Finding a Growth Path at Palantir

Test drive

I looked out the window: it was an uncharacteristically cloudy day in Southern California. I had just gotten off a call with my team lead. My one-year anniversary at Palantir was around the corner, and with it came the recognition that I was no longer a new hire fresh out of college. I was now expected to own parts of the codebase, lead my own meetings, and answer all types of questions, technical and non-technical. People thought that with one year of exposure to this company and to this industry, I should be able to form my own opinions by now. The conversation I had just had with my lead seemed a repetition of so many smaller conversations with other coworkers:

“Where do you see your career in five years?”

I unconsciously shook my head. Where did everyone get this number — five years? What was it about this arbitrary mark of time that was so important? I had graduated from college a year ago. In five years’ time, I would be twenty-seven.

I joined Palantir during the COVID-19 pandemic, when everything was in flux and life itself was uncertain. I thought I was only giving this role, this industry, and most of all, this company, a test drive of a year or so. I sat through onboarding sessions, listening wide-eyed to other twenty-two-year-olds talk about how they want to make contributions to Palantir’s renowned technology, how they hope to change the way Palantir operates as a company, or how they aspire to use that technology to change the world from the frontline of wars and pandemics.

How could these people, who were the same age as I was, know with such certainty their passions and goals? It seemed that everyone around me, regardless of tenure, had already figured out why they were at Palantir, and where exactly in their career they were. It’s alright, I told myself. It wasn’t like I planned on staying at this company for long anyway, right?

Definition of a “dev”

Just after hitting the one-year marker, I moved to New York, out of my parents’ house, where I had stayed through the first year of my job. I started to go in-person to Palantir’s New York office. I sat with other people from my organization, called Production Infrastructure (PI), and began to learn everyone’s names, along with their favorite office snacks. We would grab lunch and dinner together every day, and do the weekly New York Times crossword puzzle on Friday afternoons. Everyone was so welcoming — I only want to contribute to make it even more so. I began organizing my own social activities for PI in New York, from group dinners to Secret Santa to the PI holiday party, even trips to Home Depot to get office plants for our desks. “Should we nominate Khanh to be our PI social chair from now on then?” someone said, as we were waiting for the elevator, holding our office plants. I grinned — if there was such a position, I would have loved to fill it.

Everyone was so welcoming — I only want to contribute to make it even more so.

Around the same time I moved to New York, the Class of 2021 joined the company, and my team took on a new grad hire, with whom I was given the same project in the fall of 2021. He was a backend engineer who was interested in systems architecture — he wanted to build clean and logical APIs. He worked hard, never afraid to face problems he didn’t understand head-on, and always ready to expand his knowledge, regardless of the effort and time he would have to put in. It was easy to see that he was motivated by the technical challenges he solved, and that he wanted to grow into a good systems engineer, to write great architectural proposals. He was only three months into Palantir, but already he was responsible for the backend of an entire project.

I thought back to when I was three months into my job at Palantir. Did I have as much confidence in my role at the time? I couldn’t help but feel that I was not growing fast enough, in this company where everyone was so self-driven. What if I was not good enough, and newer hires would come to replace me? I brought this up with my lead at one point, thinking he would tell me to work harder, to become more efficient. Instead, he smiled at me and said, “There’s always more than enough room for both of you to grow together.”

I had never even paused to ponder whether this was true. Tech recruiting out of college was so cutthroat: it made me believe there was no alternative to this zero-sum game. But there was never just one definition of what a “dev” should be at Palantir — there was so much space and flexibility for us both to grow.

Day-to-day

Once, on another occasion when I was discussing potential next projects with my lead, we quickly realized that the type of project I should take on depended on what I wanted to grow into. Unfortunately, I was missing that side of the equation. “It’s clear to see what some other new hires’ growth paths would be, whether they want to become an independent contributor, a people lead, or a tech lead. But your growth path is a little less clear to me, Khanh,” my lead said to me. He said it gently, more like a question to both of us than a comment, and I couldn’t help but smile. Has my lead truly put this much thought into my growth?

During their weekly one-on-one meetings with me, my mentor and lead constantly checked in on whether I still liked the projects I was doing. My answer was always yes — I thought that was because I didn’t care enough about my work, but only later on did I realize it was rather because of the extraordinary amount of effort and thoughtfulness my lead and mentor had put into choosing projects for me.

It’s this level of thoughtfulness and support that make me love coming into work every day. Yes, I enjoy the technical aspects of my job as well: I am never bored, the tasks are more than challenging enough to keep me engaged. I am trusted and given ownership and full reign for creativity. But, for me, it was never about the technical problems I get to solve as much as it was about the mentorship I received and the friendships I made along the way. I love waking up every morning to come into work, to say hi to those who sit near me, to grab coffee with people outside my organization, to walk around the office and see friendly, familiar faces — and, most importantly, to know that I work with people who care about my well-being.

But, for me, it was never about the technical problems I get to solve as much as it was about the mentorship I received and the friendships I made along the way.

That, to me, is the most important thing about work: being happy with your job. And I’ve come to realize that a job that makes you happy cannot just consist of the technical problems you would solve — it must also include the people, the culture, the atmosphere. All these things add up to your entire experience, and if their combination does not make you happy, then no amount of intellectual challenge will.

Growth

On occasion, I am asked to get on the phone with candidates currently interviewing with Palantir to answer questions about company culture and work/life balance. This is an extremely challenging task, because I do not know how to sound genuine when I say: “People at Palantir truly care about me, not only as a coworker but also as a person.” I would hear the candidate on the other end of the line chuckle nervously, probably thinking the recruiter was paying me to tell them this.

If only I could tell them how I am now looking back at what I thought would be my one and only year at Palantir, how I’m laughing at the thought that this was just a “test drive”, how it has now been a year and a half and I have no intention of leaving. I wish I could also tell them that starting their first job out of college, they do not need to have a firm idea for where they are now or where they want to be in five years. Their job, their career, and their teammates should give them enough space to figure that out. That’s what real growth should look like.

I wish I could also tell them that starting their first job out of college, they do not need to have a firm idea for where they are now or where they want to be in five years.

I want to tell them that Palantir is special, because we allow for that space for growth: that undefined, more well-rounded career path that many other companies do not provide. There are enough recruiting emails and blog posts out there to tell them why they should join Palantir for the technical challenges that they will solve here and for the real-world impact they get to make on the job. But I want to tell them why they should join for reasons other than that — the mentorship, the culture, the space for creativity, the flexibility for growth, and, most important of all, the people.

But despite all these things, I don’t. I don’t tell them any of this on the phone, smiling a little at their nervous chuckles, because they did not ask. Besides, how could one sound sincere about how great their company was on the phone? So instead I only say, “Why yes, we do have an espresso machine in the office. We also have a freezer full of ice cream. Can I entice you with that?”

Khanh Vu joined Palantir in September 2020 as a new grad hire. She is currently a frontend engineer on the Apollo Platform product.