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'No One Cares' About Elite Degrees at Palantir, CEO Tells Investors (businessinsider.com) 83

Posted by msmash from the disrupting-the-diploma-industrial-complex dept.
Palantir chief executive Alex Karp has told analysts and investors that the company treats Harvard, Princeton and Yale graduates the same as those without college degrees, calling employment at the data analytics firm "a new credential independent of class and background."

During the earnings call Monday where Palantir reported its first billion-dollar revenue quarter, Karp said university graduates come to the company after being "engaged in platitudes" and claimed workers without college degrees sometimes create more value than degree holders using Palantir products. The company launched its Meritocracy Fellowship this spring to recruit talent outside traditional university pathways.
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'No One Cares' About Elite Degrees at Palantir, CEO Tells Investors More

'No One Cares' About Elite Degrees at Palantir, CEO Tells Investors

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  • polymathorous autodidactyl (Score:3)

    by Pseudonymous Powers ( 4097097 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2025 @01:34PM (#65568002)
    Well, they do say that advanced credentials are generally construed by personnel departments less as a signal of proficiency per se in a given discipline, and more a signal that the applicant is serious about that discipline, which is itself strongly associated with proficiency in that discipline. But of course these people aren't serious about anything, so who cares?
    • The problem with having advanced credentials is that if you don't have experience then every potential employer looks at you as a short-term hire.

      My kid ran into this where they couldn't go straight into grad school because it was made clear they wouldn't be able to get a job ever if they did.

      Every perspective employer will look at your experience and they will agree that you're valuable and capable of doing good work and profitable work for them but they will also fully expect you to hang around ju

      • Every perspective employer will look at your experience and they will agree that you're valuable and capable of doing good work and profitable work for them but they will also fully expect you to hang around just long enough to get a little bit of experience and then leave.

        What this implies is that as soon as someone gains valuable experience, every other employer in the area is willing to offer them more money. Which says very loudly they want to pay below-market rates for labor, and they don't give

  • Palatinr is a Republican pro Trump people. They would never value a college education, let alone a Harvard one.

    If you want to work for FANG or Finance ( Google, McKinsey, Bain, and a bunch of other places,) you really need a Harvard degree (probably an MBA from them).

    But for Palantinr? That's kind of like asking for a job at Mar Largo. They want to hire cheap, not hire educated.

    • Re: (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Palatinr is a Republican pro Trump people. They would never value a college education, let alone a Harvard one.

      If you want to work for FANG or Finance ( Google, McKinsey, Bain, and a bunch of other places,) you really need a Harvard degree (probably an MBA from them).

      But for Palantinr? That's kind of like asking for a job at Mar Largo. They want to hire cheap, not hire educated.

      This sounds like something you should be shouting at the sky. Maybe tell a nurse or a waitress. They mostly have to pretend that what you're saying isn't bat-shit crazy.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by russotto ( 537200 )

      If you think you need a Harvard degree, let alone a Harvard MBA to work for Google, your view of the world is quite off.

      • If you think you need a Harvard degree, let alone a Harvard MBA to work for Google, your view of the world is quite off.

        Google (and pretty all companies) have an extremely strong bias toward hiring graduates of school in their vicinity. This is true of Silicon Valley companies that tend to hire from Berkeley and Stanford and even San Jose State over Ivy League schools. The car companies hire heavily from Midwest schools, including many Michigan schools that are not as well known. And unsurprisingly, there are a lot of Ivy League and northeastern school alumni at companies in the Boston and NYC areas.

        School aside, whether

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Nobius2 ( 10026968 )
      I think Peter Thiel (i.e., Palantir) has a bit different politics than MAGA--pretending to be libertarian while actually espousing "Dark Enlightenment" ideals
      ( see Curtis Yarvin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] ).
      Note Thiel/ Elon Musk are the main forces behind Golden Dome, so that kind of gives a sense of their ambitions. Trump has actually been putting a stopper on them at least in the last few months.
    • Palatinr is a Republican pro Trump people. They would never value a college education, let alone a Harvard one.

