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Palantir Technologies

Is this your company?

Good times on boats - Software Engineer Palantir Technologies Employee Review

5.0
Nov 30, 2012
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- Software being used to tack important problems. It's gratifying to see the projects I've worked on being used on real problems. - Coworkers are, by and large, fantastic. Fun people to work with who you can trust to do good work. I feel like I have a lot to learn from the people around me. - I can see why the culture might seem intimidating at first but as a bona fide antisocial developer stereotype, I would say that my experience here has been quite welcoming. - I believe the company has a large potential upside. Having seen our software deployed and used, I think we have the potential to be very successful.

Cons

- There are definitely growing pains. With the size of the company and by which it's trying to grow, there is a large burden of recruiting on everyone. This can be tiring but the load will be better distributed as we grow. - Work-life balance could be better. I definitely work a lot, but I wouldn't be willing to do so if I didn't enjoy the work I'm doing. - A lot of effort is being put into "preserving the culture" as we grow but I think care should be taken not to let this alienate new people. I think if I had interned/started a year later than I did, I would not have felt as at home and welcome here as I do.

Explore other reviews about Palantir Technologies

5.0
Jun 21, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Hyper intelligent people, interesting problem sets, amazing technology, three meals a day, flexibility

Cons

Pay is below market, workload is exceptionally high

2.0
Mar 8, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- Most talented, smart and industrious group of people I've ever worked with. Unfortunately, smart people can be easily deceived.

Cons

If you are in Business Development (BD) - i.e. Delta or Echo - this job will be your life. They deliberately underhire - they claim it's to maintain the culture, but really it's to squeeze every ounce of productivity out of you. You are thrown into chaotic situations with no way out but to "chew glass and excrete product". Don't let the flat heirarchy and encouragement of confrontation / open debate deceive you. Karp has majority founder shares and calls the shots. The company is a dictatorship, not a democracy. Resourcing is a black box. If you are a U.S person without a clearance, you will be bait-and-switched into defense even if you thought you could avoid it. With clearance, you'll end up on something much worse. Trust your gut - the company's leadership are not wise, nuanced philosophers - they are spineless, shifty edgelords with no ethical red lines. As a FDE, you will spend half your time working around stupid limitations in the platform you could not foresee when making grand promises to the customer. Foundry is not a cutting edge product, just like Microsoft Suite is not a cutting edge product. Its just too broad for any other company to easily copy it. Palantir just brought middle-of-the-road Silicon valley tech to old-school government, slapped some AI integration onto it and shrouded it in a veil of mystery to make it seem cool and mysterious and appeal to retail investors.

5
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