Reflections on Palantir

> These were seriously intense, competitive people who wanted to win, true believers; weird, fascinating people who read philosophy in their spare time, went on weird diets, and did 100-mile bike rides for fun. This, it turned out, was an inheritance from the Paypal mafia.

Sounds like a fucking awful place to work.

100 mile bike rides are awesome. So is reading philosophy. Competition can be fun and motivating. Experimenting with weird diets can be fantastic exploration.

Fuck Palantir. Not because sometimes they act like human beings, but because sometimes they don't.

The worst attitude fta by far was the "Well at least we're at the table" justification. Weak rationalization presented as rationality; a thin veneer over "might makes right". "Gray areas" - yeah okay buddy.

I think you've hit the rationalist nail on the head. They look thoughtful and intellectually honest but in reality they're just kit bashing philosophy to paper over absolutely insane biases and political positions. You don't see any of them espousing leftist/egalitarian views, they're always sitting around thinking "this ethnic cleansing makes me feel good, how can I justify my participation?"

Eh, maybe. I wouldn't completely judge a workplace by these people. I've kind of come around to enjoy working with "weirdos" like this because their personal quirks have no actual affect on how they work. It can make them more interesting if anything.

I think the actual awful part of people like that are when they get in a position of power and preach their weirdness as The One True Way(tm). Which, unfortunately, a lot of them do. I think this stems from them having success in life without realizing it's selection bias. The result is that their own decisions are biased towards their quirks and they become pretty insufferable about it.

But, to your point and to completely contradict mine, I would bet those "One True Way" people probably are the norm at Palantir, judging by the onboarding book choices.

Are the book choices bad? I looked them up after first hearing about them through this article, and at least the Interviewing Users one sounded useful, and Principles seems to have a ton of good reviews. For the uninformed like me, could you give some color to those books?

I just think that both Impro and The Looming Tower have nothing to do with development and seem imposed by people who think they are important.