      Except for Vance who went to that elite unversity known as Yale. The same Vance who says these elite schools are brainwashing people.
      • Having read his book, I think he's smarter than all this, but decided to turn off his brain and crawl around on his belly for 1-5 years for political gain.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by r1348 ( 2567295 )

      Look at me, working at a FAANG without a Harvard MBA...

    • Palantir would be doing/saying whatever is required to be in favor with the current administration. It's not betting entirely on government contracts, just mostly.
      I believe Alex Karp is a pro-trump libertarian nutjob, but even if he wasn't they'd be doing the same sort of getting in the administrations pockets as deeply as possible. They'll get so embedded that the next administration can't kick them out.

    • I work for a FAANG, we did previously exclude recent college grads from universities we considered "top" in the field, although Harvard, Princeton and Yale were not on that list. However that policy was eventually forced out, both because such people didn't want to work for "the man" in a non-executive capacity, and because they were often unwilling to do grunt work. It's possible this was considered a feature of the hiring process, I can't confirm it. I am not going to say what kind of executive tends to f

  • This is partially true but has its caveats (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MindPrison ( 864299 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2025 @01:42PM (#65568034) Journal

    Companies does indeed hire people on an equal level to graduates, but you have to prove you have some skills, and those counts way more than your papers or degrees ever will, I know - because that's how I got hired (not at Palantir but similar).

    There's a caveat to that however, people with degrees often get a much higher salary than the ones without a degree.
    The degree protects you to a certain extent, but the companies have found out the degrees aren't really that important, it's only a paper proving that you can take orders and follow direction, it doesn't demonstrate talent. (I know a bunch of people will get really upset when I say this, they always do, but it is what it is - an opinion).

    This is as old as time itself, for example in the 80's I was hired as a Service technician, with ZERO degrees or education. When I asked my boss why me? He answered, I'd rather have you because you know how to solder, and you also know how to fault find with intuition and skill with comes with real interest and passion for what you do. You should have seen the tiresome 170 applicants I went through, I took a few in for an interview, it was exhausting, sure, their paperwork looked brilliant, but when I put them to the test, they wouldn't know a C-mos from a TTL, and you can do this blindfolded I didn't even have to ask.
    That's why.

    Later in life I also realized that's not the entire story. As an lifelong student of Computers and Electronics, without a degree you have zero protection, you often get a lower title which in turn gives you less rights when it comes to salary and bonuses. And it's almost impossible to grow without it, it's just the way it is.

    The company I now work for, had the same reasons, my manager told me "well, just one look at the lab behind you (my lab) was enough to skip all the questions, I already see you have more than enough to learn anything we throw at you, can you start monday?).

    But there was a catch, I didn't get any titles like the ones I replaced, and the salary was relatively low for what I do, I see this in my fellow coworkers around the world as well (I work internationally), all the ones with a Degree, has about twice the salary we do, and they don't even do the same amount of work we do).

    We have to work crazy hours, put all of our passion into it, and we don't get rewarded for it - we're a gold-mine for corporations, and they don't want you to know that, in a way - we're a part of undermining your position, and it's a double edged sword, because on one hand - we have a job, and you with an expensive education wonder why no one is hiring you.

    Not a great development.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by drinkypoo ( 153816 )

      because that's how I got hired (not at Palantir but similar).

      Similar how? Same trampling of human rights? Insert goose motherfucker meme here.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by shanen ( 462549 )

        Close to the joke I was looking for, but I was thinking more along the lines of "suitability to be a Bond movie villain".

        Perhaps "How much do you like feeding sharks?"

    • I took the same path. Work early, work hard. I started out as a mechanic without any qualifications, went to community college and got a job from a teacher as a network eng on his team at a game company. A year later I was promoted to a programming position. But I started at less than half the pay of any new hired programmer. Later on I figured I was getting paid 20% less than average. I didn't rocket through the titles like people with degrees did.
      I have not tried leveling up by jumping through companies m

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Indeed. That lack of degree makes you cheap and dependent on that employment. Obviously, employers love that and exploit it.

      As a person that can solder and can tell TTL from CMOS (and more) and that also has an engineering PhD in the CS/IT field, I can say that I probably would not have gotten work adequate to my skills without that degree. Those practical skills do come in handy time again, but so do the academic skills.

