8 ms·

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

by freyr 10y ago

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?

deprave 10y ago
My guess is the hype created through secrecy.
fullshark 10y ago
The stock options and perceived prestige.
lotso 10y ago
There was a point where Palantir became the most prestigious place to work out of school.
- askafriend 10y ago
  I think this was around 2011-2012 timeframe.
  - hueving 10y ago
    In a tiny fraction of the schools. I hadn't even heard of them while working in a top research university at the time (this was Europe so maybe I was just missing out on a SV circle jerk).
    - argonaut 10y ago
      In Silicon Valley, European schools aren't really considered among the top 10 engineering schools. I'm not saying that's right, just telling you what the perception is.
      - openplatypus 10y ago
        Possibly. We value US degrees pretty low in EU as well.
      - santaclaus 10y ago
        Uhhh what? ETH Zürich puts out some of the best CS grads in the world.
        rryan 10y ago
        There's a reason Google has an absolutely massive office in Zurich. Anecdotally, some of the sharpest Googlers I have ever collaborated with are in Zurich.
        jonathankoren 10y ago
        True, but the number of non-us schools that any American in computer science can name tops out at like 20, and that's only if they've been grad school or recruiting long enough. Let's see how I can do at naming perceived good foriegn schools. I'm not going to google anything, so the any misnaming is an accurate representation of the data in my head. These are listed in no particular order. North America and the Caribbean excluding the United States - Canada: Simon Frasier, Waterloo, UBC, Toronto, McGill - Mexico et al: nada South America - mas nada Africa - South Africa: I one time had a CS professor from the University of Natal, but that's all I really know about it. Australia and Oceania - New Zealand: Weka came out of University of Waikato or something. That's popular, so I guess it must have something going on. Asia: - Japan: University of Tokyo - Taiwan: National Taiwanese University? That's shown up a few times I believe. Taiwan also has a Tsinghua, but that's not the good one, so don't count it. I on;y mentioned it because... - China: Tsinghua University is very good. It's "the MIT of China." Peiking University is also a good school, but they're not as engineering focused. There's something called Beiha or something in Shanghai or so, that one's good. There's another school with a long name that's in Guangzhou or something that's on the coast but not near Shenzhen that whose colors are white and green that's good. Maybe it's Fujian? - India: I know about IIT, but in all honesty I don't remember seeing any papers or anything like that come out of it in my field, so I'm biased against it, even if it's "the MIT of India." - Israel: Haifa, and Tel Aviv Europe: - UK: Cambridge and Oxford are famous, but I've never heard anything about their engineer schools, so I'm going to put them in the impressing-looking-degree-but-actually-only-average-or-less pile with Harvard and Yale CS grads. (Sorry Harvard boys and Yalies. Should have gone to Cornell.), Aberdeen shows up from time to time, so that's a plus. There's Open University, which might be okay, but I don't really know. I know people that went to Southampton in HCI, so I'll say yes for HCI. Swansea exists, but I don't know. - France: University 6 or something. Although, I think it recently changed it's name, so if you're using the new name, you're out luck, because I don't know any other schools in country. - Switzerland: There's the school in Lausanne. The one with the french name, and the four letter acronym ECPI or something. The first word is Ecole or something. That's got a good CS and math program. - Austria: Zurich - Germany: There's the Max Planck Institute, but I don't think that's a school. There's a university in Cologne, but I can't tell you anything else about it. Other than that, I can't name anything, which is a real shame, because Germany is famous for engineering. I heard the all the schools took a nosedive after the Nazis killed the Jews, but I don't know if it's true or not. - Finland: University of Helsinki was good enough for Linus, it's good enough for me. - Russia: Moscow Technical University or something. That's the good math school in Moscow. but there's more than one university in Moscow, and so it's hard to remember which one is which. It's even harder, because I can't actually name the other schools. I think St Petersburg also has STEM school, but maybe I'm just making that up. And that's pretty much the international STEM post-secondary educational system. So 25 schools that I'd call good. (Mentioned, but not good: Oxford, Cambridge, Cologne, Taiwan's Tsinghua, IIT (sorry India)) And even though Max Planck isn't a school, although if you have it on your resume, I'll be impressed. I'm sure I missed a ton, but that's kind of my point.
