Palantir

Amazing (like seriously amazing) people. Not just ridiculously smart and talented, but also extremely collaborative, friendly, and nerdy (in a good way) people. I don't think I've ever fit in better with a group of people.

Interesting work. I don't want to go into the specifics of what I worked on, but it was pretty cool and used modern technologies.

Work/life balance was kind of bad. Not for me, since I was a software engineering intern, but FDEs had notoriously bad work/life balance. Even software engineers on my team put in 50-60 hours some weeks (two over the course of a twelve-week internship, and both were when we were pushing for release).

This culture of "taking pain" was ingrained in Palantir. I distinctly remember hearing things like, "Palantir engineers are set apart by their inability to give up even if things get really hard." Which sounds great, but really endorses this work before everything else culture, which doesn't always exist but can come up before releases.

Tying into the previous point, the culture seemed a little "kool-aidy." People were really hyped on Palantir fighting terrorism and "saving the shire." People told me that they joined the company because Palantir was the only company where you could change the world and solve huge issues on Silicon Valley pay, which is true to an extent. But I don't think that attitude—that Palantir is so much better or doing so much more for the world than other Silicon Valley companies—is healthy for their engineers to have.

Overall, it's a mixed bag. If you care a lot about your work having a huge impact, and you are okay with putting in more than 40 hours/week some weeks, then this may be the place for you. If not, you can still probably fit in and find a place at Palantir. You would probably be really happy with your coworkers, but you might be happier at another company in terms of work-life balance and culture. There are a lot of really amazing companies in the area, after all.