8 ms·

I cannot say enough bad things about Palantir. Their technology is worse than the free alternatives and their consultants are not worth the money. They are losi

by bazqux2 10y ago

I cannot say enough bad things about Palantir. Their technology is worse than the free alternatives and their consultants are not worth the money. They are losing their big commercial customers because of this and now need 'Hail Mary' contracts from the US govt to remain in business. There is already a lot of information out how bad Palantir is. I hear from friends who work there that the BuzzFeed article on them is accurate. In short, like much in the valley, Palantir financially set up as an unmaintainable pyramid scheme. One way for them to get out would be to pay Goldman Sachs to get Meg Wittman use HP shareholder money to buy Palantir at face value. This worked for Autonomy - a similar scam 'Big Data' company where the founders got away with it.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
tptacek 10y ago
This is the kind of Palantir criticism I want to hear more of on HN. Could you flesh it out? What are the open or free alternatives?
- bazqux2 10y ago
  Sure, I'll give a few examples. A guy from BP told me in 2013 that they forked iPython, replaced all iPython references with Palantir and tried to sell it to them for $500K p.a. For me; back in the day (2010) they were less secretive about their technology which was essentially an ontological reasoner. This was pre the Big Data hype boom - and AFAIK Palantir has never been about Big Data. Ontological reasoners have problems that prevent them from scaling or generalizing so they generally fail. Due to a long long history of failing ontological systems have a very bad name. But they look good for guided demos and has a ton of academic backing so it's easy to sell - as long as you call it something else - which is what they did. So if you want to use ontologies a better open source alternative software is Protege. But for the problems Palantir targets I'd recommend using standard machine learning technology where all the good stuff is open sourced. As an aside, Peter Thiel also helped found Quid. A start-up that ripped off the Gephi layout engine and charges people $20K p.a. a seat. They've since rebuilt it but like Palantir it's still not solving people's problem and they've evolved into a consulting firm.
  - asdfologist 10y ago
    What does "p.a." mean?
    - DominikPeters 10y ago
      per annum = per year
      - gaur 10y ago
        Why do people replace transparent English phrases with opaque foreign abbreviations? We're not writing with quills on vellum anymore. Even "$500k/yr" is an improvement on "$500k p.a.".
        adenadel 10y ago
        As far as I know, per annum is actually a part of the English language. I typically have seen it used in the context of pricing or finance which seems to be verified. [1] I don't disagree with you about p.a. less clear than /yr though. 1. http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/3933/what-is-the-difference-between-per-year-and-per-annum http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/3933/what-is-the-...
        tptacek 10y ago
        Complaining about p.a. in a finance context makes about as much sense as complaining about "etc".
        hueving 10y ago
        Well it makes sense to complain about etc when we have etcd now. Embrace the future!
        trengrj 10y ago
        I'd argue "per annum" or p.a. isn't a foreign term and just standard English. English is full of Latin words, transparent, opaque, foreign, those are all words of Latin origin.
- bane 10y ago
  I think this is the most surprising thing, from my understanding, Palantir's user-facing tech is an ancient c.2007 era Java web start tool backed by a fairly ho-hum enterprise ontology system, some free-text search and fairly basic geospatial map server. It sounds like a 3-6 month, 3 person project to replicate with modern tech. I think all of the pieces of a Palantir-like system exist with open/free alternatives, but nobody has just bothered to write the glue code to make it happen. This makes me wonder at the ultimate utility of the particular shape of a Palantir system if nobody else is bothering to do it in quite the same way. It's probably some combination of PostgreSQL (plus PostGIS) + Elastic Search + Neo4j for the storage tech, pick-your-web-framework for the server-side, D3.js + some mapping library for the front-end and have all the major pieces. A few months of glue code and CRUD writing and it would be done. I'd definitely welcome a quick-to-deploy open/free alternative. The real money is in the integration, ETL, ontology consulting service bit and so anybody could really build a company around that stuff.
