Ask HN: Palantir or Facebook? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Palantir or Facebook?

36 pointsjizue63 comments

Similarly to the question asked on HN four years ago, I am deciding between a grad position with Palantir or a grad position with Facebook, and I'm having a tough time deciding. Both positions would be in NY.

Palantir is a much smaller company (in particular, the team I would be joining is tiny) so I feel like I'd have a much larger impact on the product itself, while Facebook is one of the most used things on the internet. It seems like the major difference is in the difference between a consumer product and an enterprise product, but I would be happy working in either area.

I'm finding it very difficult to decide, so I'm thinking about just going for whichever one will be higher paying, post negotiation. Is this dumb?

Thanks for reading!

EDIT: Both positions are in software engineering, and offers seem mostly comparable in terms of perks and benefits.

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I think very few people would blame you for taking the mercenary approach here. However, you may wish to consider who it is you will be working for.

Palantir is deeply entrenched in the surveillance state. Though they may come at you with a decent offer, I believe it is ethically impermissible to use my skills in order to contribute to the deprivation of the human rights of others across the world.

I do not have much positive to say about Facebook either, except that the bulk of their revenue does not come from three letter agencies. And they have in the past and will probably continue in the future to solve some interesting challenges in scalability.

I agree with the general recommendation that you should consider those factors.

I also agree with your rough assessment. Facebook is pretty sketchy as well on the privacy front but you're not really forced to use them if that's a concern.

Having worked for Facebook is probably better for the CV, too if you decide to move on (debatable depending on the specific line of work. Palantir is obviously not an unknown).

> Facebook is pretty sketchy as well on the privacy front but you're not really forced to use them if that's a concern.

I agree with what you're saying, but we should mention that Facebook's data collection extends far beyond what we generally think of as Facebook's users. (They collect data on friends of Facebook users as well - search for "dark profiles" to see what I mean, and they also collect data on people who simply view websites that have Facebook "share" buttons or the like).

And it's expanding even further - if Facebook has its way, parts of the developing world will use Facebook as their primary (or only!) way of accessing the Internet.

I agree that Facebook is slightly the lesser of two evils at the moment, but we're basically debating between Scylla and Charybdis[0] here.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scylla

"except that the bulk of their revenue does not come from three letter agencies" I'm curious - how well informed are you of Palantir's revenue distribution?

love your username. Now, to what degree do you also agree that it is ethically impermissible to use advertising to "monetize" traffic that you garner by telling people it's free? Is it really free? Is it really honest? What do you think about my take: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7485773 ?

I typically include this quote when I critique the use of advertising on HN since a lot of people here live off of advertising:

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." -- Upton Sinclair

Worked for Palantir from 2010-2012. Palantir will push you hard (if you let it, and are interested in doing so); it's the highest-performing team I've ever worked with, and I learned a ton both technically and culturally (how to interview, how to hire, how to productively have high expectations of your colleagues) that has served me well in the other roles -- even though it wasn't immediately obvious what I was learning when I was there.

That said, there's a lot that's rough about the place, especially as it's gotten larger. You'll likely have a little more freedom than at Facebook, but I wouldn't expect to have a significant impact on the product -- though you will absolutely see an impact on a smaller number of enterprise customers. The culture can be a little overwhelming; it's hard to get oriented as a new person. You need to take responsibility for learning things for yourself and have to think on your feet -- don't expect your colleagues to spend a lot of time training you.

The way you describe palantir seems like the going to the military or something, without the added value of making lifetime friends. Sounds good for short term, bad for long term.

Would you elaborate on the "how to" aspects of the cultural part?

There are certain cultural imperatives; catchphrases that get repeated. Like Facebook's "move fast and break things." That's an interesting statement in and of itself, but what's more interesting is watching how people interpret that imperative and get things done.

Don't want to go into too many examples, but let's take the "we maintain an incredibly high hiring bar, because good people want to work with good people." Everyone says that; how do you actually execute on that in practice? What interview practices work? One well-known public thing you can see from reading Glassdoor interviews is that the founders try to interview every candidate. One of the most memorable things about my time there is that even the guy who was hired to stock the kitchen went through an intense interview process; which seems like overkill until you meet him and realize the depth of pride, customer service and creativity he brings to his job is every bit as strong as the engineers we hire. Not everyone who says "we maintain a high hiring bar" would go through that kind of effort.

