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They sure have chosen their preferred client industries of Government and Financial Services wisely then. Those industries (a) are accustomed to paying that muc

They sure have chosen their preferred client industries of Government and Financial Services wisely then. Those industries (a) are accustomed to paying that much for their technology, and (b) are very unlikely to leave your platform once you start using your wares, since the difficulty of getting them as a customer in the first place (and how slow they move and how much paperwork / due diligence is required) directly translates to difficulty for them to move off of your system. Brilliant.

elblanco 12y ago
there's a fair amount of vendor lock-in in this space as well and Palantir is pretty good at it. They talk quite a bit about open standards and what not. But moving off of their platform and onto one of the competing ones is basically impossible. They've done a fantastic job at disrupting the link-chart market (which is surprisingly robust) and making it seem like customers are buying something else, but at 2-3x the price of the competition. They hide their sales guys as "forward deployed engineers" and obfuscate their sales process to the point where it doesn't seem like you've ever dealt with the kind of sketchy enterprise sales goon you'd deal with from any of their competitors. They're very smart.
- irremediable 12y ago
  I'm not comfortable going one way or another on Palantir, but... > They hide their sales guys as "forward deployed engineers" and obfuscate their sales process to the point where it doesn't seem like you've ever dealt with the kind of sketchy enterprise sales goon you'd deal with from any of their competitors. Really? I've known a couple of forward deployed engineers there, and I assure you, they're not salespeople.
  - lkjhskjhsdkjh 12y ago
    Not all FDEs are the same. It so happens that many of the FDEs do the selling aspect as well as implementation.
    - irremediable 12y ago
      If true, then fine. I've not yet met one who sells, though.
  - elblanco 12y ago
    Here's a long thread on just this topic here on Hacker News. One of their senior engineers jumped in to "clarify". It's worth reading the entire exchange. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1461136 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1461136 I think these days they've deobfuscated the roles a bit. But back during this discussion, they were definitely hiring and mixing in sales people with their "deployed" engineers. Most of these guys would probably be sales engineers somewhere else, relegated to a life of doing canned demos for commission scraps. It's actually kind of smart from a sales POV, embed your sales guy in the government site, call them engineers and let them have unlimited upsell opportunities. You've basically tricked your customer to put one of your sales guys on staff. From a customer POV, when you figure out the guy your paying $300k/yr to have on-site is just triaging issues and calling in real engineers to spot shoot issues, then spending their downtime trying to sell more software inside your organization it's kind of irritating.
    - irremediable 12y ago
      The thread is interesting. I do wonder if these reports are outdated, though. The people I know with that job title don't do sales. And I've met a few of them by now.
      - elblanco 12y ago
        No, it's still current. If you take a peek at their careers page and look on the Business Development Team (that's the sales and partnership team) openings, it's chock full of Forward Deployed Engineer positions.
        irremediable 12y ago
        Huh, alright. You make a strong case. I guess it's not exactly a surprise, but I'm still a bit disappointed.
    - 14yearsofsnow 12y ago
      I worked at Palantir for a number of years, and was heavily involved the hiring of Forward Deployed Engineers. The vast majority of FDEs did serious software development. There are only a few people I can think of who were not engineers, and their presence on deployments had to do with the alignment between their analytical background and the customer's focus.
wahsd 12y ago
I am not sure I see the brilliance in their actions. It's rather expected. Not only is what you described true, but government and finance are also the main two sectors that are most interested in violating and usurping through unfair advantage and full spectrum tracking and monitoring.

elblanco 12y ago

there's a fair amount of vendor lock-in in this space as well and Palantir is pretty good at it. They talk quite a bit about open standards and what not. But moving off of their platform and onto one of the competing ones is basically impossible. They've done a fantastic job at disrupting the link-chart market (which is surprisingly robust) and making it seem like customers are buying something else, but at 2-3x the price of the competition. They hide their sales guys as "forward deployed engineers" and obfuscate their sales process to the point where it doesn't seem like you've ever dealt with the kind of sketchy enterprise sales goon you'd deal with from any of their competitors. They're very smart.

irremediable 12y ago
I'm not comfortable going one way or another on Palantir, but... > They hide their sales guys as "forward deployed engineers" and obfuscate their sales process to the point where it doesn't seem like you've ever dealt with the kind of sketchy enterprise sales goon you'd deal with from any of their competitors. Really? I've known a couple of forward deployed engineers there, and I assure you, they're not salespeople.
- lkjhskjhsdkjh 12y ago
  Not all FDEs are the same. It so happens that many of the FDEs do the selling aspect as well as implementation.
  - irremediable 12y ago
    If true, then fine. I've not yet met one who sells, though.
- elblanco 12y ago
  Here's a long thread on just this topic here on Hacker News. One of their senior engineers jumped in to "clarify". It's worth reading the entire exchange. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1461136 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1461136 I think these days they've deobfuscated the roles a bit. But back during this discussion, they were definitely hiring and mixing in sales people with their "deployed" engineers. Most of these guys would probably be sales engineers somewhere else, relegated to a life of doing canned demos for commission scraps. It's actually kind of smart from a sales POV, embed your sales guy in the government site, call them engineers and let them have unlimited upsell opportunities. You've basically tricked your customer to put one of your sales guys on staff. From a customer POV, when you figure out the guy your paying $300k/yr to have on-site is just triaging issues and calling in real engineers to spot shoot issues, then spending their downtime trying to sell more software inside your organization it's kind of irritating.
  - irremediable 12y ago
    The thread is interesting. I do wonder if these reports are outdated, though. The people I know with that job title don't do sales. And I've met a few of them by now.
    - elblanco 12y ago
      No, it's still current. If you take a peek at their careers page and look on the Business Development Team (that's the sales and partnership team) openings, it's chock full of Forward Deployed Engineer positions.
      - irremediable 12y ago
        Huh, alright. You make a strong case. I guess it's not exactly a surprise, but I'm still a bit disappointed.
  - 14yearsofsnow 12y ago
    I worked at Palantir for a number of years, and was heavily involved the hiring of Forward Deployed Engineers. The vast majority of FDEs did serious software development. There are only a few people I can think of who were not engineers, and their presence on deployments had to do with the alignment between their analytical background and the customer's focus.

wahsd 12y ago

I am not sure I see the brilliance in their actions. It's rather expected. Not only is what you described true, but government and finance are also the main two sectors that are most interested in violating and usurping through unfair advantage and full spectrum tracking and monitoring.