Saw them at career fairs while also recruiting there. They all wear cool hoodies and project this agile young startup image. It seems to work, there is a decent size line of young hopeful grads wanted to work there.

It doesn't hurt that Palantir's offices in McLean are reminiscent of the GooglePlex while the top defense contractors' offices look like those in Office Space.

Yap, I agree. They are doing everything right recruiting-wise. I think only Google and Facebook had lines longer than them amongst maybe 50 companies or so.

Re: Inside Palantir

#154

Post by bhaumik »

desdiv wrote: post #151
huac wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>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?).

Sure. Here are 818 data points: https://www.glassdoor.com/Interview/Palantir-Technologies-In...

Re: Inside Palantir

#155

Post by rezashirazian »

nicklovescode wrote: post #22
jbob2000 wrote: post #10

I want to see what Palantir actually produces. Like does Coca-Cola get a monthly report that says "Hey, you guys should bring back Cherry Cola in Montana for an expected 4% increase in sales" or what? What does $1mil/month actually get you ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ooAUeTlzdU here's a quick demo of one of their products edit: this is 2012, likely way out of date

I can't take anyone who pronounces Iran(ɪˈrɑːn) "Eye-Ran" as a serious person.

Re: Inside Palantir

#156

Post by bane »

jbob2000 wrote: post #25
trhway wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I want to see what Palantir actually produces. SAR. Suspicious Activity Report. If you don't know what "fusion center" is - https://www.palantir.com/wp-assets/media/capabilities-perspe...

Huh. Kind of looks like ArcGIS.

Don't ignore the network visualization on the right. My understanding is that it's a slice through an ontology driven knowledgebase. Palantir provides consulting services on the ontology as well as the integration services to map customer data to that ontology. The tool provides a visualization of this knowledgebase.

Re: Inside Palantir

#157

Post by bane »

palantir_intern wrote: post #104
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…

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,…

My understanding is that the userfacing tool is still the ancient Java tool Palantir's been hawking since what, 2006? and that the several HTML5 rewrites haven't worked well [1].

Am I hopelessly out of date?

1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cajoFN6yjB0

Re: Inside Palantir

#158

Post by rsanek »

desdiv wrote: post #151
huac wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>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?).

Top 5 schools according to LinkedIn are Stanford, Cornell, Berkeley, MIT, and CMU. See https://www.linkedin.com/vsearch/p?f_CC=20708&trk=rr_connect...

Re: Inside Palantir

#159

Post by bane »

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.

Looks like the web-based client work has finally started to produce a client. Nice work!

Re: Inside Palantir

#160

Post by jzwinck »

"Those anxieties come amid a wave of staff departures. A chart from Palantir’s internal wiki said the departures through mid-April amounted to 5.8% of all staff, or an annualized rate of 20%. That compares to a departure rate of 13.6% in 2015, 12.2% in 2014, and 9.2% in 2013. Palantir paid annual bonuses in March...."

Many companies have waves of departures in the spring. Bonuses are paid (as at Palantir), holidays are over, kids are about to finish school. A 5.8% departure rate in the beginning of the year cannot be "annualized" any more than fruitcake sales from December. And if it does end up that 20% of Palantir quits in 2016, that'd be totally normal attrition for a large company. Where I used to work it was 30% among software engineers, and even this was not a problem.

I imagine that a number of ex-employees go on to work in the industry whose data they analyzed at Palantir. This may help to explain why employees are willing to work for less than elsewhere. It's because three years later they will work for much more elsewhere. Especially the hedge fund analysts.

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