(P.S. re: the above "lifelong friends" comment as well - that guy, who I am still friends with, continues to post photos of particularly well-executed Palantir meals to private social media. So while I respect the feeling that 'it sounds like the military' -- like the military, I'd say it's hard work in the short term, occasionally nonsensical, but for people who are willing to do it it's very much a long-term positive experience.)

Thanks. So it's a mix of self-discipline, holding oneself to high standards, going the extra mile. And--I assume--trusting that others do the same.

Palantir:

- Boring work since you will be an FDE if in NY (data munging, plugins, etc - no "real" coding projects)

- Below-market pay (including equity due to future dilution)

- Culture of working 80-100 hour weeks

- Corporate cult mentality (everyone constantly wearing the company clothing, living at the office, etc)

- Reputation for having a "bro culture"

Facebook:

- Higher cash comp, probably less equity upside

- No opportunity to work with customers if that interests you

- More typical "go to work and code" environment

- You will actually grow as an engineer because you will work on more substantial projects that are not throwaway code for one customer

- Your code will be reviewed

In short, if you don't really care about your life outside of work, and you see yourself enjoying a more consulting focused role that will put you on a career path away from programming in a few years, go with Palantir NYC. If you actually care about improving your software engineering skills, and you have friends/significant other/family that you care about seeing during the week, go with FB.

> - Culture of working 80-100 hour weeks

What?

The New York Times profiled Palantir a couple of months ago. The article has interviews with the founder of Palantir. It also has photos of the office.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/01/business/unlocking-secrets...

In my industry, FDE only means full disk encryption. I've seen that acronym a few times in this thread though. Can someone break that down for me?

"Forward Deployed Engineer". It is a title Palantir uses for software engineers that are customer facing.

I believe it's "Forward Deployed Engineer" ... heard it said that Palantir doesn't like the term consulting and makes up its own titles...

Forward Deployed Engineer

Thank you! A quick Google search on that tells me a lot, sounds like a sales engineer meets a consultant.

What is a "bro culture"?

"Bro culture" is created when nerdy programming skills, macho personalities and frathouse-like behavior are fueled by drugs, booze and sex.

For more details, read this article: http://mashable.com/2014/07/29/startup-sexism/

I saw this in my RSS feed. Without seeing the text, I actually thought this post was going to be a question of which company was more evil.

Downvotes welcomed, but I stand by my point.

Palantir, by far.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2011/02/09/did-sec...

Kinda hard not to immediately jump to that conclusion isn't it? Both companies definitely have some trouble in the PR side of things

Is there a large company that a significant number of folks on HN don't think is evil? Amazon, maybe?

I personally don't see Apple or Microsoft as being that evil. Microsoft is less evil today than in the past. Google is kind of a complicated case. Facebook is sketchy but at least using them is a choice. Palantir is evil.

Mozilla?

I'd go with Facebook, I imagine they're offering more money anyway. Facebook is a household name, has better perks last time I checked, and more offices.

Palantir looks hip but the work they do is very boring on the Forward-Deployed engineer side — which, being a position in New York, sounds like what you're gonna be doing.

PS I interviewed with both these companies very recently.

Yes this might be a dumb way of deciding where to work, especially because you might be able to negotiate your salary based on the competitive offers you might get.

Ask yourself:

- with which of the companies (mission and strategy, as well as customers) can you identify yourself best?

- where do you see yourself having a more pleasent work environment in regards to the people you would be working with and the working culture/environment?

- what are your future career targets and which opportunity might increase the probability to reach them? what is the potential for the role?

- what might be the goals, and can you identify with them as well as add value, of your direct reports?

Are you limited to choosing between those two companies? If not then maybe cast your net a bit wider and go for something that is less likely to keep you up at night from a moral point of view. Of course if these are your only options I'd choose facebook as the lesser of two evils.

http://www.quora.com/Why-is-Palantir-considered-evil

http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/08/14/agent-o...

I spoke to a Palantir recruiter once, if you aren't in the Bay Area you'll be doing customisation for customers - not the core engineering stuff that's really cool. Do you know what team at FB you'd be working with? For me the job itself is the most important thing: I wouldn't want to sling PHP, but FB has amazing teams who wrote Hive, Scribe, Presto, HHVM, etc.

