Skip to content

Writing

How did Palantir hire so well?

I have written before about the Forward Deployed Engineer profile, and how hiring for that profile can be highly impactful for a company -- Palantir being a great example. In that blog post I also wrote a bit about how to hire FDEs. But honestly, re-reading that post I realised that the framework I wrote down though helpful to orient, does not give the means to assess whether or not your hiring is going well.

One Hiring Manager

That got me thinking -- how did Palantir do it so well? What was the secret? Unfortunately, the answer is not an easy one. Palantir did things that do not scale for their hiring. During the time I interviewed there, there was 1 hiring manager for all engineering hires. This one individual was responsible for:

  • Gathering feedback from all the on-site interviews a candidate has been through: 3 per candidate.
  • Based on the synthesised feedback, design a bespoke hiring manager interview for the candidate that would gather signal that was missed during the on-site interviews.
  • After the interview, if decided to hire the candidate, write a thorough hiring thesis for the candidate.

These were just the actual interviewing responsibilities. This same hiring manager was also the lead for the whole recruiting machinery:

  • Working with recruiters to put together top of the funnel strategy.
  • Working with leadership and resourcing to understand headcount and/or specific geographical/profile needs.
  • Designing and running the internship program.
  • And most importantly recruit and calibrate new interviewers.

Conclusion

By centralising the hiring function there was immense quality control over the hiring. But as you can imagine, it is hard work and can result in the individual burning out.

Like any other aspect of building a startup, this is a tradeoff. At early stage companies I do recommend founders and/or founding team to be involved in hiring as much as possible. You know your company and its culture better than anyone else. As you scale, if you can find an individual who is willing to take on the hiring function and keep it centralised as much as possible that is ideal for maintaining high quality bar.

Need Help with Your Hiring Strategy?

If you're looking to improve your company's hiring process, I can help. I offer:

  • Tailored hiring strategy development
  • Interviewer training and calibration
  • Guidance on building a hiring function

Whether you're a startup founder or an HR leader in a growing company, let's discuss how to elevate your hiring to the next level. Contact me for a free consultation.

  • in hiring
  • 2 min read

Debugging, Interviewing and Complex Systems

Debugging

Debugging is in its essence diagnosing the behaviours of a complex system. One needs to probe and observe the system to understand why it's doing something it's not supposed to do. Debugging using the scientific approach usually works quite well:

  1. Reason about collected data
  2. Form a hypothesis.
  3. Probe the system to test the hypothesis - this could be in the form of providing a certain input, collecting more data, or altering the underlying infrastructure.
  4. If hypothesis is disproved - repeat 1 & 2.

Interviewing

Interviewing is not that different from debugging in that sense. Your goal is to understand a fairly complex system, to develop a sense of how the system would perform in different situations. Approaching an interview with the same scientific approach can be an effective strategy.

  1. You start with some initial data - this would be the resume, or notes from other interviewers.
  2. Form a hypothesis.
  3. Ask a question that tests the hypothesis.
  4. Go back to 1 and repeat until you are satisfied with your understanding of the system.

For example, if you see a lot of academic projects on the resume, you may form the hypothesis that this is an individual who is academically inclined and might not end up prioritising the customer's needs. You could test that by asking questions like

  • How do you go about prioritising your work?
  • What was the most important aspect of a project that you worked on?
  • Have you ever considered doing a PhD, why/why not?

The answers will prove/disprove your hypothesis, but will also provide you with more information to form new hypotheses.

Conclusion

A lot of engineers do not like interviewing. I find that a bit strange because as engineers we reason about complex systems on a daily basis. Interviewing is not that different. Taking a scientific approach to interviewing is not only effective, but will hopefully help you enjoy the process of interviewing - in turn making you a better interviewer.

  • in hiring
  • 3 min read

Motivational Interview

Why have a motivational interview?

Often times companies will do a "culture fit" interview. This is usually done to understand whether the things that motivate the candidate are aligned with the company values and culture. It is also to see whether they joining the team will have a non-linear effect on the wider team - in addition to their individual performance, do they have a positive effect on the people around them.

However, you often run risk of hiring similar profiles and as a result losing out on a lot of candidates. It is important to be mindful about why you are conducting this interview.

Everyone has a few things that drive them, keep them engaged in their work. The question you are trying to answer is not whether the person is motivated, but what is it that motivates the person and why? Is that something we can give them?

Different types of motivations

Broadly you can classify motivations in two categories: intrinsic and extrinsic.

Intrinsic motivations are based on the individual. These can be both positive and negative.

  • Do they care about learning?
  • Do they care about making their environment better?
  • Are they achievement driven?
  • Are they an adrenaline junkie who thrive in stressful situations?

Then there are extrinsic motivations.

  • Promotion and career advancement
  • Do they expect external fairness, and do something thinking that it's fair?
  • Being part of a group
  • Fear

Notice that neither intrinsic nor extrinsic motivations are necessarily good or bad. It is also important to understand that good motivation does not equate with a good person. Don't hire someone because they are nice and friendly, but hire them because their motivation translates into them being productive.