nilkn 10y ago
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.
- laxatives 10y ago
  I agree they they spent a ton of money on recruiting, but many of my interview questions were absolutely terrible trivia questions. They were strictly questions that had a single answers regarding knowledge of shell command line functions. Not familiarity with usage, like when to use grep or ps aux, but things like how do you unzip and search with 5 keystrokes (zgrep)? For a new grad, it was a complete waste of time.
- sumitgt 10y ago
  I had the exact same experience
- TallGuyShort 10y ago
  My experience was similar, but with Facebook it was even more so. I'm not sure this correlates to the work you end up doing.
- askafriend 10y ago
  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...
  - 10y ago
atom-morgan 10y ago
Secrecy, inexperience of the developers, and wooing them with money and a great interview experience. A solid first impression.
MattLaroche 10y ago
I quit Palantir after 6 months in 2011; I am a CMU CS grad and I worked at Google for 5 years before Palantir. Their pitches of "We only hire the best and brightest" and "Our work truly changes the world" sold me on them.
- askafriend 10y ago
  Why did you quit? I'm curious what your observations were as an insider.
  - MattLaroche 10y ago
    Bunch of reasons: * Making hedge funds richer didn't actually feel like changing the world. * I never really clicked on the codebase, didn't understand what was going on in the code, and didn't contribute much. (I don't think the code was easy to understand, and my mentor wasn't much help) * I wasn't interested in making Palantir my full life, and there was a lot of pressure to have work be life. One of the leaders in my group basically said "yeah, I don't spend time with my pre-Palantir friends anymore." * I also didn't click with my coworkers. I was about 27, and felt like an old guy. There were a bunch of other things socially that didn't work out. Strong culture that I didn't jive with. * I got the signal that my 9-7 schedule wasn't enough. The Government group may have been a better fit for me, I'm not sure.
    - dbt00 10y ago
      Hey, not everybody there was baby faced. Your lead when you quit was 35. :)
- untilHellbanned 10y ago
  Pretty lame pitch. Yeah help coca-cola sell more sugar water. I guess that does change the world. Also best/brightest worship needs to stop. It correlates to nothing. This coming from MIT/harvard grad.
  - aswanson 10y ago
linkregister 10y ago
The offer letter includes the stock/salary options based off of the current and projected valuation of the company. It's hard not to be impressed when you see the eye-popping values of stock options after they vest (4 or 5 years). At least that was my experience in 2011. Had I taken the offer I would have had no problem affording a Bay Area house today, given Palantir's current valuation. That also assumes a liquidity event.
- CydeWeys 10y ago
  Do you regret not taking that job? (Granted it's hard to answer without having all the information available, such as how happy you would've ended up being there over the past five years.)
  - linkregister 10y ago
    Yes and no, I chose not to take the job since my spouse didn't want to relocate to Virginia from central Maryland. The job I had at the time was fantastic as well. I have no doubt the position I would have fulfilled at Palantir would be intellectually challenging and rewarding. The salary was also competitive for the DC area (not at all for Palo Alto). So on one hand I made my wife happy but who's to say buying a house in cash might have made her happy too. My colleagues that went there for the most part enjoyed the work. One of them got burned out but I'm confident that was self-imposed and not due to excessive pressure from team leaders.
    - CydeWeys 10y ago
      Oh, similar story! I used to live in Montgomery County, and I interviewed with Palantir precisely because it was a top-tier tech company that I wouldn't have to move for (albeit the commute wouldn't have been amazing). I didn't take interview preparation seriously though and flubbed the interview, so nothing came of it. I did end up relocating to NYC to work a different top-tier tech company that has an engineering office here but not really one in DC. I've basically taken every good job offer I've had in my life, and I haven't regretted one jump.
- 10y ago
morgante 10y ago
Palantir has great marketing. Several friends turned down offers from Facebook/Google/etc. for (much) more money to join Palantir because they "didn't want to sell ads" and somehow thought that Palantir's work would be more fulfilling. The government and NGO work certainly sounds compelling (you're going to be finding terrorists and improving public health) until you realize it's a soul-crushing job mostly pushing low-level data around.
- KingMob 10y ago
  Ironic, considering Palantir's involved in the ad world, too. I believe their NYC office does quite a bit of advertising/marketing analysis.

