
Inside Palantir - JimDash2145
https://www.buzzfeed.com/williamalden/inside-palantir-silicon-valleys-most-secretive-company
======
callmeed
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 met at bar.

Anyone with more insight know if this is accurate?

~~~
freyr
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?

~~~
nilkn
I interviewed there a few years ago.

I can tell you that at least at the time the impression given during the
interviews was that of a deep, intellectually enriching place. Mostly everyone
I talked to went to Stanford, Berkeley, Princeton, or a similarly ranked
school. Many of those not straight out of school had come from Google or
Facebook. The interview questions were among the hardest and most technically
demanding I was asked. You're told of working on problems of massive scale
involving true "big data".

On top of this, the budget for seeking out top engineering talent seemed to be
without bound. I was flown out and put in a really overly nice hotel room. I
was treated to a very expensive steak meal for lunch. I was just one of a very
large group of candidates being luxuriously herded through their HQ that day
and seemingly every day without end.

~~~
askafriend
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...

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

~~~
crdb
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.

~~~
zeemonkee3
> 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.

One wonders how a company as rich as McKinsey could have such piss-poor data
management. Why not, I dunno, check that the person you're headhunting is
already in your database?

~~~
devonkim
Data privacy issues can keep head hunters from accessing such databases.
Secondly, many, many recruiters (and consultants, too) are given company
e-mail addresses to give the appearance of being an employee but are actually
contractors that might as well be external recruiters.

Big, cash-loaded companies tend to enact policies more about protecting their
wealth and reputation than to actually grow a company or even to keep it
efficient. "Good enough" growth and revenue projections are enough to keep
people happy and the bonuses coming in. Nobody goes into Big Four style
consulting trying to actually change the world unlike at least a fair share of
entrepreneurs globally.

------
willalden
Hi all -- I wrote the Palantir article. It's really awesome to see all this
discussion about it. As I say in the post, please don't hesitate to contact me
if you'd like to chat confidentially. I am always eager to hear any tips or
new information. Find me on WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, or encrypted email.
Contact info here:

[https://www.buzzfeed.com/williamalden/inside-palantir-
silico...](https://www.buzzfeed.com/williamalden/inside-palantir-silicon-
valleys-most-secretive-company?utm_term=.tmJy8Qexp#.iheRjVPw1)

~~~
CydeWeys
By the way, your PGP key has no signatures on it. It could trivially be
swapped out on your webhost if the server was compromised and no one would
know the difference. You should go to a PGP key-signing party. I would offer
to sign your key, but you aren't in the NYC office like I would've assumed.
Fortunately there's no shortage of people to sign your key in SF!

~~~
rcpt
This seems relevant right now [https://moxie.org/blog/gpg-and-
me/](https://moxie.org/blog/gpg-and-me/)

~~~
snassar
Signal has a nicer communication user interface for some communication
compared to email + PGP but it has not really solved the verification problem
that many secure communication methods have.

The grandparent is advising the writer to improve the verification aspects
that PGP provides.

Have you tried re-establishing trust with a Signal user who wiped their
device? It falls back to the same PGP problem of comparing a string of numbers
over a different secure channel.

Moxie addresses some problems with the OpenPGP RFC and with the GnuPG
implementation, but after re-reading that post I don't see how it relates to
the verifiability issue the grandparent is bringing up.

------
vonnik
This article is much more interesting than its fairly predictable headline
implies. While the secrecy of Palantir has served as clickbait for many years,
there's actually real news in this.

And the news is about the difficulties of scaling a services-heavy, on-prem
software company that basically rents out forward-deployed engineers at 10s of
millions of dollars per year. Especially when the software is an open-source
stack, and the engineers are increasingly junior as the companies grows. That
said, it's still great at sales. Big numbers there...

~~~
amiraliakbari
> Especially when the software is an open-source stack

Is there specific information about stack used by Palantir? I just saw a few
videos presenting their products.

~~~
vonnik
Apache Hadoop, Hive and Pig, among others.

[https://www.palantir.com/wp-assets/wp-
content/uploads/2013/1...](https://www.palantir.com/wp-assets/wp-
content/uploads/2013/11/Palantir-Solution-Overview-Cyber-long.pdf)

And actually, it's usually an enterprise distro such as Cloudera's CDH rather
than Apache Hadoop itself, which is kind of a nightmare.

------
jbob2000
I want to see what Palantir actually produces. Like does Coca-Cola get a
monthly report that says "Hey, you guys should bring back Cherry Cola in
Montana for an expected 4% increase in sales" or what? What does $1mil/month
actually _get you_?