  - bazqux2 10y ago
    That matches my understanding of their tech stack as well. I also understand why people don't do an open sourced version - it doesn't pay nearly as well as having a job. What I find interesting about this is that in effect Palantir is acting as a consulting company while pretending to be a software tooling company. This allows them to claim a higher earnings multiple to inflate value and extract more money out of VCs and offer a lower percentage of equity to employees. This is a very old trick. The problem is that consulting companies are much harder to scale than software companies and the inevitable disappointment will lead to a loss of equity. There is good money in consulting (I am one) but it's hard to build a large consulting company when the 'tooling' companies can poach your talent away with cheap VC money and fairy tales about future piles of cash. It spoils the market. VC powered tooling companies masquerading as consulting companies are a real problem right now.
    - bane 10y ago
      What's pretty interesting is that my understanding of their licensing scheme is that it is not cheap per seat per year. Something on the order of $10-12k. There was a pricing sheet that floated around a few months ago that was released through a FOIA request. So it sounds like they covered their initial development R&D costs through licensing, led with that tool into consulting. My understanding is that many of the tooling companies who became consulting firms mostly jettisoned the tools along the way. Palantir has just let theirs stagnate.
6502nerdface 10y ago
Impressionistically, over the past 6-8 months or so, I've seen a lot of new resume flow coming out of Palantir (as a hiring manager at a large fintech co). I get the impression that they're bleeding talent.
- bazqux2 10y ago
  After the BuzzFeed article and Unicorn Flyers they bumped pay and bonuses by ~20%. This was around 6-8 months ago. From what you're saying it sounds like it wasn't enough.
  - hinkley 10y ago
    My experience, limited as it is, is that nobody talks out loud about turnover until something awful has already happened. It's always too little too late. Maybe that's because these things tend to only happen when there's a serious lack of respect and the employees have noticed. You can't bribe people into thinking you respect them. It just looks like being bought off. Twist the knife a little won't you?
throwaway081416 10y ago
This is the kind of low-quality vague mudslinging ("my friends tell me they're bad and also I think they're terrible") that makes me lose faith in the HN comment section. I'm sure my sibling post asking for details will lack for a detailed response.
Omnipresent 10y ago
What are some free alternatives ?
avs733 10y ago
>I cannot say enough bad things about Palantir. I cannot comment about the technology but I sure as hell can at a people level. I was a speaker at a conference where one of the Palantir cofounders gave a keynote. This was a conference organized by college students for their peers. As with all such situations these kids worked incredibly hard and his talk was incredibly disrespectful to that. If I hadn't been so disgusted I would have thought to record it. Rather than talk about anything relevant to his audience, or frankly anything informative, he told 'stories'. We have all seen that type of talk, but I have never seem one which so blatantly braggadocious about his interactions with this and other country's intelligence branches. I saw it somewhat ironic that for someone who works for Peter Theil the level to which the talk, and his representation of the 'good' the company does was so absolutely and apologetically statist and authoritarian. He talked about who's jet he rode on, who he knew, and other things that seemed simply organized to ensure we knew just how important he was. Several of the stories were overtly misogynistic, and none of them had any useful knowledge about Palintir or working for them. I was sitting with another speaker and we were literally shaking our heads. I felt bad for the organizers and felt the shame he[the speaker] seemed incapable of. Edit: clarified ambiguous pronoun
- bazqux2 10y ago
  This matches my experiences with them and other Peter Thiel funded startups.
banusaur 10y ago
But... Didn't Palantir find Osama Bin Laden?

