Palantir Technologies Reviews

Former Employee – worked at Palantir Technologies full-time for less than a year

Pros – The mission comes first, and everyone believes in Saving the Shire, and it is beautiful.
You know that person you meet that blows you away with how intelligent and introspective they are? Ok, now realize that everyone who works at Palantir is that type of "one-of-a-kind." The amount of brain power in one building is unbelievable.
The benefits are fantastic and people deserve the benefits with how hard they are working.
Your work is actually changing the world and Karp puts his people and the mission first.
Every support team is fantastic! They will go out of their way to take care of things for you.

Cons – It is hard to take time off. If you do, you end up being extremely out of the loop when you get back and it is stressful.
There are never enough people on your team to finish all of the work.
Be prepared to be on your computer on weekends and at night.
It is not a 9-5 job so be prepared to come early and stay late.
Sometimes you realize that you are taking the small things for granted because everything is taken care of for you. Ask your friends about their jobs and you will realize how lucky you have it at Palantir.
Feedback can be out of the blue.

Advice to Senior Management – As you grow, try to stay ahead of the work instead of being behind it. People will burn out if they are not given enough help and support from their leads and/or upper management. Implement some sort of training regimen for non-BD folks. It is daunting to be thrown in and only given feedback when you fail. Some guidance for at least the first month would be helpful. Encourage social interactions among Palantirians so that members of different teams can meet each other.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Palantir Technologies full-time for more than a year

Pros – -Nice/great/talented people
-The mission really does impact people in a great way
-Free Food

Cons – -Welcome to mini-Google, in other words recruiting hell without the great pay.
-A huge team for a company that has less than 1000 people.
-Located in downtown, huge parking problem!
-Broken recruiting process.

Advice to Senior Management – Stopping letting all these former Googlers recreate their mini hell, take a lesson from eBay, Facebook, or any other Fortune 500 company that isn't Google.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Palantir Technologies full-time

Pros – I can't think of a better place to work than Palantir. I've worked at several tech companies during my time including several big names you have all heard of, and I could never imagine going back to those places after having worked at Palantir.

I'd like to mention early on that Palantir is a VERY intense place to work. You're surrounded by super smart people who are incredibly passionate about our mission, and those of us in the field are working directly with customers whose job responsibilities include keeping citizens safe. I've noticed a few very negative reviews of Palantir but I suspect most of those come from people who arrive at Palantir thinking it was a 9-5 job. It's not -- everyone is expected to execute as strongly as the person next to them, and those who don't contribute are obvious to the rest of the team. Some folks may be surprised that they didn't realize what it was that they signed up for, but I assure you everyone is given notice and a fair warning if they are underperforming.

Working at Palantir is different from anything else out there. How many computer science students can say they've worked in war zones as rockets exploded 100 ft away? How many Silicon Valley startups have offices around the world and encourage you to explore international opportunities? How many of us can look back and say we honestly worked on projects that saved countless lives or made the world a better place? In the Valley most people are either working on advertising systems (Google) or tweaking social networking platforms (Facebook, Twitter). The only other companies I can think of with such world-changing ambitions are Tesla and SpaceX.

Beyond the mission itself, the people at Palantir are top tier. When you sign on as a member of the business team, the Forward Deployed Engineers, you're joining a regiment of the best of the best. I've never seen any environment where so many super smart people are so passionate about their work, and it certainly shows. You also get a chance to experience first-hand what a profound impact we're having in so many areas. It's not something we can typically talk about publicly, but it's more rewarding than anything I've ever done before.

The company also treats its employees really well. There are the usual perks on the level of Facebook and Google, including the best corporate food I've ever experienced (the HQ office has a full cooking staff with locally sourced organic/grass-fed/free-range/etc food). We also have a world class ops team that takes care of us so we can focus on our work.

When you join Palantir, know that you're immersing yourself into a different experience than anything else you have seen before, but even though people joke about us working too hard and getting too involved, I wouldn't trade it for anything else.

Cons – If you're looking for a 9-5 job, you're looking in the wrong place. Try Google or Facebook if you want a cozy California life.

The company has done a great job at adapting to its growing pains as they come up. I think the only real con I can think of is the salary cap -- people have been with the company for many years and raises are rare, even with top performance. Yes, we get equity bonuses and our cash bonuses can convert into more equity, but the once-youthful staff is aging and real life catches up eventually with marriages and mortgage payments. I'm not suggesting we need anything like 15% raises per year or something structured like you see in the big firms, but even keeping up with inflation would be a good start.

