Sounds like a modern version of an consultancy company but with a significant focus on data rather than business processes.
Reflections on Palantir
481–490 of 658 posts
Re: Reflections on Palantir
#482Earlier quoted context omitted.
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Given that it's a site run by a startup incubator with opaque moderation and a strong American bias, I would imagine that most things that make "line go up" are ok.
I don't even think it's always about "line go up". I've talked to real life engineers who evidently have no ethical bar whatsoever--if the technology is cool and complex and an interesting technical problem, they'll work on it, regardless of the real-world application. "Whether my code is used ethically is someone else's problem. I just love technical challenges!" You absolutely see this mentality on HN as well.
Re: Reflections on Palantir
#483Earlier 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?
My sense working at an adjacent company and having talked with folks there is that they are more successful with their government projects than their corporate ones.
Re: Reflections on Palantir
#484I have been directly involved in deals involving Palantir and I can say that their sales force, at least in Europe, is sociopathic. They play very dirty, both with their customers and amongst themselves. On top of that, I'm not particularly impressed with their software, which they charge way too much money for. It's data aggregation and visualization, gimme a break.
Re: Reflections on Palantir
#485Wow, this is a great article. I had no idea what Palantir did these past 10 years, but after reading this article I can say they had amazing direction.
Re: Reflections on Palantir
#486Palantir seems more Mechanical Turk-like than amazing tech. In my observations they could do some interesting things with data but there was no real secret sauce to dealing with the usual messyness of real world data beyond just deploying manual labor to sort it out and then do interesting, but ultimately pedestrian, analysis. Struck me as not that different from many other consulting type engagements: It’s not somet…
It would be hard for, to pick a random large company like Coca-Cola, to hire a whole bunch of top school CS grads. Their IT team will always be less attractive as a job than working at a company whose whole focus is IT, and so giving the choice, people will prefer to work at a company that makes computer programming its central focus, and pays better than Coca Cola does, and gives them more freedom than Coca Cola does. This is the whole "be a profit center, not a cost center" issue in the corporate world (1). So it would actually be hard for someone like Coca Cola to build a team similar to one that Palantir can provide. This is also how McKinsey etc. work: a top Harvard Business School graduate doesn't want to get hired by Signet Jewelers, selling retail jewelry in shopping malls, but if they get hired by McKinsey to work on the Signet Jewelers contract
then everyone is happy.
1: For Coca Cola paying salaries for computer people is a cost that gets in the way of their real business of selling beverages; for someone like Palantir having good computer people produces profit, that is the real business. This is always going to trickle down to the work conditions, pay, etc.
Re: Reflections on Palantir
#487“ This ended up helping to drive the A350 manufacturing surge and successfully 4x’ing the pace of manufacturing while keeping Airbus’s high standards of quality.” come on…
Re: Reflections on Palantir
#488Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is the other solution? create a separate state for palestine under the control of hamas would only legitimise them, allow them to easily get more weapons and go on another oct 7, which will again lead to the bombings currently happening. Bombing them to death would lead to deaths of many, many women and children cuz gaza is 75% children. You cannot have peace with hamas, only ceasefire, and even then they havnt…
My solution, if I was in charge of Israel, would simply be to NOT order the army to destroy most of Gaza and kill tens of thousands of people, and to instead just focus on preventing incursions into Israel. I would also focus on stopping Hamas missiles by using the hugely effective anti-missile system that, conveniently, already exists. I realise that this is not a perfect solution to the Israel/Palestine problem. It…
sooo prolong the problem so that when you are dead, your descendants have to deal with it and you will be free of the responsibility?
Do we forgive oct 7? what precedent would it set for other groups? that you can just go kill and rape people and there will be no response?
Re: Reflections on Palantir
#489Earlier quoted context omitted.
There has always been high immigration in the US, its a country built on immigration!! Like others have said, the current levels are not higher then in the past, its just the political parties that are using it to hide the real problems of ultra rich and corporations abusing the country. In regards to changing society; what is changing? The language? Again, the US is built on immigrants. Are the Italian - Americans i…
> political parties that are using it to hide the real problems of ultra rich and corporations abusing the country Yup, same in Europe. There's constant fear mongering with racist undertones in the media about illegal immigrants and refugees, it's driving people crazy and violent against each other. All the while they're conveniently distracted from the root of their social ills.
Europe has the "pie" in form of considerable (by standards of most of the rest of the world, including US) welfare benefits. I don't think it's particularly surprising that people who have access to it today don't want to share. The legal vs illegal distinction is really mostly about that - when it's legal, it can be significantly curtailed (and the same people who are against illegal immigration saying "just go through the process" tend to also be in favor of making that process much more difficult).
Re: Reflections on Palantir
#490Earlier quoted context omitted.
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Some other opinions go back even further and more criticize Great Britain for their mishandling of Mandatory Palestine. There are a lot of opinions that develop as both sides adjust their strategy and the borders of their theater. Writing off any development of opinion (particularly in the wake of Lavander) is a counterproductive and insular habit.
If you don't want to discuss the behavior and morality of the IDF, nobody will force you to steelman them. But some of us would like to call that into question, and dismissing our conversation with "that's immature" is a thought-terminating cliche.