81–90 of 168 posts
I've never heard a single good thing from my friends who had interviewed or had brushes with the company.
Do the employees get stock options or just U.S. Treasury bonds?
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A few months back I met a building contractor at a party outside of SV who was going on and on about installing "bullet proof glass" inside various areas of a tech company headquarters. I asked a few questions about the environs and it was clear it was the Palantir office he was talking about. I've never heard a single good thing from my friends who had interviewed or had brushes with the company. Do the employees ge…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you need to rethink your argument. As far as i can tell, you're essentially saying "Take this job that's against your ethics or somebody else will".
No, I'm saying "Take this job that is against your ethics and do the best thing you can, because otherwise someone who is not concerned about this job being unethical will take it, and do much more damage than you will".
Now that I think about it, calling it Palantir is ridiculously apt.
Seriously, there's a lot of FUD on this thread. Right now it's anecdotal evidence at best that there is a relationship there at all. But most people here seem to be talking about it as if it's already proven fact. Come on HN.
While links are never impossible, I am ever optimistic and hope that their employees actually do watch out for the red flags they just spoke about on their blog two months ago. "Every Palantirian is trained to look out for “red flags” at deployments that might indicate activities that are antithetical to our commitment to privacy and civil liberties." http://www.palantir.com/2013/04/dont-just-trust-us/ ;
And every elected federal official in the United States takes an oath to defend the Constitution.
U.S. Constitution, Art. VI, Clause 3 (emphasis added):
The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.
finally a topic comes up on HN that I'm an expert in, and yet I'm legally unable to talk about it. ... crap.
finally a topic comes up on HN that I'm an expert in, and yet I'm legally unable to talk about it. ... crap.
Not really a surprise. Palantir has always been secretive about what exactly it is they do every day, though it's always been implied and rumored that a large part is government intelligence work. Also the reason why I've ignored every contact from a Palantir recruiter so far. This smells like working for the white collar, air-conditioned, catered-lunch version of Blackwater.
Be careful with moral judgements like that. You basically work in an industry that exists due to it's role in preparing for nuclear war.
Which doesn't mean people aren't getting shot and blown up, it just means I'm not closely involved with it. My stance is not beating people over the head with morality, it's purely personal and self-centered. It helps me sleep better at night when I'm not building tools that directly spy on people. I'd like to be as many degrees removed from that as possible, really. Don't take my post to mean that I'm prescribing this morality onto others.
We could do a Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon that proves that my work actually does lead to pain, death, and suffering throughout the world in a convoluted and indirect way, and it may in fact be true - but I don't think it's a stretch to say that there is a large moral difference between directly working on something with ill effects and being far removed from it with no intentional contribution.
Side note though: I don't buy this argument that we can't condemn things unless our hands our perfectly clean. The fact that we all are products of war, suffering, and other terrible things does not remove our ability to steer the ship forward.