Advice to Senior Management – Keep adapting to our growing pains. Otherwise, keep up the great work.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at Palantir Technologies full-time

Pros – - You have a lot of freedom to make decisions about what you're doing day in day out.
- Fun environment, friendly people, great perks.
- The problems you are solving are quite complicated.
- The company is making a real world impact.

Cons – -Culture of entitlement
-Interpersonal conflicts

Advice to Senior Management – Hire more people with industry experience.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Palantir Technologies full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Choosing to work at Palantir has been the best career move of my life. I liked my old job, but I love Palantir! I do work long hours, but when you really enjoy your work the time flies by.

Having worked at Palantir for a while now I can tell you that a lot of the people that are griping about not being integrated quickly are because it's a high speed and challenging work environment. Most people coming into the DC office are not familiar with the flexible work environment that Palantir provides. Nor are they familiar with how things work at a fast moving company with streamlined oversight.

At Palantir the only barrier to success is you. Sure you are given left and right limits, but really you control your own destiny at Palantir. I love this and try to seize every opportunity I can, however it is not necessarily easy to adjust to this type of environment. I think this is where some of the frustration from other reviews comes from. In my experience I did not truly "get it" until after 6 months of hard work.

The personal growth I have gained at Palantir has been invaluable as well; in three years I have noticed so much personal growth in my professional skills. This is because I feel like I have been given the opportunity to do a lot of things that I would have never had the chance to do anywhere else.

Even with all of the awesomeness of personal growth, career development, and working with awesome people, you also get some fantastic perks which you can read about on the website.

Cons – Palantir is so different from a lot of companies that it is often hard for people to adjust. This in turn can cause friction with people that don't adjust well to change.

Advice to Senior Management – Keep doing what your doing!

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at Palantir Technologies as an intern for less than a year

Pros – - Very fun atmosphere and people. Lots of exciting events and weekly traditions (pizza night, ultimate frisbee, Halo, etc.)
- People are mostly friendly, happy to see you.
- Great mission that everyone's working for.
- Everyone is super willing to help you out if you have a problem. I would IM people I'd never met but whose names I found on the Wiki and they would answer my questions right away.
- They don't waist your time with administrative stuff.

Cons – - Very high expectations. People often work long/hard hours. People seemed to be a little fearful of keeping their jobs.
- The older engineers were hard to approach in person, didn't seem interested in making friendships (at least with interns). I often felt like they thought I was wasting their time and that my questions were dumb.
- There's an attitude that some may find to be "elitist" that most of the employees and executives often give off.
- Some, if not many, engineers didn't seem super enthused about the mission. Some seemed to just be there because it was a job, or because it was fun.

Advice to Senior Management – - Limit the amount of times you say "we're the best." Don't say/imply that you're perfect. You have your flaws and difficulties (mostly code-based) like every company does.
- Be more approachable. Don't always be in a hurry everywhere.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Palantir Technologies full-time for more than a year

Pros – In my nearly two years with Palantir, I'm certain that I've had a much bigger outcome on the impact I worked in government for seven years to affect: A government making better decisions driven by better information. It sounds cheesy, it's at times a slow and hard fought battle but we're actually winning it. If you've ever worked with the government you know what a huge accomplishment that is.

I am also extraordinarily lucky to work with the highest integrity, smartest people I've ever known. Working a campaign in 2006 I thought I had worked with the most capable, tight knit, well motivated team I would have the fortune to work with. Only Palantir has topped that experience.

Even if you forget both of the above reasons to work for the company - which are by far the best reasons to work here - they treat us extremely well. It's not just the big decisions like compensation and benefits, but also hundreds of small decisions where an ordinary company would optimize on keeping things simpler or spending less money, and it's clear that Palantir as a company prefers in each case to actually make my life easier and more productive, even if it means spending more money.

Cons – The work - both in volume and in degree of difficulty - is intense. Not only are we always trying to make something improbable happen with government customers in Silicon Valley timelines, but we're on the hook for the quality of that work in a big way. Making this all come together is definitely the most challenging professional experience of my life, and one that I have not always gotten right.

Advice to Senior Management – Keep up the focus on making everything we've done so far work at greater scale.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Palantir Technologies full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – 1. First and foremost, Palantir is working on some of the hardest and most important problems in the world. Working on these is both intellectually stimulating and extremely rewarding.

