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by prepend 3025 days ago
But they don’t have any sales people, only engineers.
2 comments

Much like Accenture or McKinsey, we were assigned a "partner", who was always looking to upsell more services and get more entrenched in the organisation. E.g. "we've built system X (which I assure you is better than what you have), how can we use it to do Y and switch off your existing system Z."

A lot of the times, they were just using stuff like Hadoop, and massively over-engineering simple data integration tasks.

Their Open Positions page advertises the following. Sounds like sales 2.0 positions.

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT

Communications Strategist

Deployment Strategist

Forward Deployed Security Engineer

Proposal and Capture

Legal Strategist

Proposal and Capture Strategist

Yep, “business development” basically means business-to-business sales, with a dash of “consulting” mixed in for taste.
What's the difference between a "Proposal and Capture" and a "Proposal and Capture Strategist"? What the heck is a "Forward Deployed Security Engineer"? Are these 20-somethings wearing camo, with an AR in one hand and a laptop in the other? This would honestly be pathetic if Peter Thiel weren't making enough money to build his own island. I haven't heard if he's in the Mars Rocket Club yet.
Forward Deployed means you're working at the client place and not in a Palantir office if I recall correctly the information I got when I interviewed with them.
It certainly sounds more tacticool than "On-Site."
The "Proposal and Capture Stategist" strategizes the job of "Proposal and Capture" employees and he reports to the "Proposal and Capture Strategist Proposal Capture Manager."