Palantir

I joined Palantir in 2010 when the company had about 250 employees. I had worked at one company (> 10,000 employees) for many years before changing jobs in 2010. Needless to say, I was nervous with such a drastic change in my career. I'm now in my sixth year at Palantir, and I have to say that the transition was smooth. I continue to enjoy my work here every single day.

Here are the pros I can think of:

• Technical challenging projects that allow you to grow your technical skills. There is plenty of help from experienced engineers in the organization to ensure you don't feel lost.
• Excellent leadership at the Director level and first-line leads. Directors are open to any feedback, are very approachable, and always trying to help out engineers.
• Good work-life balance. I'm hearing some horror stories from my colleagues in the tech industry, but I haven't had many problems here. I have been able to spend plenty of time with my family all these years.
• Absolute meritocracy and very little bureaucracy. There are very good resources available in terms of systems, facilities, etc.
• Very good perks.

Like any other enterprise software company in this day and age, Palantir faces a stern test when it comes to figuring out what exactly their customers want and how they can deliver software for these needs. Because of this, the company does make significant organizational and philosophical changes frequently. This can cause some confusion amongst engineers, but I've generally seen company leadership providing lots of knowledge on why/how a change in direction was made.

Sometime in the next few months, Palantir will cross the threshold of 2000 employees. I definitely see some growing pains next year because of this. I expect our leadership to be fully ready for challenges they can predict, but many issues they don't anticipate at this time.