What to ask?

There are different ways to approach this. A lot of them end up in open ended how questions.

  • How did they decide to change jobs?
  • How did they choose which companies to interview at?
  • If they had multiple offers at some point, how did they choose which one to pick?

You can also get them to open up by asking them to talk about something they are passionate about.

  • Tell me about the last time you heard an interesting problem and were really invested in solving it.
  • Tell me about a passion project of yours. And then ask follow up questions.
  • What was your proudest achievement? What achievement of yours do you think went unnoticed?

Honestly, it is just about being genuinely curious and getting to know them as a person.

Conclusion

Conducting a motivational interview is not just about identifying whether a candidate fits into the existing culture of the company. Instead, it's about understanding the underlying drivers that keep them engaged and productive in their work. If you manage to understand that at a deep level that can guide your hiring as well as staffing decisions.

Remember that a motivational interview should be approached with genuine curiosity. Investigating a candidate's motivations through thoughtful, open-ended questions can reveal insights that go far beyond their resume. This approach ensures that you are not only bringing in capable individuals but also those whose motivations align with and enhance the team’s dynamic.

Is a PhD worth it?

Personally, it was worth it for me. I was fortunate to work with amazing people like Bill Dorland, Alex Schekochihin and many more. And I got to work on fun problems.

But, if you are asking this question, it probably isn't worth it for you. You should only do a PhD if you are so hell bent on doing one that no one could convince you otherwise. There were many who tried to tell me it was a bad idea to do a PhD, but I was not to be convinced.

Don't get me wrong, a PhD can absolutely be worth it. You get to work on something that you (hopefully) love. You get to push the boundaries of human knowledge. It is literally one of the most impactful things to do.

It also grows you as a person - you become better at learning new things, at systematically breaking down a problem and chipping at it till it becomes manageable. You learn to communicate your work to a wider audience. You develop a confidence in yourself that you can take on gnarly, seemingly impossible problems and just figure it out.

However, a PhD is a long and painful journey. It can be quite lonely. So if you have even the smallest of doubts about whether you should do one or not, then don't. Especially if you think it might be a stepping stone in a career outside academia. More than likely it is one, but that is not motivation enough to actually stick with it during.

Having said that I really enjoyed mine, so if you are that focused on it then go for it! It's also not a one way street. People do go back to doing a PhD after a career in industry - my good friend satej is a great example! After a successful career at Palantir he decided to spend some time in academia, and seems to be enjoying it.

If you are someone who is trying to decide between a PhD and a career in the industry, hope this short writeup helped. If you have any questions or want to discuss further, do get in touch - I am happy to chat.

Taking bets on candidates

Hiring for early stage companies is hard. You are competing for strong talent against a ton of other companies. As a founder or a hiring manager, your ability to identify candidates to take a bet on can be an asset.

I was a bet candidate

I was a bet hire at Palantir. I didn't have a standard background - since the age of 13 I had always wanted to study Physics and no one could have convinced me otherwise. Because of this I didn't even consider studying anything else. I learnt programming to simulate physics systems, and to analyse and visualise the simulation data. I did not work on side projects or build things for fun. I had done no internships. I had zero experience in tech before joining Palantir.

I still remember my interviews. I could tell that I didn't know enough, but I could also tell that I enjoyed engaging with the questions I was being asked, and I think my genuine interest and engagement with the problems came through.

I was lucky that the hiring manager could see my potential and decided to take a bet on me. Or maybe it had nothing to do with luck, and this was just a reflection of the high-trust high-autonomy culture at Palantir.

Relate to the candidate

Going back to the essentials from the FDE hiring post - those qualities have nothing to do with the tactical specifics of what the candidate knows, and everything to do with who they are as a person. During the interview, you need to relate to the candidate, get to know them as a person and only then you may find out what makes them tick. What are their spikes and what are their kryptonites.

If they are engaged and demonstrate first-principles understanding of the problem, they are probably going to be successful. On the other hand, if they are not engaged and keep trying to reverse-guess what you want to hear from them, maybe not.

An example of a good interview

There is this one interview I shadowed at Palantir that has stuck with me as a master-class in interviewing. The candidate was super passive and giving monosyllabic answers. It was really hard to break through. The interviewer kept asking different questions about their background persistently, trying to get to a topic they would enjoy talking about. Eventually, the interviewer succeeded - the candidate opened up when talking about their interest in foreign films and how that relates to them learning new languages.

It was an absolutely incredible interview. It took a lot of effort but the interviewer finally did manage to relate to the candidate, and understood a bit more about how they could be successful.

Don't shy away from going off-road

The key takeaway is to get to know the candidate. They are a person. They are going to have things that engage them, and things they struggle with. Guide the interview to a place where you find common ground to help the candidate open up. Don't worry about the tactical specifics of what you want to hear from them. Take copious notes or use a tool like Metaview1 and you can always synthesise later.

