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Reflections on Palantir

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Re: Reflections on Palantir

#281

Post by jiggawatts »

botanical wrote: post #263

[flagged]

It's interesting to watch these "talking points" bouncing around when there's a politically charged topic like the war in Gaza. (For reference: I have no skin in the game and support neither side.)

Having said that:

65% killed being women and children is because of the demographics of Gaza, not because of any specific behaviour by Israel other than just "being at war" with their neighbours.

It's a talking point used by a people supporting one of the two sides, blithely ignoring the realities of a complex situation.

The reality is that 50% of Gaza's adult population if female, and nearly 50% of their population is below the age of 18! In other words, their population is 75% "women and children".

In any other war, that 65% statistic would be a sign of deliberate and malicious targetting of innocent non-combatants. In the Gaza war it is the sad but usual level of collateral damage that one might expect in urban fighting. Not to mention that this number would be even lower, but is as high as it is because of human-shield tactics used by HAMAS.

The people that use this 65% statistic often do so with the knowledge that people listening to it don't know the demographics of Gaza or the vile actions of HAMAS. They're trying to convince those listening through deception. Their cause may be just in their eyes, but does that justify this kind of false debate? It's in the same category as claiming 500 people died when "Isreal bombed a hospital" mere minutes after the incident, which turned out to be a failed HAMAS rocket that landed in the parking lot and killed maybe half a dozen people.

Yes, what Isreal is doing is bad, but not "murdering women and babies on purpose" bad!

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#282

Post by monkaiju »

kevinventullo wrote: post #197
ak_111 wrote: post #173

Note that Palantir's moral stature isn't as grey or debatable as made in the article, it is basically clearly complicit in the genocide in Gaza. In other words, if you read the article I would add one more bucket to the three categories the author provided to classify palantir's work - genocide assistance. from https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/us-jd-vance-peter-thiel-f... """ Not only did it provide information to…

Them and every American taxpayer

Pretty obvious difference between choosing to work towards the goals of a genocide and being threatened to pay taxes or have your property and wages seized...

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#283

Post by monkaiju »

samatman wrote: post #193
ak_111 wrote: post #173

Note that Palantir's moral stature isn't as grey or debatable as made in the article, it is basically clearly complicit in the genocide in Gaza. In other words, if you read the article I would add one more bucket to the three categories the author provided to classify palantir's work - genocide assistance. from https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/us-jd-vance-peter-thiel-f... """ Not only did it provide information to…

[flagged]

If you think the goal of defeating Hamas justifies this amount of civilian killing yiu have no moral basis to argue with.

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#284

Post by smolder »

anshulbhide wrote: post #278

This is the first article on Palantir I've found that's refreshing in its candour and actually exposes why its a such a success. Also, great learnings for everyone building AI driven services companies.

Peter Theil is scum. People who work for him are also scum. Evil has the ropes of society because evil worked harder at getting them and didn't learn the lesson about sharing in kindergarten.

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#285

Post by vundercind »

jeltz wrote: post #174
sroerick wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People dismiss this type of work as no big deal, but in my experience this is the actual hard work of producing something useful for companies, and what 90% of SaaS resellers will never be able to deliver on.

Yes, it is very hard. But does Palantir succeed? Or do they like some other companies just trick customers with big wallets to buy?

The impression I get from their involvement at one company I know of is that it’s very much the latter. I was pretty surprised to see them behaving and performing about the same as any parasitic enterprise software vendor with an integration services arm. One wonders how different they really are, and if maybe they just have very good PR and marketing.

Chalk it up as yet another case of some famous one-would-suppose impressive entity, or strata of a company hierarchy, or whatever, turning out to be pretty average, or even below average. You’d think I’d stop being surprised by now.

Then again, maybe I was just seeing their B-team.

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#286

Post by anshulbhide »

anshulbhide wrote: post #278

This is the first article on Palantir I've found that's refreshing in its candour and actually exposes why its a such a success. Also, great learnings for everyone building AI driven services companies.

