palantir

Maggette · Post by **Maggette** » Tue Sep 29, 2020 8:39 am

Any comments on the IPO?

Jurassic · Post by **Jurassic** » Tue Sep 29, 2020 11:37 am

can anyone elaborate on what their product does differently to say ibm consulting?

prikolno · Post by **prikolno** » Tue Sep 29, 2020 11:58 am

Know several who work or have worked there. The HN threads on Palantir are quite accurate. A consulting firm with two value propositions: (a) hiring engineers from a certain tier of universities at a slight discount to pure tech jobs and then outsourcing them as contractors in data analysis jobs to collect the spread, (b) reusing tribal knowledge and inhouse tools accumulated over the years for said task.

I think they fulfill a need that isn't met by other consulting firms that recruit from the same places, e.g. Bain/McKinsey/BCG, but not with the same stickiness and growth potential as, say, Snowflake, which has differentiated tech.

In a red hot IPO market and the brand recognition among retail investors, I won't be surprised they get valued as a tech stock when they really peer with consulting firms, the way WeWork was badged as a tech stock.

Jurassic · Post by **Jurassic** » Tue Sep 29, 2020 12:41 pm

@prikolno which threads exactly are you refering to? also i thought palantir paid high end, theres no discount there

whats the difference between their offering and mckinsey (IT/digital?)? as far as i can tell online is that they have tweaked pagerank a bit

also why cant these companies just organise their data themselves with inhouse IT, isnt this what they do?

Maggette · Post by **Maggette** » Tue Sep 29, 2020 1:12 pm

I worked together with a guy who I respect a lot and he used Palantir Foundry in a recent project and was kind of positively surprised. So they do have products. But you can't use them without lots of plumbing and integration work.

I hope for Palantir that they hire different people than Accenture or McK do. I had the "pleasure" to work with their ML and IT folks. Wich was, with some exceptions, quite catastrophic.

prikolno · Post by **prikolno** » Tue Sep 29, 2020 1:14 pm

grep for "Palantir S-1". Here's a few for your convenience, haven't read them recently so you'll have to denoise yourself:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24276086

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24235654

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23754643

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10785985

The total comp is generally below FAANG+M. I guess that might change for the better in the short run...

Jurassic · Post by **Jurassic** » Tue Sep 29, 2020 1:22 pm

@prikolno yeah ive seen those threads, most dont say much other than its IT consulting and loses money

Jurassic · Post by **Jurassic** » Tue Sep 29, 2020 1:23 pm

"I hope for Palantir that they hire different people than Accenture or McK do. I had the "pleasure" to work with their ML and IT folks. Wich was, with some exceptions, quite catastrophic. "

@Maggette what are the differences?

prikolno · Post by **prikolno** » Tue Sep 29, 2020 1:34 pm

Maybe a better comparison is Red Hat, which also monetizes their tech through consulting?

Maggette · Post by **Maggette** » Tue Sep 29, 2020 1:38 pm

I don't know the differences, because I never worked with Palantir folks.

I just worked with McK, Accenture and some BCG guys.

The sample is small, but apart from some exception in the best case they were young, quite bright and motivated.....but were sold to the projects as senior engineers and/or experts in ML...which they were clearly not.

I learned a few things from them, because I learn a few things from virtually everybody and juniors have a different perspective on things. But in the most part I trained and guided them.