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Inside Palantir

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Re: Inside Palantir

#311

Post by lyyons »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #265
Lxr wrote: post #44

> “One of the things we did well early on was to recognize and invest in the unique talents of each Palantirian” I find it a bit weird how tech companies make up names for their employees now. Googler, Palantirian... does this make people work harder because they feel like they belong or something?

Is it an American thing? We name folks from counties and states with nicknames too - Hoosiers from Indiana for instance. And folks from Cedar Rapids are Cedar-Rapidians around here.

It's not just an American thing, it's the concept of a "demonym" -- and there are official and unofficial demonyms. For example, the official demonym of Massachusetts is "Bay Stater," but everyone uses the far more popular "masshole."

Re: Inside Palantir

#312

Post by Tycho »

yyin wrote: post #255
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…

Questions: What language are they using for cleaning up the data for import? Is there a market for a middleman (i.e., something as a service) that cleans up enterprise data, using customized solutions if necessary, for import into different databases? If this type of company already exists who are some examples? This is very unsexy work which I happen to enjoy. Its the phase that routinely comprises 80% or more of an…

There is a company that called CloudFactory that offers a distributed task platform for data science. Data wrangling manpower on-demand.

Re: Inside Palantir

#314

Post by canweriotnow »

dbt00 wrote: post #205
[deleted] wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

I was a CS dropout who didn't work anywhere near SV when I was hired. The filter (and recruiting pipeline, given the proximity and deep connections to Stanford) tends to correlate with "top CS schools", but I promise you that they're not discarding resumes based on school.

I was a philosophy dropout software engineer who worked on the other side of the country and was aggressively recruited by Palantir a few years back (I passed, mostly not wanting to relocate)... I think they like to keep that top-tier CS count high but still go after engineering talent when they spot it, like any half-sane software shop. The degree thing probably (theoretically?) helps the sales pitch but it's not like an East Coast "white-shoe" firm where anything other than a Harvard MBA is automatic disqualification.

Re: Inside Palantir

#316

Post by linkregister »

leroy_masochist wrote: post #253
linkregister wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Palantir has been overtly committed to avoiding an IPO for a while. Yes, the "liquidity event" mentioned in the article is extremely vague. I'll reach out to my colleagues that are still at Palantir to find out what that actually meant.

It's the ability to do board-sanctioned sales of stock to buyers. It's basically an equity follow-on sale to previous investors (or new investors if there's a round concurrently underway). This is significant because private companies typically have clauses in their option agreements that you can only sell shares pre-IPO if the board approves. So, a company like Palantir structures things so that, before an IPO, you…

Are you sure that Palantir options expire after the 90 days? The options offered to me were NSOs; I wouldn't have had to convert them.

Or are you making a general statement about companies similar to Palantir?

Re: Inside Palantir

#317

Post by linkregister »

drmattyg wrote: post #304
linkregister wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The office isn't in McLean anymore, it's been moved to Georgetown. Much hipper.

That sounds like a nightmare, traffic-wise.

Re: Inside Palantir

#318

Post by tedmiston »

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?).

1745 current employees on LinkedIn [1] and 76 on AngelList [2]. Those are some data points that could be analyzed from their APIs.

1: https://www.linkedin.com/vsearch/p?f_CC=20708&trk=rr_connect...

2: https://angel.co/palantir-technologies

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