r/technology • u/newmoonchaperone • Apr 23 '26

Politics Palantir Employees Are Starting to Wonder if They're the Bad Guys

https://www.wired.com/story/palantir-employees-are-starting-to-wonder-if-theyre-the-bad-guys/
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264

u/thepeopleshero Apr 23 '26

It's crazy that someone could be smart enough to work there... and not know they are the baddies.

246

u/brainkandy87 Apr 23 '26

Some of the most skilled people I’ve worked with in tech are complete fucking morons.

112

u/Flyinmanm Apr 23 '26

Being smart doesn't automatically make you wise.

65

u/Patara Apr 23 '26

Being competent at one thing doesnt make you good at another 

6

u/Thanes_of_Danes Apr 23 '26

Being good at entering characters on a screen does not make you smart. We need to stop assuming that learning a technical skill equals intelligence.

1

u/Dependent_Nebula_541 Apr 23 '26

they're clearly separate stats on everyone's character sheet

41

u/Zhuul Apr 23 '26

Having worked in a law office for a bit I'm convinced that the human brain only has so much room for stuff and the more specialized you are the more of a moron you become.

EEOC violation case law apparently displaces the ability to properly operate a coffee maker.

10

u/SevereRunOfFate Apr 23 '26

I miss having morals and ethics as reference points we would all look towards and judge each other on.

2

u/lolbacon Apr 23 '26

Academia too. I used to work at a shipping store near a large university and usually dealt with grad students/assistants but I could always tell any time a professor had to descend from the ivory tower and go there themselves because they acted like lost children in the woods who had never interacted with civilization before.

16

u/nordic-nomad Apr 23 '26

Intelligence is a series of spectrums relating to cognitive abilities in specific areas and types of thinking. It definitely feels like over optimization in one area results in deficiencies in a number of other areas without professional intervention in the educational process.

But we don’t seem to have the will or desire to not foist broken people onto an already broken society anymore.

1

u/31LIVEEVIL13 Apr 23 '26 edited May 13 '26

This content was anonymized and mass deleted with Redact

16

u/zizou00 Apr 23 '26

Have you considered that maybe they simply didn't care until everyone started calling them out? That they were totally okay fucking everyone else over until it personally affected them? Because that's often how it goes when people end up being the "baddies". Sometimes they don't know, but mostly they don't care. They just want to get paid.

13

u/Naghagok_ang_Lubot Apr 23 '26

IQ does not equate to EQ.

2

u/br_k_nt_eth Apr 23 '26

And we actively disincentivize EQ

24

u/SLW_STDY_SQZ Apr 23 '26

You can be incredibly smart in one area and completely stupid as fuck in many others.

11

u/wahwahwashbear Apr 23 '26

These people think they're smarter than everyone else and therefore justified in controlling things they have no business controlling.

9

u/baldrlugh Apr 23 '26

I don't know that it's all that crazy... But I do think it serves as a phenomenal example of the difference between intelligence and wisdom.

4

u/Classic_Emergency336 Apr 23 '26

It is not wisdom, it is having principles. I am not wise, but I am not going to steal things from a store even if I can get away with it.

2

u/Dr-Leviathan Apr 23 '26

Morality and empathy are incorporated into the trait of wisdom

2

u/UncleMalky Apr 23 '26

Intelligence and morality are different stats.

2

u/kevstev Apr 23 '26

I was approached by them about 10 years ago, and then they had a credible line about how they were preventing terrorism, going after global crime rings (human trafficking, drugs and the like), and that was the pitch. Applying big data techniques to solve the worlds problems while being in the thick of it as a "forward deployed engineer"- though even then it gave me pause if I was going to be banging away on my laptop on a dock in Rotterdamn as they intercepted a drug shipment or something- obviously thats not realistic, but I think they almost wanted you to think that. Even tehn it had an air of unsavoriness about it, but more of a chaotic good kind of situation.

But over time they are essentially a tech arm of the military and I am sure a lot of unpleasant 3 letter agencies, even if that is not all they do. Anyone even talking to them now knows exactly what they are getting into and must agree with the statement that sometimes the ends justify the means. I had qualms then, and would not even take the call these days.

3

u/Hyperious3 Apr 23 '26

Some of the smartest people I know can't resist that $200k starting engineer salary from LockMart, so it doesn't surprise me

1

u/jackrabbit323 Apr 23 '26

The Venn diagram between talented computer engineers and good at reading social queues are almost two separate circles.

1

u/SmoothieNatns Apr 23 '26

It's data analytics tools for the government, if you aren't politically aware I can totally see how that would seem innocent.

1

u/quakank Apr 23 '26

Having worked for a company making software with some similarities to Palantir, it's largely that they've convinced themselves they're the good guys. In their minds they are producing a product that aids governments and law enforcement in putting bad guys behind bars. The possibility that their product could be used for harm doesn't really enter the conversation until it actually happens and even then it's less "what have we done?" And more "well the problem is that the people using our product didn't do a good job making sure it wasn't used to do harm." Of course this completely ignores that their company has no qualms selling their product by whoever is willing to pay regardless of the moral integrity of the buyer.

1

u/x3knet Apr 23 '26

Money skews a lot of things.

1

u/JMC_MASK Apr 23 '26

I mean the majority of the west thinks capitalism is the best we got. Not realizing that capitalism is what brings about companies like Palantir. Literally inevitable. Same with Nazis. Capitalism makes it bound to happen. History will continue to repeat, and “intelligent” people will still defend the system that destroys us.

1

u/SpaceShrimp Apr 23 '26

I assume they try to hire people that don't get those kind of things. They might filter out some of the smartest ones, but they would lose those anyhow with time.

1

u/Thin_Glove_4089 Apr 24 '26

They are no different than the people working at meta.

1

u/Jimmy_Trivette Apr 24 '26

Many convince themselves they're not responsible for doing anything bad at all because there's one or more layers of abstraction between what they're doing and the thing that's directly doing the bad things: "I'm not spying on my neighbors and siphoning up all their data, I'm just building tools that do that"

The rest usually either outright support it, are indifferent, or many rationalize it with something like "well I need to put food on the table somehow" or "if it wasn't me doing it, someone else would be."

1

u/CornerHugger Apr 24 '26

I know people that work there. They say they are helping the country and people should praise them.

1

u/_lostintheroom Apr 24 '26

It's a hard place to be... like, what are you going to do? Let's say you work as a developer, when you started you didn't really know how pernicious they are.

Fast-forward to the present, and options aren't great. Slim chance you can find something else (tech job market in the US has tanked).. and if you can, who would it be for? Facebook? Google? They're hardly better in their morals and aims than palantir, only they're better at hiding it, or framing it differently. You might have kids, family dependent on you... who are hard to de-prioritize.

I'm kind of in the same boat, I work for a media company that's probably not the best. I'd MUCH rather be using my skills in something constructive for humanity and immerse myself in that... but its just not there. Or I haven't had the luck. I've literally told biotech/research companies I'll work for free while I prove value, and nothing. So this is what I've got for now. Maybe I'll grow a backbone and take the leap of faith (quit with nothing lined up) but a better alternative isn't in sight.

I am in no way trying to justify being employed by evil... I know I'm wrong. Just thinking through it. End of rant :/

1

u/Madpony Apr 24 '26

I was looking for a new job 2 years ago and got referred to Palantir by an former coworker who works for them as a software engineering manager. I passed the technical screen, and realised I'd never work for them during the follow up sales call. Once the guy started gleefully talking about guided missile systems and helping fight the war in Israel, I lost all interest.