~~~
nicklovescode
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ooAUeTlzdU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ooAUeTlzdU)

here's a quick demo of one of their products

edit: this is 2012, likely way out of date

~~~
rezashirazian
I can't take anyone who pronounces Iran(ɪˈrɑːn) "Eye-Ran" as a serious person.

~~~
antod
Even if they had auburn hair and tawny eyes?

------
danso
FWIW, Gawker reporters have been making FOIA requests of various agencies
about their contracts with Palantir...you can see the responses on MuckRock:

[https://www.muckrock.com/search/?q=palantir&models=foia.foia...](https://www.muckrock.com/search/?q=palantir&models=foia.foiarequest)

Many of those requests came back empty, here's one that produced responsive
documents: the NYC Department of Finance -- $150,000 for a 6-month pilot of
their "Perpetual Server Core" technology to do fraud detection:

[https://www.muckrock.com/foi/new-york-city-17/palantir-
contr...](https://www.muckrock.com/foi/new-york-city-17/palantir-contract-
services-24354/#comms)

edit: specified that the requesters appear to be Gawker reporters doing their
own investigation

------
jzwinck
"Those anxieties come amid a wave of staff departures. A chart from Palantir’s
internal wiki said the departures through mid-April amounted to 5.8% of all
staff, or an annualized rate of 20%. That compares to a departure rate of
13.6% in 2015, 12.2% in 2014, and 9.2% in 2013. Palantir paid annual bonuses
in March...."

Many companies have waves of departures in the spring. Bonuses are paid (as at
Palantir), holidays are over, kids are about to finish school. A 5.8%
departure rate in the beginning of the year cannot be "annualized" any more
than fruitcake sales from December. And if it does end up that 20% of Palantir
quits in 2016, that'd be totally normal attrition for a large company. Where I
used to work it was 30% among software engineers, and even this was not a
problem.

I imagine that a number of ex-employees go on to work in the industry whose
data they analyzed at Palantir. This may help to explain why employees are
willing to work for less than elsewhere. It's because three years later they
will work for much more elsewhere. Especially the hedge fund analysts.

------
swingbridge
Saw the aftermath of a Palantir project after the client parted ways with
them. What a train wreck. There was a lot of hype around them but when one
looked deep into what they actually did it was a lot of smoke and mirrors and
not a lot of substance. Even basic stuff like data cleaning and integration
was poorly executed. Senior leadership didn't see value in what Panintir did,
the project was cut off and they were asked to leave.

Not surprised in the slightest to hear they are struggling.

------
tlogan
The problem with Palantir is the following:

Three letter agencies are paying and will continue to pay for Palantir
consulting and products.

However Palantir has been unable to fully productize their solution (it is
still pretty much consulting). Thus they have hard time convincing Fortune 500
companies to pay due to the costs and depending too much on human interaction.

~~~
n00b101
> unable to fully productize their solution

In my experience with this type of problem, it happens due to a failure of
vision and leadership. The software company focuses a vast majority of
resources on POCs and "consulting" revenue (really, rent-a-coder revenues) and
these "consultants" end up failing as product innovators (i.e. they contribute
practically nothing to the productization or even harnessing of institutional
knowledge) and they also fail as true consultants (i.e. they do not have deep
industry experience or management consulting prowess to be able to deliver
unique value and engage with clients). Ultimately, this happens because
leadership neglects product and becomes too caught up chasing deals and
burdening the organization with custom development work to close the gap
between the existing product versus market needs.

This is OK if your software company's consulting services are affordable.
Enterprise clients tends to be quite accepting of the need for customization
after product purchases. However they do not expect to pay McKinsey levels of
fees (let alone $18M per year?!).

An alternative business model that seems to work is management consulting,
where you can charge huge consulting fees (if you have earned the requisite
reputation), and you can even cross-sell relatively low cost in-house software
products or services alongside the consulting work. However, high value
consulting engagement like McKinsey tend to last weeks (not years), making the
expense palatable to clients (e.g. around 500k fee, for 2-3 consultants for a
month or so). The difference between management consulting and enterprise
software is that when paying $200k for 2-3 "millennial" "management
consultants" for a week of work, the client doesn't expect delivery of a
complete working software solution - the client only gets a PowerPoint
presentation suggesting what and how management should do in order to achieve
some given goals.

There is an interesting potential disruption occurring at the intersection of
management consulting and software, but not much has changed yet with
traditional business model divide between old-school management consulting and
enterprise software, and Palantir doesn't seem to have cracked that code.

