Variety and autonomy like nowhere else
Pros
If you're a driven person, the opportunities to take ownership of complex problems here are peerless. This week, I've been shaping the architecture of our trader-oversight platform, building an automated test framework, speaking to the CTO of a major bank about our technology, and spinning up a brand new dev team. Oh, and organising the London office's next beer-tasting outing. Meanwhile a friend/colleague of mine is simultaneously figuring out how to use machine learning to solve data-quality issues in the insurance industry, and coordinating the spin-up of Palantir's next European office. All of the above happens because Palantir's culture is one of decentralised autonomy. You are given the freedom to entirely manage your own schedule, to identify things that need fixing (both internal and external) and then run experiments to address them. Our culture is also one that fosters an insanely tight global community of smart, interesting, passionate people. Everyone on my team has an interesting story to tell, and has something that they do far, far better than I ever could. There are few companies of this size where literally anyone can literally send an email to a director to tell them when they're wrong (and indeed, are positively encouraged to do so). NOTE: I wrote this review as part of an initiative to correct the current skewed/unrepresentative status quo of UK reviews here. That said, everything you read here is reality as I see it; no one else has vetted or influenced my words.
Cons
The company (and the London office in particular) is scaling incredibly fast, which is not without its costs. Many things used to come for free, but we're now learning how to stay on top of the tech debt of complex projects, and to tackle a decrease in general employee awareness of what's going on around the company and how we're sticking to our mission. We're also working hard to ensure that new starters don't get lost in the chaotic, ever-changing world that is life at Palantir. The variety I talked about above goes hand-in-hand with drive/passion. If you're accustomed to being handed things on a plate, then your experience at Palantir may end up very different, especially in BD. There is often a lot of boilerplate work to be done (but of course, the interesting challenge is to find ways to reduce this.) The culture and work ethic is not for everyone, especially versus the European norm. 40-hour weeks are something of a minimum in practice, but for most people here that's an acceptable trade-off to work on important problems, with amazing colleagues.
