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Inside Palantir

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Re: Inside Palantir

#191
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You hear quite a bit about Bay Area companies paying top dollar for fresh CS graduates from top ranked schools. I wonder what compels a Stanford CS grad to take a job doing non-exciting work with a company that prides itself on paying below market rate. Maybe it's the code names?

The offer letter includes the stock/salary options based off of the current and projected valuation of the company. It's hard not to be impressed when you see the eye-popping values of stock options after they vest (4 or 5 years). At least that was my experience in 2011. Had I taken the offer I would have had no problem affording a Bay Area house today, given Palantir's current valuation. That also assumes a liquidit…

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

Re: Inside Palantir

#192
post #103

I don't see this as particularly damning to Palantir. From what I understand, Palantir is really like a McKinsey/BCG/Bain that specializes in data rich projects. If you view Palantir as another consulting firm, I'd be curious as to how its rates and deliverables compare to the that of MBB. My uneducated guess is that what Palantir is offering for its billing rate is probably in line with the standard for consulting f…

But it is pitched to investors and clients as a product company, not a services company. The two get valued very differently.

Re: Inside Palantir

#193

I'm curious if any positions require pre employment drug tests, random urinalysis, or security clearances. What a miserable life for a 20 something in the private sector!

Clearly some jobs at the org require security clearances, but most don't, and access to career growth isn't gated on that at all.

Look up the forbes article from 2013 about the CEO Alex Karp (can't link easily due to adblocker BS) entitled "How A 'Deviant' Philosopher Built Palantir", and tell me again with a straight face that you'd be worried about this.

Re: Inside Palantir

#194

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…

I'm in kind of an odd position, because I worked there for many years with no CS degree at all and I was a lot older than most (not all). They do hire people who are great at CS things, and that often translates into mostly people from higher tier CS programs, but the filter that is applied during hiring is not that. "If you can do the job, we don't care what's on your resume. If you can't do the job... we don't care what's on your resume."

Re: Inside Palantir

#195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did you quit? I'm curious what your observations were as an insider.

Bunch of reasons: * Making hedge funds richer didn't actually feel like changing the world. * I never really clicked on the codebase, didn't understand what was going on in the code, and didn't contribute much. (I don't think the code was easy to understand, and my mentor wasn't much help) * I wasn't interested in making Palantir my full life, and there was a lot of pressure to have work be life. One of the leaders i…

Hey, not everybody there was baby faced. Your lead when you quit was 35. :)

Re: Inside Palantir

#196
post #12

At least they have the decency to tell you who they work for right in their name.

It always kind of amazed me as a pick for a company name. Like, they realize palantirs are a tool of the bad guys, right? They're not a good thing! It's like naming your company "Stormtrooper", or "Dementor".

I think it is happening unconsciously. Like say Chertoff named his naked-airport-scanner company Rapiscan. I think on some level they do it because they can, and that serves as a signal -- we are so awesome we can even use a name like that and still be successful.

Re: Inside Palantir

#197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a similar experience as well. They put me in a very fancy hotel and let me charge anything to the room (don't worry, I absolutely did take advantage of this). On top of that, they sent an S550 to pick me up on the day of the interview...

So gimmicky and shallow, can't believe this works.

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 almost shout to be heard across them, and there was a sofa on the balcony! I took home loads of Hermes toiletries and cologne (I didn't have enough money on my bank account for the room deposit, and one of the consultants had to deposit with his card). In fact we even missed our Paris connection to Dubai, so McKinsey sent a consultant over to baby sit us, which meant taking a Mercedes to the Brasserie La Coupole for an epic feast followed by a night in a neighbouring 5* (I think in the Tour Montparnasse).

Unfortunately, I did not graduate with high enough grades (2.2 on the BA, cutoff was 2.1) for McKinsey, which is why they rejected me the first time. 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. They insisted, and it happened as predicted, making me wonder why they still care about that for more senior hires.

There was also a period of time in my life where I accepted conference speaking slots if the hotel was nice enough and close enough to my home. Can't resist a proper 5* hotel lunch buffet, especially if they have giant prawns and olive-roast beef and a decent beer on tap. I made my talks increasingly ridiculous, I think by the end I was explaining Starcraft cheese to middle-aged CTOs and quoting Delta Force founder Col. Charlie Beckwith before following up with droid-driven tractors (all relevant to ML in e-commerce, I promise). They loved it, got voted "best talk of the conference" a couple of times, not hard when 90% of the other talks were "so here's the 3Vs of Big Data" verbatim copied from Wikipedia.

Re: Inside Palantir

#198
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"…

The difference is Thiel is paying people to drop out of college to start a business, not to just go get a job.

But yes, there is irony, maybe not as much as at first glance.

Re: Inside Palantir

#199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The offer letter includes the stock/salary options based off of the current and projected valuation of the company. It's hard not to be impressed when you see the eye-popping values of stock options after they vest (4 or 5 years). At least that was my experience in 2011. Had I taken the offer I would have had no problem affording a Bay Area house today, given Palantir's current valuation. That also assumes a liquidit…

Do you regret not taking that job? (Granted it's hard to answer without having all the information available, such as how happy you would've ended up being there over the past five years.)

Yes and no, I chose not to take the job since my spouse didn't want to relocate to Virginia from central Maryland. The job I had at the time was fantastic as well. I have no doubt the position I would have fulfilled at Palantir would be intellectually challenging and rewarding. The salary was also competitive for the DC area (not at all for Palo Alto).

So on one hand I made my wife happy but who's to say buying a house in cash might have made her happy too.

My colleagues that went there for the most part enjoyed the work. One of them got burned out but I'm confident that was self-imposed and not due to excessive pressure from team leaders.

Re: Inside Palantir

#200
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You hear quite a bit about Bay Area companies paying top dollar for fresh CS graduates from top ranked schools. I wonder what compels a Stanford CS grad to take a job doing non-exciting work with a company that prides itself on paying below market rate. Maybe it's the code names?

The offer letter includes the stock/salary options based off of the current and projected valuation of the company. It's hard not to be impressed when you see the eye-popping values of stock options after they vest (4 or 5 years). At least that was my experience in 2011. Had I taken the offer I would have had no problem affording a Bay Area house today, given Palantir's current valuation. That also assumes a liquidit…

I forgot to add that the actual valuation in 2015 exceeded the median projected valuation listed on that offer letter.
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