by freyr 10y ago

deprave 10y ago

My guess is the hype created through secrecy.

fullshark 10y ago

The stock options and perceived prestige.

lotso 10y ago

There was a point where Palantir became the most prestigious place to work out of school.

askafriend 10y ago
I think this was around 2011-2012 timeframe.
- hueving 10y ago
  In a tiny fraction of the schools. I hadn't even heard of them while working in a top research university at the time (this was Europe so maybe I was just missing out on a SV circle jerk).
  - argonaut 10y ago
    In Silicon Valley, European schools aren't really considered among the top 10 engineering schools. I'm not saying that's right, just telling you what the perception is.
    - openplatypus 10y ago
      Possibly. We value US degrees pretty low in EU as well.
    - santaclaus 10y ago
      Uhhh what? ETH Zürich puts out some of the best CS grads in the world.
      - rryan 10y ago
        There's a reason Google has an absolutely massive office in Zurich. Anecdotally, some of the sharpest Googlers I have ever collaborated with are in Zurich.
      - jonathankoren 10y ago
        True, but the number of non-us schools that any American in computer science can name tops out at like 20, and that's only if they've been grad school or recruiting long enough. Let's see how I can do at naming perceived good foriegn schools. I'm not going to google anything, so the any misnaming is an accurate representation of the data in my head. These are listed in no particular order. North America and the Caribbean excluding the United States - Canada: Simon Frasier, Waterloo, UBC, Toronto, McGill - Mexico et al: nada South America - mas nada Africa - South Africa: I one time had a CS professor from the University of Natal, but that's all I really know about it. Australia and Oceania - New Zealand: Weka came out of University of Waikato or something. That's popular, so I guess it must have something going on. Asia: - Japan: University of Tokyo - Taiwan: National Taiwanese University? That's shown up a few times I believe. Taiwan also has a Tsinghua, but that's not the good one, so don't count it. I on;y mentioned it because... - China: Tsinghua University is very good. It's "the MIT of China." Peiking University is also a good school, but they're not as engineering focused. There's something called Beiha or something in Shanghai or so, that one's good. There's another school with a long name that's in Guangzhou or something that's on the coast but not near Shenzhen that whose colors are white and green that's good. Maybe it's Fujian? - India: I know about IIT, but in all honesty I don't remember seeing any papers or anything like that come out of it in my field, so I'm biased against it, even if it's "the MIT of India." - Israel: Haifa, and Tel Aviv Europe: - UK: Cambridge and Oxford are famous, but I've never heard anything about their engineer schools, so I'm going to put them in the impressing-looking-degree-but-actually-only-average-or-less pile with Harvard and Yale CS grads. (Sorry Harvard boys and Yalies. Should have gone to Cornell.), Aberdeen shows up from time to time, so that's a plus. There's Open University, which might be okay, but I don't really know. I know people that went to Southampton in HCI, so I'll say yes for HCI. Swansea exists, but I don't know. - France: University 6 or something. Although, I think it recently changed it's name, so if you're using the new name, you're out luck, because I don't know any other schools in country. - Switzerland: There's the school in Lausanne. The one with the french name, and the four letter acronym ECPI or something. The first word is Ecole or something. That's got a good CS and math program. - Austria: Zurich - Germany: There's the Max Planck Institute, but I don't think that's a school. There's a university in Cologne, but I can't tell you anything else about it. Other than that, I can't name anything, which is a real shame, because Germany is famous for engineering. I heard the all the schools took a nosedive after the Nazis killed the Jews, but I don't know if it's true or not. - Finland: University of Helsinki was good enough for Linus, it's good enough for me. - Russia: Moscow Technical University or something. That's the good math school in Moscow. but there's more than one university in Moscow, and so it's hard to remember which one is which. It's even harder, because I can't actually name the other schools. I think St Petersburg also has STEM school, but maybe I'm just making that up. And that's pretty much the international STEM post-secondary educational system. So 25 schools that I'd call good. (Mentioned, but not good: Oxford, Cambridge, Cologne, Taiwan's Tsinghua, IIT (sorry India)) And even though Max Planck isn't a school, although if you have it on your resume, I'll be impressed. I'm sure I missed a ton, but that's kind of my point.

