Reflections on Palantir

> 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 founders and early employees have to be genuinely interesting intellectual thinkers.

This mythical idea that certain successful tech founders are successful because they are highly contemplative intellectuals is so exhausting to me. The amount of self-aggrandizement engaged in by people who merely _interacted_ with these founders is also insane. I can no longer take seriously the "I make software and then sit and think about ancient political philosophy" trope.

I'm not sure most people would claim their success comes down to the intellectual stuff. It's just that a certain type of nerd who is also very competent at what they do likes hanging out around other nerds of a similar type. If you read the descriptions of the actual work, at least among the FDEs, it seems striking how much it sounds like a relatively normal consulting engagement — we're not really talking developing foundational new algorithms or infrastructure here. But the kind of person who enjoys working at and does well in places like Palantir probably wouldn't enjoy Accenture. I agree it can veer pretentious, but I think it's more about clustering a certain kind of person together, similar to what you hear about e.g. places like Jane Street.