Palantir

Some (but not all) of the work the company does is incredibly exciting and impactful to real-world problems.

Your co-workers will be smart, hard-working, and motivated.

There's a very small number of companies in the DC area that offer catered food 3 times a day and have a speakeasy. The perks are real, and while they shouldn't be a deciding factor, they're definitely nice.

I was hired as a "Forward Deployed SOFTWARE Engineer". During the interview process, I asked what the difference was between this and a normal software engineering position, and was told "there's basically no difference". That response was untrue. I was further misled at least twice during the interview process, and one of my interviewers apologized for lying to me during interviews after we both had left the company.

Any type of forward deployed position at Palantir bears very little resemblance to a normal "software engineering" position. Some people like the differences and others don't. Forward deployed engineering involves mostly deploying other people's code of varying quality and trying to shoehorn it into a place to solve a problem, then struggling desperately to keep it running. Also, trying to keep other people's earlier shoehorned solutions running.

As of my departure in summer 2016, the DC office still has no real SE positions, though it does list them as openings. Be very cautious applying for one of these positions. I recommend asking every single person you talk to the following questions:

• If hired, what PRODUCT will I be working on? (They will probably try not to answer - you can interpret that response however you like)
• How many products are developed in this office, and where are they used? How big are the development teams?
• How many product managers are in the office?
• What does the development/release cycle look like for the product I will be working on?
• Will I be working on a client site? OR What are the travel requirements for this position?

Basically, try to ask very SE-specific questions about the job you're applying for. Be critical when analyzing the responses.

But seriously, if you want to do software engineering, do yourself a favor and don't go to work at Palantir in DC. London, New York, and Palo Alto all have supported and stable engineering teams as of summer 2016.

The company also suffers from systemic poor leadership, which creates a political, distrusting environment that said leadership refuses to believe exists. This isn't necessarily a dealbreaker though, just something to be aware of. I ranked culture & values low, because while Palantir has a great cultural manifesto, it's almost 100% not reflective of conditions inside the company.

Palantir has a culture of disrespecting customers, which made me uncomfortable.

Finally, there's definitely a subculture of people expecting employees to be in the office a lot. I think even people who are on site all the time suffer from a public perception that they're not "spending enough time in the office".

Stop hiring software engineers to not do software engineering.

Don't lie to prospective candidates about their job duties.

Consider hiring some people who have demonstrated excellence in leadership, and actually let them be leaders and make decisions.