"if you aren't in the Bay Area you'll be doing customisation for customers"

False.

One unique advantage Palantir would have over Facebook is that if you get the itch to travel, Palantir casts a much wider net throughout the world (assuming you'd be willing to work as a forward deployed engineer, which in Palantir's case is genuinely not a sales role).

Tough call, but a nice problem to have, congrats!

> Palantir casts a much wider net throughout the world

In more ways than one !

This is a very difficult question for anyone to answer for you. It all depends on which metrics/values are most important to you. Here are a few generic ideas:

You can look on Glassdoor for company reviews but they tend to be biased negatively, as in disgruntled people are more likely to write and complain about their experiences than those who are perfectly happy.

Talk to people at both companies, preferably ones in similar positions or doing similar work.

In terms of salary, don't fixate on just the salary but consider total compensation as in salary + stock options + rsu + bonus, etc...

Finally given that you've presumably interviewed with teams at both companies, you should have a better sense about your would-be teammates and manager and which environment suits you better.

I would suggest that you go to Facebook. Why? Being an SV company, they will generally treat developers better than say Palantir. Being treated as a valuable member of the team and not a cost center is very important for job satisfaction. (And those free lunches/snacks will definitely help you save some money in NYC)

To start your career at a place where one has to solve huge scaling issues will really do you good. You may not understand everything right away but you would be trained from the beginning to think of scaling anytime you solve a problem. I don't know much about Palantir but I will doubt if they have scaling problems as big as Facebook.

Finally, brand name. Whenever you will decide to move on to the next job, you will have a much easier time if you were at Facebook v/s Palantir. Trust me, this is important. You should view each job opportunity as a stepping stone for your overall career.

So assuming that pay/perks/benefits are more or less similar, I would highly recommend that you join FB.

Palantir has offices in no fewer than 6 buildings in downtown Palo Alto, across the street from Stanford. It is as close as you can get to being an SV company, other arguments aside

Palantir is an SV company too. It was founded by Peter Thiel (et al) and its HQ is in Palo Alto.

Both companies are needing people without that kind of disability we all know as “ethics”. So your choice is obvious: just take the better offer, and if the other one then is renegotiating, cheat and again take the better offer.

I totally agree with your dumb decision to go for whichever one with the higher paying. Both companies are extremely large, extremely pushy and extremely boring.

If you ask me what would be the difference between joining the two companies, I would say not so many people know about Palantir, but Facebook is well-renowned all around the world. Facebook could add a lot to your future resume.

After all, employees in the IT industry are flowing between companies pretty quickly. If you regret joining Palantir, I think you are always welcome to come back to Facebook, and vice versa.

You can think about where you see yourself in x years and act accordingly. Say you're more interested in startups vs enterprises, your best bet would be Facebook and vice-versa.

On the ethical side, without knowing the role specifics, I'd have a hard time considering Palantir. I'd also have a hard time considering Facebook though (still a little better on my ethical companies ranking).

Best of luck!

I wouldn't consider Palantir for an instant. They are rubbing up this close to evil.

FB is at least a public company, with accountability, and probably more mobility (both in the physical and job-position sense). You'll have a better choice of stuff to work on, and you'll be able to talk more freely about it.

OP, I'm a FDE at Palantir (not in NY) and I'd be glad to chat with you about the life/work/impact we have. I've been at several different tech companies with a variety of bizarro cultures (though not FB!), so maybe I can offer you a point of comparison on that as well.

My (personal) email is in my profile.

I hate to be that person, but I would recommend something smaller. I think you'll learn more and get to really own your project(s). I realize that you already have offers though, so between the two, I vote Facebook every time. You won't regret avoiding working in Defense.

I would say align yourself with your long-term career goals and the team that you were offered to work with. For instance, if you would like to start of your won soemtime, working in a small team can benefit a lot.

i'm stunned by the fact that people here seem to think that working for a national security agency seems to be the worst thing to do moraly. i remember a time when being a spy was probably the coolest thing ever.

one could argue that "spying" on people for the sake of saving lives is a much more noble cause than doing it purely for commercial purposes.

ps : i am not naive,and i am aware of the recent privacy issues raised by the snowden case. And i am a lover of private liberties. i'm just stunned to see such a large conscensus.

> one could argue that "spying" on people for the sake of saving lives

And what lives do you think we are saving? When in the last 20 years has anything we've done saved any lives?

