on the call (which started at 7:15) he talked 90% of the time. he would ask me two or three questions at a time, and when I would get a chance to answer one he would jump in and answer the rest of them for me.
I was rejected for lack of technical skills
Same kind of thing happened when I interviewing for AWS. Forgot to call for phone screen. Manager didn't show up on day of interview. Forgot about me during lunch. Had to parrot back the leadership principles while doing even sillier whiteboard puzzles. Then "we'll call you next day" as I had a few offers in hand was more like 2 weeks later.
It was in the early days, so it was a very startup-y attitude, "we're so smart" sort of thing. The engineers were smart, from Stanford and CMU, so it was partially justified. I ended up not taking the offer. Not for a particularly good reason, it just didn't fit with life circumstances.
Looking back, it would have been a bad idea. I didn't understand the product, which is pretty essential when joining a company. The stock was granted as options, so without an IPO it is illiquid. The salaries were all low, but at the time someone could have lived in Palo Alto on them.
It turns out they thought they could tackle this problem of disparate data silos and change the world while respecting privacy. They weren't able to automate away the expensive process of having Forward Deployed Engineers do data integration work.
Enterprise in a nutshell.
And honestly, not what the customers want. If they're hiring you in the first place, they generally suck at tech. So they'd much rather have "Stanford grads on site every day" as proof of how they're spending money.
So it's a non-starter for Palantir's management when they're looking at existing customers and their desires, and the continuing trickle of naive tier 1 undergrads. Just keep the company cool enough to attract the crop under Google, Amazon, & FB...
And if the customers don't want 100% software data integration, then why spend a lot of money to automate 85% of it?
https://www.reddit.com/r/cscareerquestions/comments/5ncqti/n...
You don't seem to be alone in having issues with it.
This unfortunate reality is why I try to avoid dealing with systems that developed professionals who are solely specialized at gaming those systems - like MBAs or career politicians.
I'm a senior engineer. Those types of interviews are to stoke the egos of green engineers who remember the solutions to their algo finals questions. If I can look it up in a book, it's not worth the time to quiz me on it.
Anyone who brushes off a question stating that it's beneath them is going to get walked right out of the building by my team.