~~~
ryandrake
> The software company focuses a vast majority of resources on POCs and
> "consulting" revenue (really, rent-a-coder revenues) and these "consultants"
> end up failing as product innovators (i.e. they contribute practically
> nothing to the productization or even harnessing of institutional knowledge)
> and they also fail as true consultants (i.e. they do not have deep industry
> experience or management consulting prowess to be able to deliver unique
> value and engage with clients). Ultimately, this happens because leadership
> neglects product and becomes too caught up chasing deals and burdening the
> organization with custom development work to close the gap between the
> existing product versus market needs.

Wow, that's a good summary. It's a trap that companies fall into and can never
get out of:

1\. Company has Product X and a bunch of smart engineers excitedly working on
it.

2\. The sales process ensues. No customers actually want Product X, but a few
whales say "We don't want that, but you have smart people, we will pay you for
this sorta-related ABC custom solution for us!"

3\. Company tries to stuff ABC into Product X. They think they are improving
their product AND getting the customer to pay for all the NRE! Woohoo! But in
reality they've just turned into a contract engineering company and don't know
it.

4\. Steps 2 and 3 repeat until Product X is a franken-product that has so many
features in it, nobody knows what it is supposed to do, customers still don't
want it, and the engineers eventually realized that they are no longer working
on the product they were so excited about.

------
bane
I don't think this is all that surprising. If you look at their staffing
numbers and their fundraises, they appear to not be sustaining business but
just growing staff because that's what startups do.

> Lisa Gordon, said that “the majority of the company’s customer relationships
> are multiple years in length, and many are as long as 10 years.”

This is not good at all. Customer loyalty is important, but considering that
they've been adding staff at a fast rate, _most_ of their customers should be
new-ish.

They've raised about $2.5b over an incredible number of rounds (multiple per
year), and are currently bringing in about $420m.

Based on my understanding, they message as a software seller, but appear to
make most of that revenue off of consulting and integration services tied
around their software lock-in. They also message as a big-data company, but
AFAIK don't provide anything that would be called "big data solutions" these
days.

edit: I thought Sankar's name sounded familiar, turns out he was the guy at
the very heart of Palantir's very embarrassing industrial espionage and
racketeering efforts against a competitor. He was apparently punished by being
promoted to company president.

[http://venturebeat.com/2011/02/16/palantirs-third-black-
eye-...](http://venturebeat.com/2011/02/16/palantirs-third-black-
eye-i2-lawsuit-settled/)

~~~
hkmurakami
They hire like a consultancy. Your topline scales linearly with the staff you
can ship out to client sites.

~~~
bane
What's interesting is that despite that being the case, and they charge out
their staff at huge rates (especially compared to what they pay them), they're
still losing money.

------
eachro
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 firms.

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

------
jgalt212
That picture of Alex Karp is amazing.

If I ever get too rich to never ever give a f*ck, I will dress like that.

[https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-
static/static/2016-05/6/12...](https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-
static/static/2016-05/6/12/enhanced/webdr05/longform-678-1462551369-3.jpg?no-
auto)

------
kwisatzh
The article hints at a larger problem that underlies all data-science-as-a-
service outfits: pricing for profitability. How can you price the generation
of insights so that you; Palantir etc. can become profitable, while those
insights can save on costs for the respective clients? Coke would need to
generate $18M+ per year from the insights alone to justify the costs.

~~~
jerryhuang100
that $18M per annum price tag is kind of steep. at that price, if a consortium
of five companies pool their money together, they could have a joint venture
of a "closed" consortium without sharing data with outsiders. the valuation
the new joint venture would even be another unicorn, depending on the
multiples you choose.

------
l33tbro
Confusing company on many levels. On one hand such huge clients, top talent
(until recently), and Thiel's famous success pre-requisite of having unique
offering. But then ... they go and do really, really weird stuff like making
recruitment videos shot on someone's Iphone:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhMqPoCQ5Q8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhMqPoCQ5Q8)

I think for a long time they got away with seeming really cloudy and
potentially mis-managed because of the secrecy that is inherent to what they
do. But clients are now asking tough questions about what value they can
actually bring to the table for crazy dollars, and things may becoming home to
roost.