You shouldn't be stunned. People might tolerate our military-security industrial complex because they have resigned themselves to be powerless to do anything about it, but that doesn't mean they want to join it. I would never work for Palantir, just like I would never work for the NSA, or Raytheon, or any of these horrible, destructive organizations. I wouldn't fit in anyway, the people that work at these places come from a different political and ideological spectrum than I do.

I'm guessing that you are over 30.

People who are young professionals now do not remember the Cold War at all, and have grown up considering the U.S. to be essentially invulnerable on the international stage.

The terrorist attacks of 9/11 were the worst thing they've experienced. But while those were terrible, they were clearly not an existential threat to the entire country, the way that the Soviet Union was for 50 years, or Germany or Japan before that.

Thus, many young people see international espionage primarily as a means of corrupting lesser states for our own benefit--an abuse of our considerable power.

Yeap, although i'm just 35 (which makes me old enough to remember world maps showing "USSR" in school). But i suppose being a european makes it a bit different. We've been hit by terrorism a lot more frequently, and are involved in wars much closer to us than the US. Although to be fair a lot of european would have the same point of view as the typical HN user.

Which reminds me of a recent trip i did to Israel. At the airport, some guy complained that people were searching his bag. Saying "why are they doing this, come on...". He seemed pissed. As for me, well I was extremely glad those people searched every single bags coming in the plane.

But you're right, that was exactly my point.

How much of that existential threat was really real though?

Apart from the Cuban missile crisis was there ever any real threat to the US from Russia?

This is a genuine question, I really don't know the answer. I do know that Americans spent a lot of time with "Duck and Cover" exercises. the UK equivalent was "Protect and Survive" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protect_and_Survive

I think there are really two questions here.

1) How much of an existential threat really existed? This question can be answered by looking through the vast archives of Soviet-era information which has now been made publicly available. I'm not an expert, but I'd say it's a mixed answer--the capability for total destruction really did exist, and there were some close calls [1]. But the USSR was a lot less interested in killing everyone than folks in the U.S. thought. Which brings me to the second question:

2) How much did people in the U.S. feel that they faced an existential threat? Note that this is not the same thing as what the threat actually objectively was. I lived through the end of the Cold War (born in the mid-1970s), and I can tell you that most Americans did in fact feel deep unease and fear. More importantly, they felt that the USSR was an equal opponent--a powerful nation that the U.S. did not and could not dominate.

Following the end of the Cold War, that feeling went away. Once the USSR dissolved, and Russia went through hard economic times, the self-perception of American citizens was that we were the "last superpower" or "sole superpower"--a nation that could not be seriously threatened by anything on Earth.

This self-perception persists today. In fact I think it has become a serious source of angst, as many Americans perceive we are "slipping" because we can't dominate every situation we want to (examples: Syria, Lybia, Ukraine, China).

But IMO the reality is that our dominant position has simply been a temporary blip in our long history as one of several equal international powers.

[1] http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/05/the...

Working for a national security agency does not make you a spy. Yes, Archer is cool, James Bond is cool, Austin Powers is cool, but a developer isn't out there sipping martinis and shooting people. Being a developer at a spy agency is the same as being a developer anywhere else, except that your projects enable others to kill people and ruin lives. I can see why some people don't want to do that when given the choice.

Being a spy was "the coolest thing ever" in TV series and Bond movies where the bad/good guys are easily spotted (they even make grimaces), the spy gets all the flashy cars, pretty girls and never dies... Try talking to a real spy, see how "cool" their life's are, watching their back constantly, being sent to slaughter at any time, etc. doesn't look like a good bargain to me.

Just like working in a startup today barely looks like anything that's displayed on TV or movies.

I was talking about the fantasmatic images surrounding the field.

> one could argue that "spying" on people for the sake of saving lives is a much more noble cause than doing it purely for commercial purposes.

I guess that's why people don't buy it. The surveillance state is not for 'saving lives'.

Exactly. Although you can never (for fairly obvious reasons) see a full cost-benefit analysis of these things, the sheer volume of cash, resources and legislative power being shovelled towards the Surveillance-Industrial Complex (it's actually a thing) is astonishing, and it's not about dealing with those edge cases; it's mainly about the expansion of 'oh, that's useful, maybe we should let another agency lower down the intelligence chain have it just in case', and on it goes. It's about control, not saving lives, and hasn't been for a long time.

