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Comment by mlazos | Hacker News Reader

IMO I remember interviewing there and my bullshit detector was at 10000%. First the interviewer went off on a tangent claiming that they’re not evil (unsolicited) and second it seems like they’re capitalizing on the whole “big data” trend. They’ll find “insights” across multiple data streams without ever providing examples beyond license plate readers. I am surprised they haven’t gotten enterprise businesses to sign on - although maybe enterprise business only trust certain brands, but am not surprised they’ve gotten the government to sign on.

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I have also got an unsolicited pitch from their recruiter and I have to concur - before I even knew what is the company about and who is behind it my BS detector was off the scale almost immediately.

All talk about "extremely high hiring standards", perks like "washing your laundry", "free massages", "wear pink on Friday" and similar nonsense, but not a single word about what is the company doing or what would I, should they hire me, be doing apart from gems like "Deploy Palantir at moment's notice".

Then I have found the zingers: "Palantir employees are far from anti-social. We have parties pretty often."

And the bit on how people there turned down or left Google and Facebook.

I mean WTF? Why would you include things like this in a recruiting pitch? The creepiness vibe was off the charts.

Then I did a bit of research and it was obvious why. I have told the headhunter in no uncertain terms to take a hike. But I have heard they are paying well - if you can stomach what they are doing.

It worked though. Both you and the GP ended up not working there, increasing the ratio of gullible fools that did end up working there. It's the same as the spammers with their Greetings in the name of God. If that turns you off you are not their mark, best to move on. Think of it as an optimization strategy from their part.

I wouldn't have been eligible to work for them anyway, given who their customers are and that I would not be able to get a security clearance as a foreign national (yay for headhunters not bothering to do their homework).

The rest of your argument is just nonsense, sorry. If that was the case, then why to pay a recruiter to actively reach out to me? It is not like they don't have enough job seeking applicants at their doors, even today.

And they certainly did even 10 years ago when the above has happened and all the bad press about the shady stuff Palantir is/was involved in had yet to come out - before Facebook scandals, before Cambridge Analytica (where Palantir was involved), before Trump election (Palantir's founder Thiel is big Trump's donor), etc.

Palantir needs true believers. Not potential whistle-blowers.

> If that was the case, then why to pay a recruiter to actively reach out to me?

Recruiters are not paid up front, nor for the number of candidates they bring.

Recruiters are paid when a candidate accepts the job, so it’s in their interest to throw as many candidates as possible at the client in order to increase their chances of closing one.

Why? Because recruiters are not paid a fixed amount per se, but 15-25% of your first year’s salary.

Palantir also has internal recruiters who make a base salary.

> First the interviewer went off on a tangent claiming that they’re not evil (unsolicited)

They're a big data company that works mostly with governments and militaries, and they're named after evil (and unreliable!) magical spying technology from The Lord of the Rings. It's clear why they feel the need to try to convince you that they're not evil.

If you are evil and proud it makes sense to name yourself after evil. It is a waste of everyone's time to try to recruit non-evil people. Given that this headline is the only example of evil failing that I have seen in recent times, they should probably assume the problem is salary, intelligent evil people are clearly the most occupied and must be very expensive. Taking short cuts with either stupid or ethical people is never going to work for them.

The palintiri weren't evil. They were created by the Noldor (elves) not Melkor or Sauron -- perhaps even by Feanor, who also created the beautiful gems known as the Silmarils. This was in Aman before the elves fell. They were given to the Numenoreans (men from which Aragorn came), and brought by Elendil into Middle Earth. Also called "seeing stones", the palintiri were used to observe and communicate over long distances. They were not used for evil purposes until Sauron captured one, and also when used by those he corrupted. Gandalf even said that it was beyond the power of Sauron to create a palintir, nor could he make them lie or show false images (though he could show select ones, and so deceive). So a stone that can tell only the truth can't be evil, although some beings that used them were.

Thanks for the explanation! I've been rereading the LOTR series over COVID shelter in place and it's been so enjoyable taking me back remembering what a great story it is and experiencing it again! I ended up ordering the LOTR ATLAS with maps drawn by Tolkein's son which looks exciting to explore. Dunno if I have the mental fortitude to tackle the Silmarilion though!

