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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 p

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.

mraj 13y ago
I agree with your point here. I wont be surprised if Palantir is associated with PRISM.
- lallysingh 13y ago
  Palantir Rakes In Stupendous Money?
dclowd9901 13y ago
Well you can't deny that their developers probably take on some pretty novel and interesting challenges.
- acchow 13y ago
  What kind of challenges? Please elaborate.
  - joezydeco 13y ago
    "The problem space we tackle is wildly diverse and growing every day. We enable the discovery of new financial relationships and strategies in capital markets. We uncover fraud rings and cyber attacks. We develop strategies for optimizing home lending default strategies. We are not domain experts; we are problem solving experts." http://www.palantir.com/careers/OpenPosDetail?id=a0m80000000gtfMAAQ http://www.palantir.com/careers/OpenPosDetail?id=a0m80000000...
    - 0xdeadbeefbabe 13y ago
      > We are not domain experts; we are problem solving experts Eeek!
      - thenipper 13y ago
        Sounds like my granddad's job he had in the 30s. He was a troubleshooter. It wasn't a euphemism.
      - rollo_tommasi 13y ago
        Out of curiosity, what sparked this reaction? Is "problem solving" a euphemism for technical drudge-work? Glorified IT contracting?
        0xdeadbeefbabe 13y ago
        Because it seems to emphasize doing over thinking. Maybe not a bad idea, but in the context of the comments about blackwater, immoral and illegal things, and indoctrinating fresh grads it sounded spooky.
    - brown9-2 13y ago
      something that isn't marketing recruitment speak would be more illuminating.
  - dclowd9901 13y ago
    I was thinking since they are probably on the fringes of legality, but with government sign-off, they probably get a lot of free reign to solve problems you typically wouldn't delve into, for fear of legal backlash. So basically you become a legal hacker. That would be kinda neat, and appealing, from a geek perspective.
- w1ntermute 13y ago
  You could say that about a lot of immoral/unethical jobs.
  - wslh 13y ago
    Yes: solving drug trafficking routes with several constraints, making the best scams, exploiting vulnerabilities to install a botnet. All are very interesting challenges.
    - scarmig 13y ago
      Drug trafficking is a relatively honorable occupation that delivers a highly demanded consumer good that's affordable for a broad cross section of society. It's unfair to compare it to the Stasi or consumer scams.
      - freehunter 13y ago
        Except for all the people killed by the gangs involved in smuggling this highly demanded consumer good that's affordable for a broad cross section of society across the borders.
        CamperBob2 13y ago
        Those are all consequences of illegality, not of the trade itself.
  - bigiain 13y ago
    Not just immoral/unethical jobs either - but sometimes other jobs which some classes of people consider "less desirable". It's the social network guys these days, but back in the late '90's I learnt more about large-scale highly-available and secure web development from people working in the porn industry than anywhere else. (I remember a long and fascinating/educational series of conversations with Sudicide Girls tech people at the Open Source Convention in San Diego back in 2000 or 2001.)
Anderkent 13y ago
>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. Is this because you would not like to work at a company handling such data, or because you think you are making a difference by not doing so? If the former, fair enough. If the latter, you might want to rethink the approach - refusing the job only means someone else will take it, and is likely to be 'worse' according to the values that prevent you from taking the job (less likely to blow the whistle, less likely to challenge sales on projects that are evil etc.)
- runjake 13y ago
  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".
  - Anderkent 13y ago
    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".
    - jboggan 13y ago
      You sound like Boromir. Now that I think about it, calling it Palantir is ridiculously apt.
- _delirium 13y ago
  > refusing the job only means someone else will take it If he's the only person who refuses the job, yes. But the overall effect depends on how many people refuse the job. If a significant percentage of technologists with in-demand skills refuse to do a particular kind of work, it will become harder for a company to hire that kind of employee. Lots of companies in the Valley are already having trouble hiring enough skilled staff, and competing on intangibles, ranging from perceived interestingness of work to perks like gourmet lunches, is one axis they use to try to get employees.
nimish 13y ago
They're pretty upfront with the fact that a major portion of their business is from the US government, especially intelligence analysts. The other chunk is financial (hedge funds and the like as well as banks looking for fraud). Not that it excuses any of it but they really don't try to hide it.
- joezydeco 13y ago
  It seems a quick run through the open positions at Palantir can tell you a lot more... http://www.palantir.com/careers/OpenPositionLanding http://www.palantir.com/careers/OpenPositionLanding "Embedded Analyst, Government: Canberra" "Embedded Analyst, Government: London" "Embedded Analyst, Government: New Zealand" "Engineer, Developer Support Team (McLean, VA)" "Forward Deployed Engineer: Singapore" "Forward Deployed Software Engineer, Government: Berlin" "Forward Deployed Software Engineer: Denmark" "Forward Deployed Software Engineer: Finland" "Forward Deployed Software Engineer: Norway" "Forward Deployed Software Engineer: Stockholm"
  - bane 13y ago
    Ugh, a quick review on glassdoor makes their hiring practices sound soul sucking http://www.glassdoor.com/Interview/Palantir-Technologies-Interview-Questions-E236375.htm http://www.glassdoor.com/Interview/Palantir-Technologies-Int...
    - rdl 13y ago
      They have a really strong college recruiting organization, which seems to be how they hire most of their people, so glassdoor probably isn't as representative. For the "FDE" positions, it's much closer to being onsite support/tech/contractor. I assure you Palantir is less shitty to interview for/work for than virtually any "traditional defense contractor", which is their comparison (I've never interviewed at Palantir, but know a lot of people there, including their recruiters, and have worked for the alternatives.) This is all independent of their "mission". (I support national security but not unlimited monitoring of US citizens; It's annoying that stuff like PRISM deters good people from working for government, lowering our capability to respond, and thus hurting national security...)
Spooky23 13y ago
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.
- EthanHeilman 13y ago
  Whats wrong with preparing for nuclear war, especially if preparation is an effective deterrent to actual nuclear war. Ensuring a credible second strike ability is probably one of the more rational ethical actions someone can take outside of pacifism. Of course creating a credible second strike ability is so easy ( merely hide x weapons with delivery systems controlled by PALs ) that it has been a solved problem from the 1960s.
- rayiner 13y ago
  I'd go further than that. A bunch of people are expressing surprise/outrage that a bunch of companies that spy on for profit you at the service of the advertising industry are sharing the fruits of that spying with the government for national security.
  - bernardlunn 13y ago
    The greatest minds of our generation are figuring out how to get a sated consumer to click
    - rayiner 13y ago
      No, the greatest minds of our generation are still working where they always have: in academia, research labs, etc. The people figuring out how to get consumers to click are the top 5-0.5% minds. When I look back at people from my high school, most of the tippy-top people are getting PhD's and figuring out how to do nuclear fusion. It's the next rung down that are working on Wall Street, Silicon Valley, etc.
      - adventured 13y ago
        Speculating about who has the bigger brain seems pretty silly. There's no way you could ever realistically prove your position (ditto the parent).
Permit 13y ago
>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 Wow. That's just as bad as saying since a person uses TOR, they're being secretive and must have something to hide. You must be able to see the hypocrisy in all of this.
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  > That's just as bad as saying since a person uses TOR, they're being secretive and must have something to hide. People who use TOR are being secretive and have something to hide. They may have very good reasons to want to hide it because of threats from bad actors (including, potentially, their own governments), but if they didn't have something to hide, they wouldn't be expending additional resources to actively hide things, which is exactly what using TOR is .

