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Consulting companies very often do not own the software they build at a clients, and so can't really reuse it. That's not what Palantir does. I'm not sure what

Consulting companies very often do not own the software they build at a clients, and so can't really reuse it. That's not what Palantir does. I'm not sure what you think the business model is that would go against code reuse across sites. If you can afford to negotiate for ownership of what you build at a client site, why wouldn't you reuse things that are common? Like, the reuse thing isn't binary. There's a whole spectrum between 'give everyone exactly the same thing', and 'give ever y single client something built for them from scratch'. And if you can build something from scratch at one client site, take half of that to another client, take 3/4 of that to yet another, and eventually end up only having to build 2-3% of the thing at every place, that's building a product while already getting paid for it.

user5994461 10y ago
>>> I'm not sure what you think the business model is that would go against code reuse across sites. If you can afford to negotiate for ownership of what you build at a client site, why wouldn't you reuse things that are common? Because there isn't much that is common. You're called to craft customised software, with special customization for the client needs and tight integration with the client systems. Anyway, none of this matters. At the end of the day. A consulting shop doesn't bill software, it bills the hours*men. Whatever spectrum you think you can achieve, your actual business model always push back to its extreme side. I've worked at consulting shops trying to bill software as software. I've never seen it goes very well.
burntrelish1273 10y ago
Palantir is more consultingish-convert-to-subscription/product model where possible... they make money anyway they can and keep looking to build new business opportunities with consultingish svcs. In general, strict consultancies are inherently unscalable and expensive, whereas SaaS has a unit cost of nearly $0. The benefits of consultingish, unscalable behaviors are known, in order to get to, and create new, scalable products. http://paulgraham.com/ds.html http://paulgraham.com/ds.html

user5994461 10y ago

>>> I'm not sure what you think the business model is that would go against code reuse across sites. If you can afford to negotiate for ownership of what you build at a client site, why wouldn't you reuse things that are common? Because there isn't much that is common. You're called to craft customised software, with special customization for the client needs and tight integration with the client systems. Anyway, none of this matters. At the end of the day. A consulting shop doesn't bill software, it bills the hours*men. Whatever spectrum you think you can achieve, your actual business model always push back to its extreme side. I've worked at consulting shops trying to bill software as software. I've never seen it goes very well.

burntrelish1273 10y ago

Palantir is more consultingish-convert-to-subscription/product model where possible... they make money anyway they can and keep looking to build new business opportunities with consultingish svcs. In general, strict consultancies are inherently unscalable and expensive, whereas SaaS has a unit cost of nearly $0. The benefits of consultingish, unscalable behaviors are known, in order to get to, and create new, scalable products. http://paulgraham.com/ds.html http://paulgraham.com/ds.html