~~~
untilHellbanned
Seems like hardly fits the "competition is for losers" claim. Consulting firms
are all about overpriced bullshit analysis. Seems like Palantir plays that
game but sadly not even well.

------
zekevermillion
Spinning the reported facts another way, Palantir has doubled revs over last
year, and could turn a profit at will. Meanwhile it is able to set price
optimally at verge of pain point for some of the largest enterprise customers.
Sounds like a well-run company.

------
Lxr
> “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?

~~~
ginger_beer_m
it appeals to that primitive instinct of belonging to a pack, fostering an us-
vs-them mentality. this way, you are less likely to leave and are encouraged
to give your 110%

~~~
yomly
It's also not just a tech thing, in consulting you have your McKinseyites,
BCGers and Bainies

------
palandick
There seems to be a lot of confusion here so let me clear up some things from
my former several years at Palantir.

1) Palantir's product is a legitimate product that works quite well for many
graph analysis use cases. If you can model your problem as a graph, chances
are that Palantir will help you find some solid insights (if there are
insights to be found) across your 15 disparate datasets. Software Engineers
build the core platform.

2) Forward Deployed Engineers customize and extend the platform for specific
client use cases and get client data into Palantir. If these customizations
end up being useful, they get rolled into the core platform(ideally).

3) Palantir works their engineers very hard and the performance bar is _very_
high. Calling it an engineering mill/sweatshop is a bit much considering you
get 3 meals/day, massages, chiropractic, nap rooms, excellent events, laundry,
etc and 6 figure salaries or massive stock or both.

4) Lots of people have been leaving. Part of this is because lots of oldies
are hitting their 10 year marks and part of it is because Palantir went
through a massive growth spurt over the last 4 years or so and now the fat is
being trimmed/people are leaving after concluding that it wasn't a good
fit/they don't want to work that much. If you can get into Palantir, you can
get into Google: Why not go to Google?

5) If you want to see the actual product, just look around. Here are like 150
examples:
[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCA98B156F7EFD6A0](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCA98B156F7EFD6A0)

6) The bookings vs revenue thing is pretty deceptive but everyone knows that
the money isn't real until its in your bank account or there's a signed
contract for it to be in your account.

~~~
triplesec
From your description, this is a classic Accenture-style (and Bain and other
strategic) consulting and systems integration business model, though possibly
with higher quality work, based on that latest management buzzphrase Big Data.
Whether it can provide the perceived value of a BCG of McKinsey is another
matter.

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

~~~
Tossrock
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".

~~~
s_m_t
Actually the palantiri were created by the elves as communication tools, even
before the sun and moon were created, and used by the good guys for several
thousand years before they fell in the hands of the bad guys about halfway
through the third age.

~~~
avn2109
Just like how a lot of computing was built by the good guys as communication
tools/for fun, before the sun and moon were created back in the 1970's, and
used by the good guys for several decades before computing fell into the hands
of the bad guys aka surveillance state.

I've always interpreted it to mean that Thiel dislikes bullshit, so he's kinda
sheepishly telling everyone who is sufficiently detail oriented/nerdy exactly
what his new company is all about, right there in the name.

------
404throwaway
Palantir is probably worth less than the money invested. At $420 million in
revenue, they would need to be worth more than 6x revenue to match the $2.5
billion invested. They certainly have "special sauce" over and above their
value as a consulting firm (which are worth maybe 2x revenue).

But how big is the market for that "special sauce"?

The intelligence customers are low-capability, have massive datasets and
really do need Palantir. But they've tapped out that market. So look at the
consumer brands in their customer list: low capability, yes. But you could fit
the data for any of them into the RAM on one server.

Yes Palantir has super smart guys who can find fascinating relationships in
the data. But there are only so many relationhips to find. And once that's
done, the IT staff of the customer can do the work easily themselves.