  • Does he have a problem? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by PineGreen ( 446635 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2025 @01:44PM (#65568042) Homepage

    The way this guy is hammering the same point again and again kinda smacks of desperation. Yes, I've seen amazing coders with no degrees, but i have yet to see anyone without a degree knowing quantum field theory. And yes, quantum field theory has very limited uses and also yes, over 50% of people with degrees could do their jobs without a degree, but I wouldn't want a medical doctor that learned their trade on the job. Why does this guy needs to show his disdain towards people with degrees I don't know, but he seems to have a problem with that.

    • Re:Does he have a problem? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2025 @01:48PM (#65568054)

      While the guy was purportedly speaking to "analysts and investors" - I'm pretty sure the intended audience was Donald Trump.

    • Re:Does he have a problem? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by jacks smirking reven ( 909048 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2025 @01:56PM (#65568076)

      Also easy for Karp to say when "He attended Haverford College, Stanford Law School, and Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany, where he received his Ph.D. in 2002." and Peter Thiel studied fucking philosophy (aren't humanities useless and dumb according to this crowd as well?) at Stanford and then went to their law school and I would bet most of these C suites are going to make damn sure their own kids go to a top level school.

      It's not even that the things they are saying are wrong, they're right in a lot of ways but the motivations for them to do this is political, not educational or from some sense of egalitarianism. Basically "universities became too lib-coded" and being against that is the political current culture du jour.

    • Maybe because obtaining a degree leaves most people in crippling debt, and the skill/knowledge benefits they get from it could have been gotten much more affordably through a self-study program at a library. There's also the problem that a lot of degrees aren't focused on giving you marketable skills, making them scams for people who are told to get a degree in what they love and then expect a fun life doing their passion all the time and getting paid.

      The American education system is largely a scam, at thi

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by davidwr ( 791652 )

      I wouldn't want a medical doctor that learned their trade on the job

      If he'd been doing his work at a better-than-medical-school-graduate-level for long enough to have an established track record, I wouldn't automatically turn him down. That said, I don't think my government allows you to call yourself "doctor" (in the medical sense) without an M.D. or government-recognized equivalent (D.O., etc.).

      By the way, most medical doctors in my country go through a long residency, which amounts to on-the-job-training mixed with classroom and practical education. If they learn new s

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Obviously. Sounds like some inferiority complex to me.

      Alternatively, he wants to sucker people without degree in to what is essentially a 4 month unpaid internship. Funny how there do not seem numbers how many of those actually get hired in the end.

  • What they don't mention... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fuzzyfuzzyfungus ( 1223518 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2025 @01:47PM (#65568046) Journal
    Designed to sound more dramatic than it may actually be.

    It seems worth mentioning that they are specifically saying that among people they hire they don't treat prestigious degrees differently and sometimes get better results from people without them. They don't actually say anything about whether they ignore degrees in hiring; or whether they find a correlation between degrees and hireability.

    The statement is certainly constructed to sound more dramatic than that; and depending on their hiring practices it may actually be; but "if we think you are good enough to hire we don't continue to uphold a caste system based on where you did undergrad" is not a terribly radical position to take. Not one that everyone actually does take; but not terribly uncommon.

    • Completely agree. For better or worse, universities do provide a curated pool of candidates that recruiters can draw from. They may not always be the best, but you can get a certain baseline of capability and competence from the right universities. Those without prestigious degrees are a bigger crapshoot: you may find some of your best talent in the wild, but it's much harder to find them and validate especially if they don't have enough work experience to point to.

      Also, we should note that when you look at

      • I wonder if that is what they are alluding to when they say ""People with less than a college education are creating a lot of value — and sometimes more value than people with a college education — using our product".

        Depending on how finished and drop-in vs. how in need of fiddly integration and customization at the customer site for their systems 'our product' is the open roles implied by that line could range from "you could be an analyst monkey; maybe even analyst monkey II if you seem lik
    • Ding ding ding, we have a winner. You interview based on the resume, and the resume catches your attention based on so many factors; education can be one, but it's not nearly the most important, unless you have no experience at all. And once you're in the interview, your education doesn't matter, and matters even less once you're on the job. I've never seen any large employer care about past educational achievements for any of their employees, it's 100% about what you can deliver on the job.

