Comment by joecool1029
4 days ago
Thanks for attempting to answer what I was asking about. I have had difficulty finding out more about it, the alleged ex-Palantir commenter said this would be part of their Gotham product, but most of what I could find on that was buzzword data visualization stuff. If their old post history and what you're saying is accurate, then it's really just a database integration tool with a nice interface?
“A nice interface” disguises the truth here. Palantir is so successful because they build minimum viable prototypes on the fly for clients, deliver rather than balk when custom code has to be written, and leave working solutions alone. (See also other replies about FDEs here.) It’s the kind of behavior I used to take for granted as normal as a small-town ISP, and were it not for their ‘ethics are the customer’s problem’ approach I’d have signed on as a database / dashboard engineer for them years ago.
> it's really just a database integration tool with a nice interface
In a way, though I think it understates how difficult of a problem unified data integration is - especially in organizations with disparate schemas and internal data that may often not be well documented and with dev teams that are often personnel strapped.
Most other vendors in the data integration space don't provide the same degree of support and hand-holding that Palantir does with their FDEs. The FDE model is their secret weapon tbh - it makes it easy for organizations to gain temporary staff augmentation without having to expend their hiring budget.