So I'm sorry but I think Palantir is a washout (worth less than the money
invested). Nice offices though.

------
pfarnsworth
I'm actually surprised that Palatir paid below market rates. I heard they paid
well above market rates, which justified their stance of never going public.

~~~
Kadin
I hadn't heard that either. Their reputation in the DC area is that the
generally pay market rate, although I think part of their recruitment strategy
is that they're less stodgy than the other big defense contractors. (I.e.
"we're a software company in the defense/intelligence space, not a
defense/intelligence company that does software".) Not sure if that's really
true as I've never worked there, but that's the pitch.

~~~
bane
What I've heard is that they pay well for incoming grads, but then no pay
raises...ever...and by year 5 you're clawing at the walls for a liquidity
event so you can shed your options and get out.

------
insulanian
Whatever you do, please don't discontinue Plottable.js

~~~
m4dc4pXXX
Plottable.js is the only charting package I've used that's a real library, not
just a set of pre-canned charts. Sadly, the devs don't seem to have a lot of
time to devote to updating the site.

------
rfrey
$1 million/month. I think that would make even patio11 blush. :)

~~~
graedus
Raise your rates!

------
bkjelden
20% annualized turnover does not seem alarming for a company in the valley
that hires mostly fresh college grads.

That implies an average length of tenure of 5 years. Very few college grads
that I know stay at their first job for 5 years.

~~~
gaius
The average doesn't tell the true story tho'. If you have a few old-timers in
management but a majority of engineers churning in a year, then your product
is mainly being worked on by people who never get fully up to speed on your
codebase, supervised by people who haven't programmed in years.

------
ktamura
"The company, based in Palo Alto, California, is essentially a hybrid software
and consulting firm, placing what it calls “forward deployed engineers” on-
site at client offices."

This says everything about Palantir, and depending on your perspective, their
valuation is (not) justified.

It's justified if you think of the equation Palantir = McKinsey + IBM. On the
other hand, no consulting firm should have 20x revenue multiple.

~~~
askafriend
I've often heard the Palantir narrative where they talk about a core platform
or product that they build independent of the consulting work. That might
explain the optimistic 20x revenue multiple. However, I don't think that
platform has really come to fruition and they're still relying primarily on
consulting to fuel themselves. Someone else here mentioned that they hadn't
fully productized their solution, which prevents them from closing large
clients outside of government contracts.

------
marmaduke
How can they ask for such high prices?

~~~
melvinmt
Price discrimination at its finest.

> "If you can pay, you have to pay us. If you are a philanthropy stopping
> pedophiles, we will give you the same product you would get if you are
> wealthy special forces unit in a very wealthy country," Karp said.

> "If you're a hedge fund and you make a billion dollars and say you're not
> going to pay us, well, that's rapacious and we're not going to take your
> calls anymore."

[http://www.cnbc.com/2014/03/19/free-advice-dont-go-public-
sa...](http://www.cnbc.com/2014/03/19/free-advice-dont-go-public-says-
palantirs-ceo.html)

------
davej
To get an idea of the kind of stuff Palantir do then it's worth taking a look
at the presentation that was leaked during the HBGary leaks:
[http://www.businessinsider.com/palantir-
wikileaks-2011-2?IR=...](http://www.businessinsider.com/palantir-
wikileaks-2011-2?IR=T#-1)

------
AndrewKemendo
I used Palantir heavily in my previous work and it was disappointing at how
manual it was based on what we were sold as a mostly automated platform.

It had a great interface for creating network diagrams, and collaborating but
it was a huge pain to get integrated.

I mean if nothing else, give us keyword matching and linking!

------
dccoolgai
Interviewed with them once: took like 2 months and it was a horrible
experience. Weirdest thing was I randomly ran into this guy onsite that was a
friend-of-a-friend.. and enough of an acquaintance that we had each others'
numbers and went drinking a couple times... saw him there wearing the same
Palantir t-shirt as everyone else (which was weird) and he barely acknowledged
me... like I wasn't "one of them" yet... it was creepy enough that I was glad
I didn't get an offer.

------
allenleein
FYI:

What does Joe Lonsdale think of BuzzFeed's Inside Palantir article?

[https://www.quora.com/What-does-Joe-Lonsdale-think-of-
BuzzFe...](https://www.quora.com/What-does-Joe-Lonsdale-think-of-BuzzFeeds-
Inside-Palantir-article/answer/Joe-Lonsdale?__snids__=1650809443&__nsrc__=2)

------
gzur
The headline graphic really caught my attention, because my fingers have ls
-latr ingrained into them.

I thought it oddly fitting.

------
forrestthewoods
I know a few people who have worked for Palantir. They all agree it doesn't
work. They all quit because Palantir data analysis is being used to ruin lives
(throw people in jail) and they believe the whole operation to be a giant
defrauding of the government.