2. What initially drew me to the company, and what keeps me here today (in addition to 1 above), are the amazing people who work here. They're some of the smartest people I know and also some of my best friends. It's a great environment to work in, learn in, and enjoy life in. Also, there's a no a-hole policy, meaning we don't hire people we wouldn't want to work with on a daily basis, so everyone is someone you can easily enjoy working with and being friends with.

3. Meritocracy: the best idea wins, even if it's proposed by an intern. Seniority and experience will likely give you the ability to have better ideas, but it doesn't mean you're always right.

4. Lack of politics: similar to 3, you don't have to "know someone" or be a "senior engineer" or whatever to move up in the company or get your ideas heard.

5. Transparency: I ask a question, I get an answer. It may not be what I wanted or expected to hear, but will be the truth.

6. At Palantir, I have a chance to grow as an individual and take on leadership roles in a variety of ways. My primary responsibility is writing code to solve hard problems, but this past summer I mentored several newcomers and have been heavily involved in our recruiting efforts for quite a while. It's like a choose your own adventure where the transitions are based on your career goals and how you want to grow.

7. Decentralized decision-making and individual ownership: everyone owns pretty large portions of the codebase, and decisions are made at the level of project teams, not by "senior management" (which is hardly even a thing at Palantir). Sure, we have people who help drive the vision of the company and products as a whole, but like all of the people in leadership positions here, they're less controllers and decision-makers and more resources to help you make the biggest impact you can and solve the most important problems as effectively as possible.

8. Experimentation, agility, and investment in the future: Nothing is sacred here. Deleting code can be just as important (or more) than writing code. We're not afraid to try things out and discard them if they don't work. Process is a tool you refine and hone to serve you, not something you're a slave to. We're willing to be wrong and learn from it. Which may cause some short-term pain, but in the long-term it's well worth it.

Cons – 1. Growing pains: Palantir is growing very, very fast, which is both good and bad. It's hard to keep up with all the new things that are happening constantly, and it's hard to get to know all the new people starting continuously. And a lot of people are really tired of all the recruiting we have to do. I happen to like it, but that's just me. We're also running low on people who are interested in taking on leadership positions, which means our current leads get overworked and we have to look externally to hire new leads. Still don't know how that's going to turn out.

2. Working in challenging environments: This is really less of a con and more of a reality of working on the most important problems we can find in the most important places. When your deployment lives on a classified network or even just contains sensitive data, it can be a PITA to diagnose and fix problems.

3. No consumer product: It's really hard to explain what we do to people. Especially non-technical people. Work at Facebook or Amazon? Show mom the website. Palantir? Not so much. Most people here aren't much bothered by this, but it is kind of lame.

4. Occasional lack of direction for projects: Sometimes when you're working on something completely new, there will be times when you just...aren't really sure what to do next. We have great ways to get feedback from customers and our Forward Deployed Engineers, but that can take time during which projects can stall, which can be frustrating.

And now for some things that others might see as cons, but I don't

1. Work-life balance: people work really hard here. Really, really hard. I'm here 60+ hours a week usually (though not all of that is time spent working). However, I don't have any set hours. I can come in whenever I want as long as I'm getting things done. And I really like the work, so it's not really an issue for me. Plenty of people have families and work more "standard" hours while the younger crowd tends to come in later and stay later. And there's no vacation policy, so if I need a break, I can just take it, again provided I'm getting done what needs to get done.

2. Compensation: Salaries here are pretty low by Valley standards, but the equity more than makes up for it. Of course, this becomes less true over time, but as of now, it's still very true. Also, the other benefits are great, including 3 meals a day, 5 days a week (plus lunch Saturdays!). Though honestly, people who are primarily financially motivated would probably be less likely to find Palantir a satisfying environment than someone like me who is more motivated by purposeful work and learning from other awesome engineers.

Advice to Senior Management – Of course, I've already talked with "senior management" about this, but there is such a thing as growing too fast, and we have to be careful not to do so. When I was an intern 3.5 years ago, the whole team was my "mentor". Nowadays, new people have to share their one mentor with 1-2 other new people. It's necessary, but it makes it harder for new people to meet and learn from those who have been around for a while and really feel welcome and important in the company.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Palantir Technologies full-time for more than a year

Pros – -Flat hierarchy with an emphasis on personal ownership. At Palantir, I can honestly say that I have never been "managed." Leadership is there to guide you and help you when you need it, but not manage you. This helps you gain a huge amount of personal ownership over your projects which is encouraged. Employees are encouraged to make critical decisions in the field and supported by leadership.