As someone who runs an IT services company, I can tell you how uncommon it is to find engineers who can both code really well, but also interact and sell to customers.

I always wondered why you needed BD / "business folk", but its rare to find the ability to schmooze with customers and hustle along with deep technical talent in the same individual.

So really surprising (and cool) to see how Palantir was able to do this with their FDEs!

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#287

Post by vundercind »

hitekker wrote: post #128
browningstreet wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In many of the enterprise orgs I've worked in, the two tech teams that are chronically understaffed are 1) info sec, 2) DBA/ data architecture/ data science. I'm lumping those 3 together on purpose, because they're always understaffed and typically not empowered to build anything.

You're right to group Data teams together. They seem to share a common plight. In my experience, internal employees outside Data have a funny relationship with Data. They hate to manage it but they love to blame it, especially in analytical / decision-making scenarios. Teams that "own" the data usually get the blame, on top of having to deal with a mass of rotting pipes and noncompliant teams, while also losing out o…

This is exactly what I thought TFA was getting at when it brought up politics being a problem at companies and in sectors Palantir engages with, but instead it went a much more general direction.

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#288

Post by throwaway2037 »

asdasdsddd wrote: post #190

I worked there in the weird era. A couple things. 1. As per usual, the things that make palantir well known not even close to being the most dubious things. 2. I agree that the rank and file of palantir is no different from typical sv talent. 3. The services -> product transition was cool, I didn't weigh it as much as should've, but I did purchase fomo insurance after they ipo'd 4. The shadow hierarchy was so bad, it…

This:

    > I did purchase fomo insurance after they ipo'd
Sorry, my English is a bit weak. What is the meaning here? Did you buy shares post-IPO?

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#289

Post by throwaway2037 »

Manuel_D wrote: post #5
newprint wrote: post #2

Can someone explain to me what is the Palantir's business model ? I haven't heard any large, meaningful project they been involved in, but I keep hearing the company name & how hot they are and their stocks are going to blow-up any day (some of my friends kept their stocks for the last 4-5 years with very little gain compared to other software companies). I know of the smaller software companies that are less than 10…

When I interned at Palantir (summer 2014) their business was mostly in data ingestion, visualization, and correlation. A typical workflow for a Palantir customer was that Palantir would come in and dump a ton of data out of old crufty databases and into Palantir's datastore. Then, they'd establish connections between that data. This is all sounds kind of hand-wavy, but the gist of it is that a lot of government agenc…

This is a good post to explain the value proposition. It sounds like "Big Data" from the 1990s, but a very good salesperson was able to infiltrate some US gov orgs to sell the idea.

Re: Reflections on Palantir

#290

Post by vundercind »

fijiaarone wrote: post #272
Manuel_D wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That, and a really powerful visualization suite. In the example I gave above, you could plot the prescription purchases on a map and see that people were driving along the highway and hitting up pharmacies along the interstate. Better yet, you could drop into Google Street view in front of one of the pharmacies, and look at it from the street level and see that it doesn't even have signage indicating it's a pharmacy.

Visualization is a fancy package. Nobody looks at visualizations, but that's what makes people buy.

I’ve known companies to spend stupid amounts of money on fake, fancy “war rooms” they staff with people doing nothing useful, filled with “big board” style maps and shit, big graphs and visualizations that aren’t used anywhere else, just as a sales tool. Walk the visiting CEO through, let them pretend what they’re involved in is way cooler and more interesting and important than it really is, and I guess that assists sales so much that such endeavors make way more money than they cost.

I connect this with comments I heard from several major management consulting firm folks stating bluntly that the best way to communicate effectively with execs is to approach them like young children.

Life is super weird. Who knew imaginative play would be such a big thing for “serious” adults? I’d never have imagined, but it’s kinda everywhere.

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