The FDE Thread
The internal thread where we worked out what we want from our next FDE hires. Typos kept, housekeeping trimmed, every disagreement intact — including the one about whether this posting should exist. Two redactions, both marked, both to keep other people's names out of it.
FDE hiring brain dump > mostly just thoughts as we wait to see how some of the [redacted] heavy activities shake out, also not ordered in any importance.
I don't really think there is any way we can skirt around this, I think our first few hires in this next cycle need to be ex Palantir FDEs. Based on the model we want to deploy, the profile of person who can actually embed well, ability to actually build, plus like for culture reasons, the current discourse Palantir internally and the market, for credibility and for selecting for the correct traits i think we should be pretty laser focused palantir people. for that reason, potentially an incentive, some type of referral bonus? both for the person joining and their referrer?
Thinking back to the highest signal thing anyone did in the last hiring cycle, it was jacob building the custom app w textql embedded. I liked using Ana as the center of the project part of the process, but I think instead of them giving a demo, not a ton of signal there, we instead have them BUILD something with Ana. A process / workflow, custom app, etc. This will have them be judged way more on their eng, taste, market knowledge, and technical capabilities. It will also filter out more SE people, which i dont think we want to focus on for a while, we have plenty of that profile on the team.
We need to do something more for branding. I think the best lever we can pull is thought leadership. The essays that ethan has been working on, I can do more writing. But we want to attract people who respond well to strong and interesting POVs, well specifically our POV, and the type of person who is actually going to index on this (ie, just read the fucking blog posts). So yea i think we need to publish and publicize more.
for that reason, potentially an incentive, some type of referral bonus? both for the person joining and their referrer?
the diagnosis is right, the solution is wrong. referral bonuses help by like 10%. but what we need is like a 20x improvement in our ability to hire people from palantir
but I think instead of them giving a demo, not a ton of signal there, we instead have them BUILD something with Ana. A process / workflow, custom app, etc.
I like this. some kind of case assignment or smt, seems right. we can also just hire engineers from waterloo / make them pass the same engineering interview bar and them let them opt into FDE work, and make super clear "being able to program is a core part of the job"
right now i think the importance of that CS skill is under-sold, and [redacted] thinks it isn't important as a result
yea the bonus is necessarily a bandaid, but by far the thing that is going to make us 20x better at hiring from Palantir the quickest is getting ex-Palantir people in the door quickly, we need our first 1 or 2 to start a fly wheel. doesn't need to be a referral bonus but something there to grease the door for the first one we hire
or i see it like a shovel and a pile of dirt in front of us, that would take like a day to dig through, and you're suggesting we create a job posting / create systematic things to get someone to help us dig the hole
i'd rather just start digging. "hire a person from palantir" is a self contained task that doesn't require help
have you DM'd everyone from palantir in new york on linkedin? are you using all 100 of your linkedin outbounds?
yea thats actually fair
Solidifying a thought that I worked through with @Mark yesterday. There is something that a "Palantir" FDE does that a solutions eng, or system integrator, or csm/support person never really will, and its work along the flow of:
Identifying the correct person and domain in a business unit that has the right combination of influence, budget, problems, and willingness to work with you, and getting them to commit to sitting down and solving their problems.
Getting to know every last detail of that person/domain's work, priorities, how it rolls up into organization, the head of that orgs priorities, the VP's priorities, what is actually addressable, and then synthesizing that into a clear, articulate, and good plan to solve this problem.
Having the technical and project management ability to actually go and then implement this solution, and the drive to see it through to 100%.
Driving adoption once the solution is done, and iterating on it to meet new needs. Then marketing it to the right people such that it satisfies the priorities up the chain of command, ie ensuring that all the right people get credit for its success.
This is less about mass adoption, which is still a skill that we need to have, instead about being able to go very deep, and 100% on projects. real things that then the right people can latch onto to show the success of TQL and improvements to the org generally.
I thought we had some fact finding expedition a while ago that identified that in fact, palantir fdes did not do 1. I could be misremembering but AE does one 1 (or finds the ~5 people they could come from) and links FDE to them for 2-4 seems much more practical
Just going to continue this as a brain dump thread. New FDEs should spend some number of their first weeks working as a MOTS. Not on anything deep, mostly just like bug fixes etc. Intern stuff. This will primarily be for the FDE to build raport w eng, learn how they work, learn how they communicate. Also learn the basics of the platform and infra. There was the big discussion yesterday about some of the disconnect between FDE and eng and this would go a long way to getting this motion correct early on
If this reads like a place you want to work, the role this thread produced is open.