mraj 13y ago

I agree with your point here. I wont be surprised if Palantir is associated with PRISM.

lallysingh 13y ago
Palantir Rakes In Stupendous Money?

dclowd9901 13y ago

Well you can't deny that their developers probably take on some pretty novel and interesting challenges.

acchow 13y ago
What kind of challenges? Please elaborate.
- joezydeco 13y ago
  "The problem space we tackle is wildly diverse and growing every day. We enable the discovery of new financial relationships and strategies in capital markets. We uncover fraud rings and cyber attacks. We develop strategies for optimizing home lending default strategies. We are not domain experts; we are problem solving experts." http://www.palantir.com/careers/OpenPosDetail?id=a0m80000000gtfMAAQ http://www.palantir.com/careers/OpenPosDetail?id=a0m80000000...
  - 0xdeadbeefbabe 13y ago
    > We are not domain experts; we are problem solving experts Eeek!
    - thenipper 13y ago
      Sounds like my granddad's job he had in the 30s. He was a troubleshooter. It wasn't a euphemism.
    - rollo_tommasi 13y ago
      Out of curiosity, what sparked this reaction? Is "problem solving" a euphemism for technical drudge-work? Glorified IT contracting?
      - 0xdeadbeefbabe 13y ago
        Because it seems to emphasize doing over thinking. Maybe not a bad idea, but in the context of the comments about blackwater, immoral and illegal things, and indoctrinating fresh grads it sounded spooky.
  - brown9-2 13y ago
    something that isn't marketing recruitment speak would be more illuminating.
- dclowd9901 13y ago
  I was thinking since they are probably on the fringes of legality, but with government sign-off, they probably get a lot of free reign to solve problems you typically wouldn't delve into, for fear of legal backlash. So basically you become a legal hacker. That would be kinda neat, and appealing, from a geek perspective.
w1ntermute 13y ago
You could say that about a lot of immoral/unethical jobs.
- wslh 13y ago
  Yes: solving drug trafficking routes with several constraints, making the best scams, exploiting vulnerabilities to install a botnet. All are very interesting challenges.
  - scarmig 13y ago
    Drug trafficking is a relatively honorable occupation that delivers a highly demanded consumer good that's affordable for a broad cross section of society. It's unfair to compare it to the Stasi or consumer scams.
    - freehunter 13y ago
      Except for all the people killed by the gangs involved in smuggling this highly demanded consumer good that's affordable for a broad cross section of society across the borders.
      - CamperBob2 13y ago
        Those are all consequences of illegality, not of the trade itself.
- bigiain 13y ago
  Not just immoral/unethical jobs either - but sometimes other jobs which some classes of people consider "less desirable". It's the social network guys these days, but back in the late '90's I learnt more about large-scale highly-available and secure web development from people working in the porn industry than anywhere else. (I remember a long and fascinating/educational series of conversations with Sudicide Girls tech people at the Open Source Convention in San Diego back in 2000 or 2001.)

