(internship) Palantir vs. Roblox
This will be my final undergrad internship. My career goal is to work on my startup(s) full time. I only plan on working in the industry for a couple years. I am leaning towards Palantir, because I think the Palantir Forward Deployed position will allow me to learn soft skills which will be relevant when I work on my startups. My decision criteria is: what will look better on my resume and what will be more relevant to skills I need when running startups. #engineering #software #swe #palantir #roblox #internship #startups #startup
Palantir FDE is not respected among the software engineer community cause it’s a glorified consulting role
That may be true, but I don't plan on staying in software engineering for long. Do you think it would help me at all with skills I'd need for running startups?
This is simply not the case. The engineering bar for FDEs is incredibly high and they regularly go to other competitive companies to go deeper on software engineering, data stuff, or more business focused stuff
I want to re-iterate I'm just doing this internship for experience, my goal is to get out of software engineering within 5 years. Not sure if that changes any answers
If this is the case palantir sounds like a no brainer. Also many opportunities to jump ship to a customer if you like the domain and want to get out of SWE.
Additionally, each subteam at palantir is really its own startup. Some 2-4 people, some up to like 50.
It sounds like you’ve already made up your mind lol. What skills are you looking for? Palantir is not a startup, nor does it run like a startup. Roblox is in hyper growth mode, so if you want to see a company transition from startup to larger company you’ll get to see that here. Palantir is also sales driven and has a lot of government contracts while Roblox is product driven and is used by the general public. Two very different companies.
My mind isn't made up, I got the Roblox offer first and was pretty set on it, but now I want to make sure to give palantir fair consideration. Their hiring bar was much higher for internship. But I think your point about Roblox's growth is a good one, I didn't consider that
If you don't mind me asking another question, do you feel like you have been getting a startup experience at Roblox? By that I mean have you had opportunities to take ownership and also build soft skills like what is needed at startups? Or is it more like typical swe jobs (tackling tickets and going home)
tc or gtfo
It's an internship, my current TC is 0. The offers are around the same like $50-60/hr
One of these is solving real problems in the world
Roblox by far unless you want to work in the defense industry? Also understand that forward deployed position is considered (even if wrongly) to not be a true development position. At the very least, I don't think it'll look as good in your resume.
Forward deploy sounds like a field support to me
Roblox, I've talked to some forward deployed people and they are kind of like consultants who build on top of the product to solve the customer's problem. They seem to be respected internally because they are doing most of the interacting with customers. I'm worried I won't get this valuable experience at Roblox, but do you think it's possible to develop soft skills at Roblox too?
What other internships do you have? The FDE position might be good if you want more diversity in the type of internships you've had on your resume, but it won't help as much with hard skills as Roblox.
Swe (frontend) internship at a mid-size tier 2 tech company
I would say go Roblox then. I personally would choose Palantir but that’s because of my personal interest in their product, if you are ambivalent to either of them go RBLX.
Go for Roblox
Could I ask why you think Roblox is the better option for me?
Side question but would appreciate if you could answer :) How was the technical interview with Palantir? going into the fde interview shortly and would love some tips if you can, dm is okay as well. Thanks!!
The intern interview was easy, not leetcode-esque at all. Just prepare system design I guess
Given you are even considering Palantir, I assume you havent seen this? https://youtu.be/cwQgjq0mCdE
Lol what
^