[recondite]

Don't believe the reviews.

I was considering a position there, and did some research into the company culture (because everything else about them just seemed impossibly awesome, with the exception of pay). Apparently, they had a fairly low review rating about a year ago which was hurting recruiting efforts, so company leadership "asked" employees to write reviews and a bunch of 5-star reviews popped out in a very short period of time. They all sound like PR copy, all cut from the same mold, and the "cons" of the company aren't really negatives but disguised positives. If you click on the "rating trends" next to the overall star rating you'll see when this happened.

Totally creepy and a bit cult-ish if you ask me. Some of the other reviewers actually called them out about this, but since they're an "engaged employer" on Glassdoor, it appears those reviews are getting buried in favor of the ghost-written ones. You can still find them fairly easily though because they'll have 20-50x more helpful tags than the kool-aid reviews. Turned me off completely to them, and makes me think there are some serious issues going on underneath the surface.

I also found this blog post written a while back about their business model which I found quite enlightening: http://kellblog.com/2011/06/27/why-palantir-makes-my-head-hu...

It's a little dated, but I think he hits the nail on the head in a few places.