by bazqux2 10y ago

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

tptacek 10y ago

This is the kind of Palantir criticism I want to hear more of on HN. Could you flesh it out? What are the open or free alternatives?

bazqux2 10y ago
Sure, I'll give a few examples. A guy from BP told me in 2013 that they forked iPython, replaced all iPython references with Palantir and tried to sell it to them for $500K p.a. For me; back in the day (2010) they were less secretive about their technology which was essentially an ontological reasoner. This was pre the Big Data hype boom - and AFAIK Palantir has never been about Big Data. Ontological reasoners have problems that prevent them from scaling or generalizing so they generally fail. Due to a long long history of failing ontological systems have a very bad name. But they look good for guided demos and has a ton of academic backing so it's easy to sell - as long as you call it something else - which is what they did. So if you want to use ontologies a better open source alternative software is Protege. But for the problems Palantir targets I'd recommend using standard machine learning technology where all the good stuff is open sourced. As an aside, Peter Thiel also helped found Quid. A start-up that ripped off the Gephi layout engine and charges people $20K p.a. a seat. They've since rebuilt it but like Palantir it's still not solving people's problem and they've evolved into a consulting firm.
- asdfologist 10y ago
  What does "p.a." mean?
  - DominikPeters 10y ago
    per annum = per year
    - gaur 10y ago
      Why do people replace transparent English phrases with opaque foreign abbreviations? We're not writing with quills on vellum anymore. Even "$500k/yr" is an improvement on "$500k p.a.".
      - adenadel 10y ago
        As far as I know, per annum is actually a part of the English language. I typically have seen it used in the context of pricing or finance which seems to be verified. [1] I don't disagree with you about p.a. less clear than /yr though. 1. http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/3933/what-is-the-difference-between-per-year-and-per-annum http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/3933/what-is-the-...
      - tptacek 10y ago
        Complaining about p.a. in a finance context makes about as much sense as complaining about "etc".
        hueving 10y ago
        Well it makes sense to complain about etc when we have etcd now. Embrace the future!
      - trengrj 10y ago
        I'd argue "per annum" or p.a. isn't a foreign term and just standard English. English is full of Latin words, transparent, opaque, foreign, those are all words of Latin origin.
bane 10y ago
I think this is the most surprising thing, from my understanding, Palantir's user-facing tech is an ancient c.2007 era Java web start tool backed by a fairly ho-hum enterprise ontology system, some free-text search and fairly basic geospatial map server. It sounds like a 3-6 month, 3 person project to replicate with modern tech. I think all of the pieces of a Palantir-like system exist with open/free alternatives, but nobody has just bothered to write the glue code to make it happen. This makes me wonder at the ultimate utility of the particular shape of a Palantir system if nobody else is bothering to do it in quite the same way. It's probably some combination of PostgreSQL (plus PostGIS) + Elastic Search + Neo4j for the storage tech, pick-your-web-framework for the server-side, D3.js + some mapping library for the front-end and have all the major pieces. A few months of glue code and CRUD writing and it would be done. I'd definitely welcome a quick-to-deploy open/free alternative. The real money is in the integration, ETL, ontology consulting service bit and so anybody could really build a company around that stuff.
- bazqux2 10y ago
  That matches my understanding of their tech stack as well. I also understand why people don't do an open sourced version - it doesn't pay nearly as well as having a job. What I find interesting about this is that in effect Palantir is acting as a consulting company while pretending to be a software tooling company. This allows them to claim a higher earnings multiple to inflate value and extract more money out of VCs and offer a lower percentage of equity to employees. This is a very old trick. The problem is that consulting companies are much harder to scale than software companies and the inevitable disappointment will lead to a loss of equity. There is good money in consulting (I am one) but it's hard to build a large consulting company when the 'tooling' companies can poach your talent away with cheap VC money and fairy tales about future piles of cash. It spoils the market. VC powered tooling companies masquerading as consulting companies are a real problem right now.
  - bane 10y ago
    What's pretty interesting is that my understanding of their licensing scheme is that it is not cheap per seat per year. Something on the order of $10-12k. There was a pricing sheet that floated around a few months ago that was released through a FOIA request. So it sounds like they covered their initial development R&D costs through licensing, led with that tool into consulting. My understanding is that many of the tooling companies who became consulting firms mostly jettisoned the tools along the way. Palantir has just let theirs stagnate.

6502nerdface 10y ago

Impressionistically, over the past 6-8 months or so, I've seen a lot of new resume flow coming out of Palantir (as a hiring manager at a large fintech co). I get the impression that they're bleeding talent.

bazqux2 10y ago
After the BuzzFeed article and Unicorn Flyers they bumped pay and bonuses by ~20%. This was around 6-8 months ago. From what you're saying it sounds like it wasn't enough.
- hinkley 10y ago
  My experience, limited as it is, is that nobody talks out loud about turnover until something awful has already happened. It's always too little too late. Maybe that's because these things tend to only happen when there's a serious lack of respect and the employees have noticed. You can't bribe people into thinking you respect them. It just looks like being bought off. Twist the knife a little won't you?

throwaway081416 10y ago

This is the kind of low-quality vague mudslinging ("my friends tell me they're bad and also I think they're terrible") that makes me lose faith in the HN comment section. I'm sure my sibling post asking for details will lack for a detailed response.

Omnipresent 10y ago

What are some free alternatives ?

avs733 10y ago

>I cannot say enough bad things about Palantir. I cannot comment about the technology but I sure as hell can at a people level. I was a speaker at a conference where one of the Palantir cofounders gave a keynote. This was a conference organized by college students for their peers. As with all such situations these kids worked incredibly hard and his talk was incredibly disrespectful to that. If I hadn't been so disgusted I would have thought to record it. Rather than talk about anything relevant to his audience, or frankly anything informative, he told 'stories'. We have all seen that type of talk, but I have never seem one which so blatantly braggadocious about his interactions with this and other country's intelligence branches. I saw it somewhat ironic that for someone who works for Peter Theil the level to which the talk, and his representation of the 'good' the company does was so absolutely and apologetically statist and authoritarian. He talked about who's jet he rode on, who he knew, and other things that seemed simply organized to ensure we knew just how important he was. Several of the stories were overtly misogynistic, and none of them had any useful knowledge about Palintir or working for them. I was sitting with another speaker and we were literally shaking our heads. I felt bad for the organizers and felt the shame he[the speaker] seemed incapable of. Edit: clarified ambiguous pronoun

bazqux2 10y ago
This matches my experiences with them and other Peter Thiel funded startups.

banusaur 10y ago

But... Didn't Palantir find Osama Bin Laden?