>If you are evil and proud it makes sense to name yourself after evil. It is a waste of everyone's time to try to recruit non-evil people.

Exactly. Interviewed there, got the same bullshit vibe.

Like, I'm here to find out just how tasty the cookies are on the dark side, you don't need to convince me you are, quote, "saving the world".

>Taking short cuts with either stupid or ethical people is never going to work for them.

I think they are going for smart, non-ethical, but obedient enough people. Drinking the doublespeak kool-aid probably is a good enough indicator for that.

Palintir's weren't evil spying tech. They were originally Zoom for coordinating the far flung domains of the Numenoreans. Only when the Minas Morgul palintir fell into the hands of Sauron did they become instruments of his corruption.

Ironically, all these Chinese based SaaS seem to go quite along the lines of the LoTR story (Zoom, Tik-Tok).

> Only when the Minas Morgul palintir fell into the hands of Sauron did they become instruments of his corruption

Only when Trump got on Twitter...

Keep in mind that the Numenorians were a cautionary tale of human pride, hubris and abuse of magical trinkets [1], that eventually led them to declare war on the gods, and try to invade Valinor.

They then got Atlantis'd.

There's a few recurring themes in Tolkien's work - one of them is that marvelous inventions, created by clever people for good purposes, can either be turned to do evil - or the struggle to possess them will turn good people to do evil.

[1] In contrast to the rest of the Silmarillion, which was a cautionary tale of elven pride, hubris, and abuse/attachment to magical trinkets.

That is a very astute observation! I seem to remember Tolkien himself explaining that The Silmarillion was from an elvish view, the middle tale of The Hobbit was a virtually human view, and The Lord of the Rings blends them. I think he meant in tone and style, but the subject material aligns with your view as well. To my mind, the Numenorean legends in Unfinished Tales seem closer to The Silmarillion than either of his other two main published works.

Yep. As others point out, the evil came later. But I spent enough time in Middle Earth to know not to trust anything named Palantir as soon as I heard about them. If they knew enough to lift the name, but not enough to understand what it signified, I didn't trust their research skills from the start.

I thought it was a great name. As a kid, reading the books, I thought palantiri would be cool to have to be able to scry anything and anywhere. All that cool info to observe and learn.

It seems like lots of people incorrectly assume it’s negative. It seems to show off a lacking in understanding of lord of the rings, more than anything.

Kind of like CCTV - can be great to help prevent crime, an invasion of privacy if abused or in the wrong hands. Not necessarily evil, depends on the user.

I loved that part of it too. I just always took there to be a cautionary tale about the consequences of that power.

I would have thought "call yourself something less obviously evil" would be a good start. Though maybe it's a case of one set of marketing for employees and another for customers; I'm sure some governments quite like the evil aesthetics.

“We’re not evil” is a bit like “don’t worry”; if it’s said too often or without prompting, it tends to make the listening party assume that they’re in fact not worrying enough

I'm reminded of the Monty Python sketch where a bored airline pilot says to the passengers, "you have no cause for alarm."

Similarly, if a political entity calls themselves a name containing "democratic" or "republic", you can be assured that it is not a democracy.

Czech republic?

Actually it's a counterpoint cause they renamed to Czechia right about when their government got less democratic :-)

>"Similarly, if a political entity calls themselves a name containing "democratic" or "republic", you can be assured that it is not a democracy. "

Like the Italian Republic, Republic of Korea, French Republic, Republic of Ireland, or Republic of China?

The non-democratic countries are usually 'People's Republics'.

There's no country that calls itself the Republic of Ireland. That's a football team.

The act which made "Ireland" independent was called "The Republic of Ireland Act", and reads as follows: "... the description of the State shall be the Republic of Ireland..."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Ireland_Act_1948

The constitution [0] reads "The name of the State is Éire, or, in the English language, Ireland", and that act can't override it. I suppose it's splitting hairs to distinguish between the "name of the State" and the "description of the State" and either can reasonably be seen as what the country calls itself.