nilkn 10y ago

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.

laxatives 10y ago
I agree they they spent a ton of money on recruiting, but many of my interview questions were absolutely terrible trivia questions. They were strictly questions that had a single answers regarding knowledge of shell command line functions. Not familiarity with usage, like when to use grep or ps aux, but things like how do you unzip and search with 5 keystrokes (zgrep)? For a new grad, it was a complete waste of time.
sumitgt 10y ago
I had the exact same experience
TallGuyShort 10y ago
My experience was similar, but with Facebook it was even more so. I'm not sure this correlates to the work you end up doing.
askafriend 10y ago
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...
- 10y ago

atom-morgan 10y ago

Secrecy, inexperience of the developers, and wooing them with money and a great interview experience. A solid first impression.

MattLaroche 10y ago

I quit Palantir after 6 months in 2011; I am a CMU CS grad and I worked at Google for 5 years before Palantir. Their pitches of "We only hire the best and brightest" and "Our work truly changes the world" sold me on them.

askafriend 10y ago
Why did you quit? I'm curious what your observations were as an insider.
- MattLaroche 10y ago
  Bunch of reasons: * Making hedge funds richer didn't actually feel like changing the world. * I never really clicked on the codebase, didn't understand what was going on in the code, and didn't contribute much. (I don't think the code was easy to understand, and my mentor wasn't much help) * I wasn't interested in making Palantir my full life, and there was a lot of pressure to have work be life. One of the leaders in my group basically said "yeah, I don't spend time with my pre-Palantir friends anymore." * I also didn't click with my coworkers. I was about 27, and felt like an old guy. There were a bunch of other things socially that didn't work out. Strong culture that I didn't jive with. * I got the signal that my 9-7 schedule wasn't enough. The Government group may have been a better fit for me, I'm not sure.
  - dbt00 10y ago
    Hey, not everybody there was baby faced. Your lead when you quit was 35. :)
untilHellbanned 10y ago
Pretty lame pitch. Yeah help coca-cola sell more sugar water. I guess that does change the world. Also best/brightest worship needs to stop. It correlates to nothing. This coming from MIT/harvard grad.
- aswanson 10y ago

linkregister 10y ago

The offer letter includes the stock/salary options based off of the current and projected valuation of the company. It's hard not to be impressed when you see the eye-popping values of stock options after they vest (4 or 5 years). At least that was my experience in 2011. Had I taken the offer I would have had no problem affording a Bay Area house today, given Palantir's current valuation. That also assumes a liquidity event.

CydeWeys 10y ago
Do you regret not taking that job? (Granted it's hard to answer without having all the information available, such as how happy you would've ended up being there over the past five years.)
- linkregister 10y ago
  Yes and no, I chose not to take the job since my spouse didn't want to relocate to Virginia from central Maryland. The job I had at the time was fantastic as well. I have no doubt the position I would have fulfilled at Palantir would be intellectually challenging and rewarding. The salary was also competitive for the DC area (not at all for Palo Alto). So on one hand I made my wife happy but who's to say buying a house in cash might have made her happy too. My colleagues that went there for the most part enjoyed the work. One of them got burned out but I'm confident that was self-imposed and not due to excessive pressure from team leaders.
  - CydeWeys 10y ago
    Oh, similar story! I used to live in Montgomery County, and I interviewed with Palantir precisely because it was a top-tier tech company that I wouldn't have to move for (albeit the commute wouldn't have been amazing). I didn't take interview preparation seriously though and flubbed the interview, so nothing came of it. I did end up relocating to NYC to work a different top-tier tech company that has an engineering office here but not really one in DC. I've basically taken every good job offer I've had in my life, and I haven't regretted one jump.
10y ago

morgante 10y ago

Palantir has great marketing. Several friends turned down offers from Facebook/Google/etc. for (much) more money to join Palantir because they "didn't want to sell ads" and somehow thought that Palantir's work would be more fulfilling. The government and NGO work certainly sounds compelling (you're going to be finding terrorists and improving public health) until you realize it's a soul-crushing job mostly pushing low-level data around.

KingMob 10y ago
Ironic, considering Palantir's involved in the ad world, too. I believe their NYC office does quite a bit of advertising/marketing analysis.