To conclude

Taking bets on candidates can be a powerful strategy for early-stage companies looking to build exceptional teams. By focusing on a candidate's potential, engagement, and personal qualities rather than just their technical skills or traditional qualifications, you can uncover hidden gems that others might overlook. Remember, the goal is to identify individuals who can grow with your company and contribute meaningfully to its success. As you interview, be willing to go off-script, relate to the candidate on a personal level, and look for signs of genuine interest and problem-solving ability. These "bet candidates" often bring fresh perspectives and a strong drive to succeed, potentially becoming some of your most valuable team members.

Get in touch if you would like to discuss this topic further, or if you think I could help with your hiring process.

  1. I know a cofounder of Metaview personally, but this post was not sponsored by them in any way. Nor do I know if they agree with the thoughts in this post. I genuinely think it's a great product! ↩↩

Invoice Generator built using OpenDevin

Now that I am trying to run my own business as an independent consultant, I have these overheads such as needing to generate invoices and send them to clients.

To start with I copied some template off the internet and put it in my google drive as a spreadsheet. For the last 2 months I have been manually editing this spreadsheet, downloading it as a pdf, and emailing it to my client. This is not efficient at all.

I looked for a lightweight tool to generate these pdfs, but didn't really find one. So I thought I would build one myself. Well, I say myself. In reality, this was a great opportunity to experiment with OpenDevin.

initial prompt

I started off with a simple initial prompt, and I was impressed with the results. Granted, the first version of the pdf looked a bit drab but it was a great starting point for me to build on.

But I decided to be lazy and test how much I could push OpenDevin to do my work for me, and to my absolute delight OpenDevin built a cli that was able to generate a pdf that I could use.

second prompt

I then also got it to add a readme and a license. This whole exercise took me 10 minutes!

All code along with the 2 generated invoices is available on github. Do give it a spin!

Forward Deployed Engineers and how to hire them

Hiring multi-faceted people who can straddle the boundaries of technical and business problems can be a huge asset for organizations. I met and worked with many such people during my time at Palantir. I also hired a lot of them. This post is about learnings from my time at Palantir as a Hiring Manager for FDEs.

What is an FDE?

A Forward Deployed Engineer is a unique role that Palantir has. The linked blog post is a great intro to the role and what a day in the life of an FDE looks like, but I want to share my perspective and my experience as an FDE, and an FDE hiring manager.

FDEs are generalist problem solvers with technical skills, with a focus on solving important problems. They are able to identify high value problem solving that will have immense business impact -- this requires strong business intuition as well as high user empathy. They are also unfazed by chaos and complexity. In fact, they thrive in environments where there is a lot of uncertainty.

As you can imagine FDEs are notoriously hard to hire. As an interviewer, you are looking for someone who is not set in their ways, but has a high ability to learn and grow. This individual may not necessarily be super experienced -- in fact, in a lot of cases, they will be just starting.

high slope

How to hire them?

I usually think about hiring in terms of Essentials and Unforgivables - qualities that the candidate must have and absolutely should not have.

Essentials:

  • Outcome Oriented: Always keep the goal in mind, always seek to solve problems.
  • Critical Thinker: Not afraid to question authority, and someone who can judge ideas on their own merits.
  • High Chaos Ceiling: Doesn't struggle with ambiguity and chaos.
  • Gritty: This isn't necessarily synonymous with hard worker, though there is a high correlation. Someone who isn't afraid to scale the mountain.

Unforgivables:

  • Goes after the shiny thing: This is the opposite of outcome oriented. Someone who doesn't tie their work to impact.
  • Passive: They tend to wait to be told what to do, and not seek out opportunities to solve problems.
  • Entitled: High maintenance and high ego.

I have found that trying to understand where a candidate stands with these qualities is a good way to get a sense of whether or not they will be successful.

Some questions I ask to suss this out:

  • How did you get from A→B→C and why? How was A→ B different than B→C , what would have happened if you went straight from A→ C?
  • What is the hardest thing you have done/worked on/learned so far? Why was this hard for you?
  • What was the hardest failure you have dealt with? Did you see it coming? How did you salvage the situation? Who did you ask for help?
  • Tell me about a time when you proactively did something outside your day to day responsibility.

But at the end of the day it's about getting to know the person. Understanding what makes them tick, what keeps them going, and why.

The Impact of FDEs

FDEs can be a highly impactful addition to your organization when hired correctly. Their ability to bridge technical solutions with real-world business challenges makes them invaluable in today's complex tech landscape.

FDEs have been a cornerstone of Palantir's success, acting as their "secret sauce" in delivering transformative solutions to their clients. Their versatility, coupled with their technical prowess and business acumen, allows them to drive significant value across various industries and problem domains.

However, identifying and hiring the right FDEs can be a challenging process. It requires a nuanced understanding of the role and a strategic approach to assessing candidates.

Get in touch!

If you're intrigued by the potential of FDEs but find yourself struggling with the hiring process, I'm here to help. Whether you need advice on interview techniques, assistance in defining the role for your organization, or strategies for assessing candidates, feel free to reach out.

Contact me at me@anjor.xyz to discuss how we can improve your hiring process and build a team of high-impact problem solvers. Let's work together to bring the transformative power of FDEs to your organization.