      • Wish the resume mattered more nowadays... mostly, they just glance it over (if they even do that).
        I've worked in warehouses driving forklifts, a half-dozen restaurants, helped build a non-profit public science lab (The Geek Group), 5 years at Electrolux (hot, hard work, then became machine operator), helped hang drywall for a year... if you apply someplace, but if they don't call back, no piece of paper is gonna matter.

        It ain't like it used to be... Electrolux was a group "interview", followed by a test if

        • The resume still matters. The thing is, hiring managers get over 100 resumes for any position, so they learn pretty quickly to just focus on what matters most, and if they trash a few good candidates... well that's ok, because there are so many. No one has the time to conduct 25 interviews with 25 people doing a test.

          • The "$300k piece of paper" should only matter for executive level crap... that piece of paper doesn't matter when someone wants to drive forklift to pay the bills.
            Of course, the hiring managers getting so many resumes is hiring managers for big corporations... there's not a hundred people applying for a dirty warehouse job picking cheap Chinese crap off shelves.

            You could do the 25 interviews, then do the testing in groups, run the tests through a scanner or something and come up with ideal candidates... a h

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Yep. Essentially a big fat lie by misdirection.

  • claimed workers without college degrees sometimes create more value than degree holders using Palantir products.

    Yeah I can see that. I frequently hired candidates who came from the same post-secondary school in my city, and to put it gently, the degree wasn't a useful indicator of value. Some people are very productive and talented and would do fine whether they went to school or not, and some people can't be helped no matter how well-educated they are.

  • Completely false (Score:4, Insightful)

    by CEC-P ( 10248912 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2025 @01:53PM (#65568066)
    We care A LOT about prestigious degrees where I work. If you have one, it lets us know not to hire you because you're a stuck up, entitled rich kid who will cause problems.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by davidwr ( 791652 )

      We care A LOT about prestigious degrees where I work. If you have one, it lets us know not to hire you because you're a stuck up, entitled rich kid who will cause problems.

      If you said "... because you're more likely to be a stuck up ..." then I would believe you.

      If every one of your interviewees has been a stuck up, entitled rich kid, that leads me to believe you haven't interviewed enough people to get a truly representative sample.

      On the other hand, the number of people who can graduate with a prestigious degree* without some amount of skills, knowledge, and effort is much lower than the number for Podunk Community College.

      * after excluding elite athletes and other "special

  • CEO lies to investors. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2025 @02:07PM (#65568106)

    Lie by omission: you can't get hired without a degree because their HR bot will filter you out.

  • It would be interesting to know if Karp applies the same rationale to hiring people off the street when he needs surgery.
  • This guy says yes, they are the people watching you (or could be tasked to watch you exactly like Samaritan in 'Person of Interest'): Palantir and the Conspiracy to Own Everything: The Largest Heist in History https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
    Yet Thiel was recently in the ALL-IN podcast and seemed fairly normal (for a tech bro) , though he supported Trump in 2016 he stayed out of the 2024 elections: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

    • Yet Thiel was recently in the ALL-IN podcast and seemed fairly normal (for a tech bro)

      IDGAF how people "seem", what I care about is their actions, by which standard Thiel is a lizard person.

      • Ahh... yes, the "lizard" people!
        Hey there, buddy!

        Palantir (obviously taken from LOTR... wonder if Tolkien's estate could sue over the name) is basically the new generation of the old ECHELON surveillance system... now that even phones are carried over IP, and everything has shrunk down, so what was a basketball-court of servers is now one half-full server rack.
        I will agree with your 'caring about their actions'... if their tech was only used for good (catching the bank robbers or terrorists), then that's go

    • No! Thiel hand picked and groomed JD Vance then demanded Trump pick him for VP. He went low profile but likely did more harm in this election from behind the shadows and missed gunshots.

  • it was ruled that any test not clearly required for the job that disadvantages POC is illegal. so companies started to require degrees. now we have to waste 4+ years of our life and go massively into debt simply because companies can't require u take a simple IQ test. i don't get how requiring a degree is legal but an IQ test is not.

    • Must depend on the state. There is a really shitty company around here called Reynolds & Reynolds. They make every applicant take some sort of IQ test and only extend initial interviews based on your test results.