Come on...

Has anyone in the US been arrested for political views after being wired or spied on the internet ?? Ever ?

I'm sorry to be blunt, but all the americans that think they're living under a surveillance state should truly get their ass in any non-western country in the world before claiming such BS.

People here are so spoiled it makes me sick sometimes.

Firstly, this argument isn't just limited to the US. But what the US does has repercussions for the rest of the world, particularly the UK.

So on that, have people been arrested (and otherwise harassed) for political views in the UK? Yes. There were around 150 known activists tracked and arrested before the Royal Wedding here because they might 'cause a scene'. An incredibly trivial example that highlights perfectly well the type of problem that you have when you create a society with multiple, overlapping and unaccountable layers of surveillance.

There are a number of other examples (Occupy London, UK Uncut, some animal rights groups, anti-fracking groups) where people have been 'pre-emptively' arrested and detained, only for the charges to be dropped months later after restrictive bail conditions were imposed, off the back of surveillance enabled by technology - fake cell tower SIM gathering, facebook monitoring (It's not just limited to 'the internet').

Protest and activism (i.e. 'political views') exist on a spectrum, and the line where that crosses into illegal activity is far further than the police would have you believe, but that does not, and has not, stopped them using those same laws (and tools, and technology) to enforce political (small 'p', and not necessarily governmentally inspired) views of 'proper' behaviour. There are dozens of examples of similar behaviour in the US for the last 30 years. Some are 'on the internet', others are not. Gary Marx's work is a great place to start for those examples. http://web.mit.edu/gtmarx/www/garyhome.html

Tl;dr - yes.

I'm sorry, my point was specificaly about the US which has an almost religious relationship to its right of speech. Something that, to my knowledge, doesn't exist in Europe for various historical reasons.

Thanks for the interesting facts about UK though. Although i don't think the internet has changed the nature of any state. Countries that abuse internet surveillance now probably abused phone wiring and police investigation on individuals before.

That's exactly my point, though (and was to the French guy below). Your original point was 'have people in the US been arrested after being wiretapped or spied on over the internet?' Yes.

The argument is always made that they were 'planning/conspiring' a particular act, something that's rarely taken through to prosecution/conviction, it's a well known harassment technique (as was overtly surveilling people with 'undercover' cars and foot patrols) by the FBI and the larger city police departments.

So yes, people have been arrested for expressing their views, which were caught via surveillance, because law enforcement abused the information they had and brought trumped up charges. The UK examples I gave was because I'm more familiar with the stuff here - the US has a great and grimy history of abusing surveillance powers, from Hoover's FBI onwards.

Just because some countries have it more wrong doesn't mean criticisms of US policy are invalid, it's really a silly argument.

Yes it absolutely does.

Qualifying the US as a "surveillance state" ( and not as something-that-could-one-day-become-as-such-if-people-don't-pay-attention) , means you think you have no freedom of speech ( at least on the internet). This is outrageous, not only compared to countries were you can actually be arrested for a tweet, but also because it means you actually have no clue as to what kind of country you live in.

As a young french adult, i tried to protest once against a government law i found revolting, by sitting peacefuly and quietly in front of the Elysee ( the white house equivalent) with a sign. I immediatly got arrested, my ID card was taken for a check, and i was told to move on. I said i found it surprising they did that, and the french policemen told me "well, you've seen people doing that on TV but this isn't the US here".

And yet, i am very able to make the difference between france and china, where people would face actual prison for that. Because i have a god damn sense of proportion.

There isn't an absolutely "free" country. A nation means laws and regulations, it is a compromise. You compromise a little bit on your personnal freedom for the sake of general interest. It's a complex matter, not a binary switch.

So all qualification of a country has to be done in comparison with other countries, facing the same kind of threat, and see how they deal with the situation. If you find a western country that doesn't "spy" the net, just tell me. They do it for child porn, drug traffic, and terrorisms. And to me that's absolutely great, as long as it remains for those purposes.

Freedom of speech and surveillance are very different things. The crucial part of surveillance is that you're being monitored on what you say, fairly routinely. Whether or not the authorities take exception to what you say/who you speak to in private communications is another matter, which qualifies only the nature of the surveillance society, not whether it exists.

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