~~~
dbt00
I worked at Palantir for over 7 years, and that doesn't sound like any of the
projects I knew about or any of the people that I worked with.

~~~
jonathankoren
While I'll defer to you about what people you know, I don't understand how
that doesn't sound like any Palantir product you know. It's the core product.
When it's sold commercially it's used to find people committing fraud, and
those people could be arrested, put on trial, and if found by a jury of their
peers to have committed the crime beyond a reasonable doubt, thrown in jail
for a number of years. When it's sold to militaries and intelligence agencies
it's used to make _kill lists_.[0] Don't delude yourself into thinking that
it's founding wasn't to algorithmically create kill lists, because it founded
in 2004 with funding from the CIA specifically to bring "big data analysis" to
the "War on Terror".

It's a scummy company. And if there's any doubt don't forget, they were
implicated with HBGary in a dirty tricks plot against Wikileaks and Glenn
Greenwald after the the scope of NSA mass surveillance was starting to be
uncovered.[1][2]

[0] [http://techcrunch.com/2015/01/11/leaked-palantir-doc-
reveals...](http://techcrunch.com/2015/01/11/leaked-palantir-doc-reveals-uses-
specific-functions-and-key-clients/)

[1] [http://www.businessinsider.com/palantir-wikileaks-
apology-20...](http://www.businessinsider.com/palantir-wikileaks-
apology-2011-2) [2] [http://www.businessinsider.com/palantir-
wikileaks-2011-2?op=...](http://www.businessinsider.com/palantir-
wikileaks-2011-2?op=1)

~~~
Anderkent
> When it's sold commercially it's used to find people committing fraud, and
> those people could be arrested, put on trial, and if found by a jury of
> their peers to have committed the crime beyond a reasonable doubt, thrown in
> jail for a number of years.

Um, and that's a bad thing how, assuming they really committed fraud?

> When it's sold to militaries and intelligence agencies it's used to make
> kill lists.

Militaries and intelligence agencies do much more than just make kill lists.
And I sincerely doubt such lists are created without human supervision. But
being mostly a pacifist I've never wanted to work with those projects, so I
don't know the details.

disclaimer: I work at Palantir.

~~~
jonathankoren
The grandparent said he doesn't know of any Palantir product that sends people
to jail. That just doesn't make any sense. But to answer your question: no,
sending people to jail who have been convicted of a crime after a fair trial
is not a bad thing.

My problem with Palantir is that it's a surveillance tool that's used to kill
people.

You can't pass it off as "just a tool", because this was its initial
rationale, and what its initial customers do. All the commercial fraud
products are just after the fact product repositioning.

The algorithmic kill lists I refer to go by the military term "signature
strike"[1]. To create target lists, the government essentially data mines
their survelince data use social network analysis (sound like any product you
know?) and throws it through a machine learning classifier. If the classifier
comes back "true", the person gets droned. The key thing to remember -- and
this can't be stressed enough -- NO ONE IN THE KILL CHAIN KNOWS THE TARGET!
It's just math.[0]

Now think about that when your test fail, or you find a data error, or the
next time you review your classification model's performance.

If you work for this company, you owe it to yourself to understand what
exactly this company is doing, and how its products are used.

Palantir isn't like any other Silicon Valley company. Google just wants you
click on ads. Facebook just wants you to click on ads. Uber just wants you to
drive taxis and get taxi rides. Palantir rationale is to help people kill
people.

Maybe you were overwhelmed with the private car, the talk of vague cool stuff,
the hint of cloak and dagger, and the 6-figure salary, but you owe it to
yourself to get informed about the company -- and any company you're thinking
about joining. This is triplely so when you're dealing with intelligence and
military contractors.

If you're honestly a pacifist, I hate to break it to you, but you've picked
pretty much the worst company in Silicon Valley to work for.

[1] Dont bother with Wikipwdia. It redirects to "targeted killing", which
isn't precise. A signature strike is a specific type of assassination. [0]
[http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/06/18/obama-cia-
ret...](http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/06/18/obama-cia-returning-to-
controversial-drone-signature-strikes)

------
Analemma_
Apparently they're not doing well. Good riddance. Palantir is creepy as hell.
For all the snark about how startups and places like Apple are run like cults,
like in The Circle, Palantir is the one outfit I know of where the stereotype
is really true. And in the post-Snowden world where we know for sure just how
all-devouring the US intelligence's community's desires are regarding our
privacy, the last thing we need is Silicon Vally outfits helping them out.
Assuming Karp can't right the ship again, I will not be sorry to see them go.