Anderkent 13y ago

>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. Is this because you would not like to work at a company handling such data, or because you think you are making a difference by not doing so? If the former, fair enough. If the latter, you might want to rethink the approach - refusing the job only means someone else will take it, and is likely to be 'worse' according to the values that prevent you from taking the job (less likely to blow the whistle, less likely to challenge sales on projects that are evil etc.)

runjake 13y ago
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".
- Anderkent 13y ago
  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".
  - jboggan 13y ago
    You sound like Boromir. Now that I think about it, calling it Palantir is ridiculously apt.
_delirium 13y ago
> refusing the job only means someone else will take it If he's the only person who refuses the job, yes. But the overall effect depends on how many people refuse the job. If a significant percentage of technologists with in-demand skills refuse to do a particular kind of work, it will become harder for a company to hire that kind of employee. Lots of companies in the Valley are already having trouble hiring enough skilled staff, and competing on intangibles, ranging from perceived interestingness of work to perks like gourmet lunches, is one axis they use to try to get employees.

nimish 13y ago

They're pretty upfront with the fact that a major portion of their business is from the US government, especially intelligence analysts. The other chunk is financial (hedge funds and the like as well as banks looking for fraud). Not that it excuses any of it but they really don't try to hide it.

joezydeco 13y ago
It seems a quick run through the open positions at Palantir can tell you a lot more... http://www.palantir.com/careers/OpenPositionLanding http://www.palantir.com/careers/OpenPositionLanding "Embedded Analyst, Government: Canberra" "Embedded Analyst, Government: London" "Embedded Analyst, Government: New Zealand" "Engineer, Developer Support Team (McLean, VA)" "Forward Deployed Engineer: Singapore" "Forward Deployed Software Engineer, Government: Berlin" "Forward Deployed Software Engineer: Denmark" "Forward Deployed Software Engineer: Finland" "Forward Deployed Software Engineer: Norway" "Forward Deployed Software Engineer: Stockholm"
- bane 13y ago
  Ugh, a quick review on glassdoor makes their hiring practices sound soul sucking http://www.glassdoor.com/Interview/Palantir-Technologies-Interview-Questions-E236375.htm http://www.glassdoor.com/Interview/Palantir-Technologies-Int...
  - rdl 13y ago
    They have a really strong college recruiting organization, which seems to be how they hire most of their people, so glassdoor probably isn't as representative. For the "FDE" positions, it's much closer to being onsite support/tech/contractor. I assure you Palantir is less shitty to interview for/work for than virtually any "traditional defense contractor", which is their comparison (I've never interviewed at Palantir, but know a lot of people there, including their recruiters, and have worked for the alternatives.) This is all independent of their "mission". (I support national security but not unlimited monitoring of US citizens; It's annoying that stuff like PRISM deters good people from working for government, lowering our capability to respond, and thus hurting national security...)

Spooky23 13y ago

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.

EthanHeilman 13y ago
Whats wrong with preparing for nuclear war, especially if preparation is an effective deterrent to actual nuclear war. Ensuring a credible second strike ability is probably one of the more rational ethical actions someone can take outside of pacifism. Of course creating a credible second strike ability is so easy ( merely hide x weapons with delivery systems controlled by PALs ) that it has been a solved problem from the 1960s.
rayiner 13y ago
I'd go further than that. A bunch of people are expressing surprise/outrage that a bunch of companies that spy on for profit you at the service of the advertising industry are sharing the fruits of that spying with the government for national security.
- bernardlunn 13y ago
  The greatest minds of our generation are figuring out how to get a sated consumer to click
  - rayiner 13y ago
    No, the greatest minds of our generation are still working where they always have: in academia, research labs, etc. The people figuring out how to get consumers to click are the top 5-0.5% minds. When I look back at people from my high school, most of the tippy-top people are getting PhD's and figuring out how to do nuclear fusion. It's the next rung down that are working on Wall Street, Silicon Valley, etc.
    - adventured 13y ago
      Speculating about who has the bigger brain seems pretty silly. There's no way you could ever realistically prove your position (ditto the parent).

Permit 13y ago

>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 Wow. That's just as bad as saying since a person uses TOR, they're being secretive and must have something to hide. You must be able to see the hypocrisy in all of this.

dragonwriter 13y ago
> That's just as bad as saying since a person uses TOR, they're being secretive and must have something to hide. People who use TOR are being secretive and have something to hide. They may have very good reasons to want to hide it because of threats from bad actors (including, potentially, their own governments), but if they didn't have something to hide, they wouldn't be expending additional resources to actively hide things, which is exactly what using TOR is .