    • A degree is some validation that you can complete 30 courses each with a dozen requirements to some level of satisfaction of the instructor.

      I have had a co-worker or two without degrees that were less able to complete tasks that were not interesting enough to them. Then again I have had similar issues with other younger workers who did have degrees.

      For some the degree may be training where they learn useful skills. For others the degree is a filter that they can't pass through.

  • Initially I thought this was about Elite Dangerous.
  • And whether you can keep your mouth shut or probably the big deciding factors.

    The company doesn't have any really amazing tech they just are being allowed to run roughshod over all human privacy because they are tightly tied in with the American ruling class.

    The thing about planatir is there a constant reminder that you have a ruling class. And that ruling class can do whatever they want to you whatever they want.

    But hey, how about those trans girls playing field hockey? And what about da woke?

  • The idiots trap (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Cward ( 10374574 ) on Tuesday August 05, 2025 @03:08PM (#65568282)
    This is not a fellowship, it is doing unpaid work for Palantir for 4 months for free for the potential of receiving an interview, should you excel, nothing more than that. They make this extremely clear. Of course hiring boatloads of unpaid work for free will provide a lot more value to Palantir than just hiring degree holders would, because they happen to have access to more data about people than your average company does, so they can filter for only the most willing serfs for a myriad of specific roles. The reality is that this approach gives the very best people who already work for them some disposable assistants they can delegate the more tedious tasks to, knowing that if they push them to the limit, which they will, that there will be another free and very willing replacement waiting around the corner.

    If you work the 4 months and do not get a job from them, you will leave with nothing of any immediate value. If you do get a job offer, you are at a massive negotiating disadvantage from the get-go, since you are now competing with a large pool of other, potentially more willing serfs. They do not ask degree holders to undergo this kind of unpaid labour in exchange for the promise of an interview, they just interview them, like any other decent employer would. If you lack a degree, please do not debase or devalue yourself by slaving away for this shitty company.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Yes, pretty obvious that one. And the 4 months will have value for Palantir in any case. They do not even have any incentive to tell people they have no chance early on. Something like this should land the c-levels in prison.

  • No one cares about ethics at Palantir, either. Perhaps that is part of what you get with a university education.

  • No one with an elite degree cares about evil spam corp Palantir, so that's symmetric.

  • Is the only metric they truly care about.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Obviously. And that is easier to get in people without degree as they understand less and lose more should they decide to leave.

  • At any job, the more elite your degree, the less talented you are...it's a paradox that applies until you get to the very top of the employment food chain. If you have a master's from MIT, you were probably handed the job. If you didn't graduate high school, you had to really fucking impress someone to be given a chance.

    As much as I hate to admit it, I agree with them and they're right. Thiel and Karp creep me out and I dislike them strongly and don't trust them or their company...but....that's my emo

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      I am of the opinion our needs are best served by people with low egos who work hard and are meticulous in their work.

      And that nicely captures why you are part of the problem. Makes me think you are lacking actually good education. And now you are envious of anybody that has one and hence try to suppress them, belittle them and generally fight them in a hopeless and invalid effort to increase your own value. Yes, people get hired for invalid "quality" indicators. But a high-value degree is not one of them.

  • They give you a coding test where the interviewer watches you try to type in a multithreaded program that figures the Fibonacci Sequence using recursion, pointer arithmetic, and elliptical curve encryption.

  • Because the primary advantage people without degree have for an employer is that they cannot easily leave.

  • I mean you can always tell yourself that, despite all the evil the "GAYMAN" (Google, Apple...) companies do, they still provide a sliver of a benefit to humanity. Sure they might destroy democracy, exploit our attention spans... but at least we get touchscreen phones, and next day delivery on soap.

    However this is not the case with Palantir. Palantir only exists to prop up dictators. There is no benefit in that company, only damage.

  • A job applicant who holds a degree from a high-quality university has more leverage to negotiate a higher compensation.

    An employee who holds a degree from a high-quality university has more leverage to refuse when they are demanded to overwork or act outside their the bounds of their role.

    An employee who has received a classical education is more likely to recognize acts which harm others. This last point seems relevant to Palantir.

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