~~~
nickpsecurity
It's a great article but I agree with you: to heck with Palantir.

~~~
secfirstmd
"Spies Sans Frontières? How CIA-linked Palantir is gaining ground in the aid
industry (and why some humanitarians are worried)"

[https://www.irinnews.org/special-report/2016/03/07/spies-
san...](https://www.irinnews.org/special-report/2016/03/07/spies-sans-
fronti%C3%A8res)

~~~
stevenbedrick
Software like Palantir's is a classic example of a dual-use technology.

------
ginger_beer_m
> “We’re looking to do transformational work with our customers,” Gavin Hood,
> Palantir’s chief of staff, said in an interview with BuzzFeed News. “Finding
> the right partner to do that transformational work takes a lot of care and a
> lot of attention.” He added, “There’s a lot of reasons why that doesn’t
> always work out.”

Sure it's hard to find suckers who will give you million of dollars for poorly
defined return.

------
untilHellbanned
Theranos, Zenefits, palantir, what's the next unicorn deflation? Is it Uber or
Spotify with their Palantir-esque spend a $1/make $0.90 strategies or is it an
another company with less-reported vulnerabilities?

------
taytus
"Although the company is not profitable"... Excuse me but, you have to be
fucking kidding me!!

~~~
dbt00
Nope. Pretty much any nonpublic silicon valley companies aren't -- some public
ones too. They are spending more money then they have, in the short term, in
order to become bigger and more successful in the long term. That's why the
venture ('building something') capital ('with money') industry exists.

------
sharkweek
Will Alden is shaping up to be one of the most connected journalists in
startupland. First the Zenefits coverage, and now this, he's done a great job
getting lots of great sources at some of the more interesting companies.

Credit to BuzzFeed for building up a pretty solid news team.

~~~
laxatives
Buzzfeed was also respnsible for outing tennis fixing in The Tennis Racket
using statistical analysis of players' matches.

~~~
DasIch
Buzzfeed is shaping up to be the one of the best sources for investigative
journalism. Who would have thought?

~~~
twoodfin
AFAIK, that was always the plan. You need a huge audience to have the revenue
to do great journalism online, and one of the few proven ways to build that
audience is with clickbait and listicles.

So while it may seem like Buzzfeed has a split personality, it's very much
intentional.

~~~
laxatives
Its not a crazy business model. My early stage company gets nearly all of its
revenue from a product no one in engineering has touched in over a year, which
funds some more intensive and risky product development. Similarly, DuoLingo
has a foundation in teaching languages while building up a large supervised
data set for machine translation. A lot of companies are basically fronts for
getting average folks to either curate a label set or provide permission to
access existing data. My old company provided a vague statement like, "Improve
your experience, integrate your gmail account", providing quite literally
nothing to customers except remove the button, yet provided us unlimited
access to contact books and emails/attachments, many of which were very
private and confidential. Not proud of that one, but thats the reality and for
some people, very profitable.

~~~
spacehome
Wow, that's nuts. My gmail account is the gateway to password resetting a
bunch of different accounts, not to mention all the private correspondences.
It would have to be quite the value proposition to make me give up the keys.
And these idiots give it away for nothing at all?

~~~
laxatives
Yes. We had numerous SSN and bank account details, basically anything you
might find in a personal or professional email inbox. Obviously we weren't
making use of any of this, but if we had one malicious engineer, things could
have gone very poorly. One automated tool inadvertently posted an individual's
SSN on the paid version of our site was very angry. The level of access was
something we were always discouraged from discussing with sales folks and
management always kept things very vague.

