1. Morally neutral . Normal corporate work, e.g. FedEx, CVS, finance companies, tech companies, and so on. Some people might have a problem with it, but on the whole people feel fine about these things.


2. Unambiguously good . For example, anti-pandemic response with the CDC; anti-child pornography work with NCMEC; and so on. Most people would agree

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Another key thing FDEs did was data integration, a term that puts most people to sleep. This was (and still is) the core of what the company does, and its importance was underrated by most observers for years. In fact, it’s only now with the advent of AI that people are starting to realize the importance of having clean, curated, easy-to-access... See more

When I joined, Palantir was divided up into two types of engineers:

1. Engineers who work with customers, sometimes known as FDEs, forward deployed engineers.


2. Engineers who work on the core product team (product development - PD), and rarely go visit customers.

FDEs tend to write code that gets the job done fast, which usually means – politely – technical debt and hacky workarounds. PD engineers write software that scales cleanly, works for multiple use cases, and doesn’t break. One of the key ‘secrets’ of the company is that generating deep, sustaining enterprise value requires both. BD engineers tend to... See more

FDEs were typically expected to ‘go onsite’ to the customer’s offices and work from there 3-4 days per week, which meant a ton of travel. This is, and was, highly unusual for a Silicon Valley company.

There’s a lot to unpack about this model, but the key idea is that you gain intricate knowledge of business processes in difficult industries... See more

The combo of intellectual grandiosity and intense competitiveness was a perfect fit for me. It’s still hard to find today, in fact - many people have copied the ‘hardcore’ working culture and the ‘this is the Marines’ vibe, but few have the intellectual atmosphere, the sense of being involved in a rich set of ideas . This is hard to LARP - your... See more

1

Both OpenAI and Palantir required backing by rich people with deep belief and willingness to fund them for years without any apparent or obvious breakthroughs (Elon/YC Research, and Peter Thiel, respectively). Palantir floundered for years, barely getting any real traction in the gov space, and doing the opposite of the ‘lean startup’ thing;... See more

• On the ICE question, they disengaged from ERO (Enforcement and Removal Operations) during the Trump era, while continuing to work with HSI (Homeland Security Investigations).


• They did work with most other category 3 organizations, on the argument that they’re mostly doing good in the world, even though it’s easy to point to bad things they did as

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Every engineer faces a choice: you can work on things like Google search or the Facebook news feed, all of which seem like marginally good things and basically fall into category 1. You can also go work on category 2 things like GiveDirectly or OpenPhilanthropy or whatever.

The critical case against Palantir seemed to be something like “you... See more