OKAY ONE MORE CUZ I JUST RECENTLY GOT ANOTHER MATCH AND OFFER Choosing between 2 New Grad Offers, as Google’s comp package from my return offer from spring internship was renegotiated after my Palantir offer came out. Palantir: Forward Deployed Engineer, NYC TC: 235K Base: 135K Sign-On: 30K RSUs: 55K (220 vested over 4 years) Annual “Distribution” Bonus: 15K minimum I’m honestly super in love with Palantir’s mission, culture, and work. (bar the ICE contract, which, after speaking with multiple employees, I realize is a very common sentiment) Is the rep in Tech still high? Or has it been too tainted by the scandals in the news? Google: L3 New Grad SWE, New York TC: 206K Base: 126K Sign-On: 35K RSUs: 30K (120K vested over 4 years) Performance Bonus: 15K minimum Fun internship, and the Google name brand is really nice. Got a bump in Sign on and RSUs after negotiating with Palantir Offer. Looking for a high impact, and high growth opportunity to ultimately pivot to a more client-facing/product driven role such as PM, Entrepreneurship, or even VC. Any input will be appreciated. Thanks!
Google pays less which makes Palantir the obvious choice. Why is this a hard decision?
I feel like the “Evil Corp” media branding has made a lot of people skeptical about joining Palantir, and Google is Google. They have incredible impact, the culture is super great (albeit more on the “safe” side) and the NYC office is amazing.
Does Palantir give as generous refreshers as Google?
Forget about the evil corp branding, Palantir's technical reputation has always been pretty poor, especially for FDEs. A bunch of people from my university started there as new grads, most were in the bottom half of the class.
Where else are you interviewing? Based on what you're saying honestly neither of these seem like a great fit.
That’s surprising you say that, because my interviews for Palantir were significantly more rigorous than at Google’s and very holistic. (We delved into systems design, and some new language learning interviews on top of 2 Leetcode medium-hard interviews) My interviewers and hiring manager at Palantir were top of their class Princeton, MIT, etc. (looked up through LinkedIn). Unfortunately, I have no other offers I’d consider, as I was rejected from most PM programs I applied to, FB, my other dream place, isn’t hiring for New Grad SWE, and there’s no way I’m going back to AWS.
My understanding of forward deployed engineer is that they just do stuff on customer’s site. Kinda like a engineer consultant. Btw, almost every fde wants to be a swe and that’s why they are always hiring fde/convincing candidates to be fde. Also, I was explicitly told that they have poor comments/docs when I interviewed at palantir nyc. Honestly, I was looking for the same thing as you mentioned in the last paragraph. In the end, I got fed with all their bs and took my return offer at Google. I have a bunch other choices at the time but I am pretty happy with where I am right now. PM if you want to talk more.
FDE was actually my ideal job, because I wanted to have a role between SWE and consulting (My school is a MAJOR consulting target, and I was strongly considering going through MBB+ recruitment if I didn’t land in Tech), so it was my choice and preference to be an FDE. I was really interested in doing meaningful work, and also developing soft skills in terms of client interactions and being user-centered. Would I not be doing any real coding as an FDE? They also said it’s really easy for me to internally transition to a traditional dev role if I wanted to.
That’s what they tell anyone, including me, but almost all fde wants to convert (based on my conversation with interviewers, a lot of them are fde->SDE). From my understanding, there is a queue for it and thus it is not as easy as you might think. I do not know how much real coding you might do on client’s side. The view I had in mind was you’d tune the products for them. So mostly configs and small changes. FYI, you can pick a team in google that has external or internal clients and develop your skills.
This is not how you compute TC. Generally you spread sign on over 2/4 years or just don’t include it. But either way, great offer congrats
Sign on was given as a one time payment in the beginning tho?
TC is the average you make. Sign on is just boosting your Y1 comp. Consider this: 100k / 100k for 4y / 150k sign on 200k/ 300k for 4y / no sign on These would all give 275k TC in your model but obviously first is worse. Since your annual TC is only 125k after Y1
Yeah this guys an idiot
Based on your last paragraph, Palantir for sure