[0] http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/cons/en/html

> Notably, the Act did not change the official name of the state. It merely provided the description for the State. The Constitution of Ireland provides that Éire (or Ireland in English) is the official name of the State and, if the Act had purported to change the name, it would have been unconstitutional as it was not a constitutional amendment. The distinction between a description and a name has sometimes caused confusion. The Taoiseach, John A. Costello, who introduced the Republic of Ireland Bill in the Oireachtas, explained the difference in the following way:

> If I say that my name is Costello and that my description is that of senior counsel, I think that will be clear to anybody who wants to know. If the Senator [Helena Concannon] will look at Article 4 of the Constitution she will find that the name of the State is Éire. Section 2 of this Bill declares that "this State shall be described as the Republic of Ireland." Its name in Irish is Éire and in the English language, Ireland. Its description in the English language is "the Republic of Ireland."

The constitution specifies that the name of the country is Éire in Irish or Ireland in English, and that name is used in all official functions and diplomatic relations. The act is neither here nor there. The UK referred to Ireland as the Republic of Ireland until 2000, but it was unusual in doing so.

Nowadays, "Republic of Ireland" is usually only used where disambiguation from Northern Ireland is necessary.

> Every faction in Africa calls themselves by these noble names - Liberation this, Patriotic that, Democratic Republic of something-or-other... I guess they can't own up to what they usually are: the Federation of Worse Oppressors Than the Last Bunch of Oppressors. Often, the most barbaric atrocities occur when both combatants proclaim themselves Freedom Fighters.

One of these things is not like the others.

As you add more modifiers it gets worse; the Republic of the Congo is hanging out with Russia and Vietman on the EUI Democracy Index, but the Democratic Republic of the Congo is all the way down, one point above the Democratic Peoples' Republic of Korea (three modifiers; extra-evil!).

DRC was my first thought when I saw the parent comment! An aside, if you want one of the most amazing and thoughtfully written travel stories of recent conditions in DRC, check out this overlanding thread by a couple who went from Lubumbashi to Kinshasa. https://expeditionportal.com/forum/threads/democratic-republ...

There's a TLDR here if you don't have time to follow the entire thread (though highly worth it!!) : https://jalopnik.com/the-first-people-to-drive-across-the-co...

I enjoyed it so much I read Leopold's Ghost to learn more about the tragic history of DRC.

Federal Republic of Germany?

That sketch predates Monty Python formation - it was part of "How to Irritate People."

the one thing that set me off was their whole rebranding of software developers as "forward deployed engineers", like some kind of William Gibson-esque cringy stealth company. I honestly couldn't go anywhere and introduce myself like that, it makes you sound like some kind of spec ops person and all you do is write Java

Palantir's "forward deployed engineers" are generally not developers. They're more like post-sales support and data engineers, embedding with clients to deploy and configure products. They might write plugins and extensions, but a relatively small fraction of their time is spent coding.

The software engineer role at Palantir is called "software engineer."[1]

https://jobs.lever.co/palantir/1619afea-6923-4047-a913-c9293...

I have always thought of them as a staffing agency.

They kind of seem like a consulting agency like McKinsey but optimized for trendy "big data" and "AI" to pursue biggov contracts.

I bet Palantir could provide something like a social credit score to supplement existing data like from Experian/etc. I wonder if lenders want to work with them but can't due to regulations, ethics, complexity, profitability of the relationship, or simply bad optics.

Based on what you've posted here - they're going to make a fortune.

https://twitter.com/shutupmikeginn/status/403359911481839617

> I am surprised they haven't gotten enterprise businesses to sign on

What makes you think that? I know of at least one global brand using Palantir.

What? Palantir has tons of commercial contracts, although I guess they don't pay as well as government contracts do. Scroll down in this long Buzzfeed article to find a subset of Palantir's commercial clients and their internal code names for them: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/williamalden/inside-pal...

I am very interested in investing in Palantir stock. There is political risk with Biden reducing contractor and military spend, but ultimately they provide critical software / infrastructure for the government and that won't be going anywhere.

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