3 ms·

Why isn't the universities being used to solve these problems

• filoleg 3y ago
  Probably because the quality of the final end-user software produced by universities is less than what a company like Palantir would produce. It is kind of amazing what you can create if you have hundreds (if not thousands) of really well paid SWEs with industry experience of working on real products used by people who pay money for it. As opposed to a bunch of really smart (and really underpaid, looking at the stipend amounts) grad students who know a lot about their specific domain, but lack the industry experience and proper product management. Add on top of that that Palantir will dedicate engineers just for their big customers, just so that they can assist with integrating and customizing the product the way the customer wants. Palantir literally has a role for that called Forward-Deployed Engineer, and they will fly out to wherever the customer is to address whatever issues they have. Even if all else was equal, there is no way a university would be able to do that. P.S. Don’t get me wrong, universities can produce groundbreaking and amazing software that will live on outside of the university walls. But it would be usually rough cutting edge prototypes with zero customer support of the type that companies and governments typically look for.
• numpad0 3y ago
  Universities as magical R&D powerhouse model don't seem to be working for past few decades indeed...