~~~
thucydides
Holy... Okay, just went to
[https://security.google.com/settings/security/permissions](https://security.google.com/settings/security/permissions)
and revoked permissions for a bunch of apps. Thanks for this story.

------
CydeWeys
> If you have information or tips, you can contact this reporter over an
> encrypted chat service such as Telegram, Signal, or WhatsApp, at
> 310-617-1302. You can also send an encrypted email to
> will.alden@buzzfeed.com, using the PGP key found here.

This is the best "contact me if you have juicy insider info" slug that I have
_ever seen_. He can take PGP-encrypted email!

And this is on Buzzfeed!!!

~~~
jauer
Buzzfeed's long-form journalism is pretty good/interesting/relevant, you just
have to hold your nose long enough to get past the foul stench of click-bait.

~~~
Nanite
Well that or use HN to curate for you, the extremely rare well written pieces
are not worth frequenting Buzzfeed, Techcrunch etc for

------
leroy_masochist
This article was way, way better sourced than I thought it'd be. Especially
for Buzzfeed of all places.

~~~
nilkn
This is a trend I've noticed. BuzzFeed has had a number of excellent longform
pieces recently.

~~~
l33tbro
They're diversifying their offering. The clickbait stuff won't change, but
they're looking to build credibility with those longform pieces you mention to
shed their poor reputation.

------
gaius
From a linked article:

 _" The primary payday for the best engineers is that you get to work with the
best engineers,"_

Funny how that's not the same for execs!

------
hackaflocka
There are a lot of similarities to Theranos.

------
dschiptsov
SAP-like scam. Highly refined, Oxford-educated sales and execs, selling with
high-status deceptive techniques grossly overpriced, lovest quality outdated
by a decade crap, for support and maintenance of which they are billing their
victims for each hour spend by expensive suit wearing nonsense talking
consultants.

BTW, the guys who went there for sweatshop positions are those who barely
managed to graduate. But in sales there are top tier liberal arts guys, with
refined speech and behavior.

These kind of enterprises is a classic social pyramid, modeled after an
organized religion, especially Catholic Church, with exactly the same
deceptions, dogmas and loyalty for lower ranks.

~~~
Anderkent
> BTW, the guys who went there for sweatshop positions are those who barely
> managed to graduate

Bullshit. I work at the London office, most of the FDEs have firsts from
cambridge/oxford/imperial/some other top european university.

~~~
dschiptsov
Oh, come on. I have seen enough of consultants and witnessed a SAP takeover of
a small retailer.

This looks like as if a whole bunch of hotshots in $3k suits take you to a
head office in, say, Germany, with a five star hotel, top tier restaurants and
business class flights, while telling you that you are too successful and too
rich to drive your own car, that only struggling, unsuccessful losers do it,
etc.

Eventually, one finds oneself with a few guys in expesive suits who are
sitting in the car right on your lap, totally obstructing the view, but
telling you when to accelerate, stop or turn, claiming that this is a much
safer and the most effective way to drive a car, so they bill you for each
kilometer and each turn taken.

They, moreover, have replaced your car with their own ancient vehicle, to
which there is not a single mechanic in a 1000 miles and the only spare parts
available from their own garage, with the replacing procedure which requires
to remove everything from the salon and from under the hood and then to
reassemble it all back, which takes a few days and for which you are billed
for each hour of each of twenty certified technicians, half of them flown from
the head office at your expense.

And, please, don't tell me that consulting companies are different.

Btw, really smart top grads would never even come close to these scam shops,
like sane people would avoid Ponzi schemes or a telemarketing crap with a
hidden charges. Being fooled by meaningless titles and certificates instead of
working with a cutting edge technologies and obtaining skills which could be
sold later.. I can't imagine top grads being so clueless.

~~~
Anderkent
> Btw, really smart top grads would never even come close to these scam shops

Nice attempt at moving the goal post; first you claim only 'those who barely
managed to graduate' work at those places. Now it's 'really smart top grads'
don't work there.

I have no idea how the rest of what you said is relevant to the article, but
your claim is simply factually incorrect.

------
ZanyProgrammer
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!

~~~
dbt00
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.

