Pros: There are two big reasons to work at Palantir (in addition to a myriad of smaller ones): * It's the sharpest group of people you'll ever get to work with. * You'll be working on some of the most important problems society has regarding technology. One of the cool features of Palantir that differentiates the company from the walled-garden (and useful, not knocking them) experiences one gets at Google, Dropbox, Facebook, etc., is that Palantir deals with problems in the messy world, in a wide variety of industries—healthcare, law enforcement, disaster relief, energy, fraud, etc.—and puts a lot of responsibility on individual employees to map new problems in the messy world to sets of existing or not existing (and needing to be built) pieces of software, to solve the problem. It's really empowering and an exciting change of pace from what much of Silicon Valley considers important.

Cons: The downside of interacting with the messy world is that you can't easily construct a narrative about your business and expect it to remain unchanged (e.g., Dropbox being the place you store your files, or Google categorizing the world's information). As a rapidly growing company, Palantir has been forced to constantly refine its mission and why it operates the way it operates. This can lead to a lot of ambiguity and anxiety, as the unknown always has a tendency to do.

Pros: Flat hierarchy, good location, and easy communication with managers.

Cons: Longer working hours and on-call.

Pros: Mission, the impact this company has and the impact you can create as an intern is amazing. You immediately work on hard and important problems, with no side projects to keep interns busy. You're treated as a full-time employee for the most part. Culture, the people are among the friendliest and smartest out there. You can ask anyone for help. Further, from the constant internal dialogues, you can tell the company is ethically-minded and pursues success with integrity. Support system, mentor/lead/team/recruiter are all actively helping you make the internship a great experience. If there's a problem, you can raise it and it will be addressed. Personal growth, you're given a voice in what you want to do and what skills you want to improve. Travel, we had the opportunity to travel across and out of the country as interns. Perks, the free housing, 3 meals a day, the haircuts, the massages, etc., make life quite comfortable. Intern cohorting, interns in an office got to know each other pretty well and we've become friends throughout the internship. This is just my experience, but my experience isn't uncommon from what I can tell. Compensation, one of the highest out there.

Cons: Finding your own work-life balance. Because of the flexible hours, it can be difficult to find a balance that works for you when you see coworkers arriving or leaving at vastly different hours. That said, I didn't feel any pressure to work late or get in early. It's just a matter of doing what's best for you and communicating that.