-Meritocracy. You are only as successful as you make yourself. You are judged on your outputs and not your inputs. While this is a norm and maybe an expectation in Silicon Valley, its nearly unheard of on the East Coast.

-No BS. BS in any form is discouraged. From our no politics philosophy to the idea of only having meetings when absolutely necessary, we live and breath a minimal BS culture.

-Transparency. Leadership will answer ANY question you have and not only that but they will do it in front of the entire company.

-Make my own schedule. This is important to me as I have a family to worry about and a personal life to manage. As long as I excel and keep performing, no one seems to mind how I manage my time.

-The People. This is the biggest differentiator about Palantir. Everyone at Palantir is smart, friendly, unique and generally awesome. I know that I could ask anyone to help me with my work and not only would they step up they'd do just a good a job as I could. This is super rare in a company.

-Solving real problems. Being able to quantify the real world results of our work is amazing and it happens daily at Palantir.

-Fantastic benefits. If you are from the east coast, no one can beat the benefits.

Cons – -Massive Growth. This is awesome and also the source of most of our problems at the same time. We often don't scale our processes until we realize they are broken. This includes managing people, structuring teams, trying to communicate across teams, etc. The transfer of organizational knowledge has been the toughest problem to hack IMO.

-Recruiting. Its none stop and a huge time sink. I know its worth it and we need it to not only survive, but to maintain the pros listed above, but it can be draining at times.

-Salary. If you are east coast, this will probably be less than you make now. Regardless, the intangible benefits, unlimited leave policy and stock options more than make up for this. The other job offer I was considering before coming to Palantir was $55k more than what I make at Palantir. Don't get me wrong, I'm so glad I took my job at Palantir, but it would be nice sometimes to be a little more comfortable money wise.

Advice to Senior Management – Try to proactively fight the growth issues as much as you can. I've had numerous conversations with leadership about this, but its a super hard problem and I know they are working full time to handle it. My major concern is keep our culture while allowing this growth.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Palantir Technologies full-time for more than a year

Pros – - Almost all employees are extremely competent, friendly, and have a great attitude. The "No A-hole" policy works.
- The software and the team are actually making a difference in the world. The missions in antifraud, law enforcement, national security, and others are really inspirational.
- A real commitment to protecting privacy and civil liberties. I, personally, feel much better about the government agencies that have my personal info using Palantir, than any other software that does similar things (and probably hasn't built protections in from the ground-up.)
- The technical bar is high, and there's lots of opportunity to learn from others who are better than you (and not stuck up about it... see the first point.)
- Lots of individual autonomy. Employees are treated as adults in regards to time management, resource usage, technology choices, etc.
- Company leadership has a commitment to transparency, which is especially important in the face of some of the tricky moral dilemmas that come with access to lots of data. When there are issues, they're brought out in the open and discussed.
- Lots of perks (meals, snacks, swag, laundry, massage, chiro, physician, events). Other reviews have mentioned meals as a way of chaining you to your desk, but that hasn't been my experience. Nobody cares if I fill up to-go containers and bring dinner home to the family, or invite outside friends to eat a nice leisurely lunch (see point about being treated like an adult).
- Equity that will actually be worth something.

Cons – - There have been some growing pains as the company expands rapidly. It's starting to feel less like one big happy family and more fragmented.
- There is always so much to do, and always too few hands to do it. Since we have a lot of autonomy to dictate our own load/pace, we can often self-impose too much, and/or try to keep up with the next guy who is inevitably whip-smart and hard working. I almost always feel like I'm behind (which, admittedly, may be my own anxiety - nobody is harping on me to catch up.)
- All leads are promoted from within, which means that while they will definitely understand your engineering challenges, they may still be honing their management and people skills.
- The recruiting/interviewing load can eat up a lot of time during the heavy seasons, killing whole weeks of independent productivity. It's important work, but can be draining.
- People outside the company call us "secretive" and "shadowy" and accuse us of doing nefarious things that we don't do. Inevitably, arguing and feeding the trolls just makes you sound worse.
- Salaries are lower than other silicon valley companies. It's enough to live comfortably, and all those pros definitely soften the blow.

Advice to Senior Management – Keep up the trend of reaching out to employees to hear their concerns, and don't be afraid to take bold moves to keep the company as great a place to work as it grows.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company