The Palantir Fellowship Program

This episode features a pair of conversations with past and present members of our fellowship program. Recipients of the Palantir Fellowship receive a full scholarship and stipend for the 12 week Drupal Career Online course presented by DrupalEasy. Graduates of the course are then offered a paid internship with Palantir, along with professional mentoring and the opportunity for a full time position.

First, you'll hear from Cori Neslund, who interviewed a number of past Fellowship recipients earlier this year. Then you'll hear a conversation George DeMet had recently with our current interns about their career transitions and their experiences working in a remote environment.

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Transcript

George DeMet
Hello and welcome to Plus Plus, the podcast from Palantir.net where we talk about what's new and interesting in the world of open source technologies and agile methodologies. I'm your host, George DeMet.

Today's episode features a pair of conversations with past and present members of our fellowship program. Recipients of the Palantir Fellowship receive a full scholarship and stipend for the 12 week Drupal Career Online course presented by DrupalEasy. Graduates of the course are then offered a paid internship with Palantir, along with professional mentoring and the opportunity for a full time position.

First, you'll hear from Cori Neslund, who interviewed a number of past Fellowship recipients earlier this year. Then you'll hear a conversation I had recently with our current interns about their career transitions and their experiences working in a remote environment.

(Music plays)

Cori Neslund
Hi, everyone. Today, we're going to meet with some of our fellow Palantiri to talk about and give an overview of the Fellowship and the internship here at Palantir. My name is Cori Neslund, and I'm a senior project manager.

Adwoa Kesse
I am Adwoa Kesse, the employee experience manager. I'm also the internship coordinator.

Travis Porchia
I'm Travis Porchia. I am a front-end developer.

Yang Turner
Hi, I'm Yang Turner. I went through the Drupal Career Online Spring 2022 internship program with Palantir. I'm now currently a frontend developer at Palantir.

Tessa Bower
My name is Tessa Bower. I am a backend engineer.

Cori Neslund
So, I am the moderator today, and we have a couple of prepared questions. The first one is: what's the most valuable thing that you learned in your course that you are now applying at Palantir?

Tessa Bower
For me, basically, everything I learned at the DrupalEasy course was valuable because I didn't know anything about Drupal going into it. I knew a couple of things as far as general programming language and internet websites, but as a whole, I didn't know anything about Drupal, so the entire class was fresh knowledge for me.

Travis Porchia
I was brand new to Drupal, brand new to development. So, definitely, learning best practices and what it means to have a great machine was valuable because, when I first took the class, I was using a really old, outdated computer system. We were just learning one of the foundations: learning the command line was huge. And just learning how to navigate through the complete Drupal process was significant.

Yang Turner
I was in the same situation as the others. I basically had zero knowledge of Drupal but had experience with coding web stuff. So, for me, it was about understanding the local dev environment, setting up, and learning all the fundamental knowledge of Drupal. Also, learning about all the modern development workflow with all the development tools, which I learned from the DCO course. I use them pretty much every day at work.

Cori Neslund
So, the next question is: what do you wish you knew before you joined Palantir?

Tessa Bower
For me, I feel like a better understanding of object-oriented programming would have been more helpful going in. I don't really have any background in programming, so object-oriented was a whole new thing. But PHP, which is the base for Drupal, uses that a lot, and then also Twig was a new concept for me.

Cori Neslund
All right. And for our newest fellows who have transitioned in, Yang and Travis, how was the transition to a fully remote working environment?

Travis Porchia
Yeah, it's awesome. It allows you to focus on the work and how you work. You get to know a lot about yourself and how you're able to self-motivate. That was the biggest thing for me working remotely. Without being in the office physically around folks doing the same thing you're doing, you have to set your own work schedule. You have to organize your life in a way that keeps you focused, keeps you on top of your task because you don't have someone constantly checking up on you. You have to strengthen that muscle of self-organization and self-motivation. So, that's the biggest thing that I had to adjust to working remotely, but it's great. I feel like I'm better for it.

Yang Turner
For me, the whole onboarding process was very wonderful. The process gets you set up, provides great resources, and offers great learning opportunities. The more I get into Palantir's culture, with transparency and the collective spirit, the easier it is to adjust. I feel like I'm learning from everybody, I have all the support I need, all the great resources I need. So with remote work, I don't feel like it's holding me back in any way. I feel like the whole process has been very smooth and effective for me. I've really enjoyed it.

Cori Neslund
So, for everyone, what piece of advice would you give to potential recipients of the Palantir fellowship?

Travis Porchia
Do not be intimidated by what you don't know. I had zero dev experience and only a little programming experience, so it was quite intimidating when I started learning. It's like learning a brand new language in a foreign country. You kind of just have to go for it and ask as many questions as you feel you need. Palantir, as Yang said, is a very open, transparent group of people who are always willing to help. The culture that the company has created is one of nurturing your talent. So, live in that. And this is a practice that I have to remind myself of every day. It's okay not to know. What you don't know is an opportunity for you to learn. So don't be intimidated by the newness of the situation. Just go into it with an open mind and heart, and ask a million questions a day. That's the only way you're going to learn and get better.

Tessa Bower
It's OK not to know everything. It's OK not to have all the answers because even some of the most experienced people in Drupal don't know it all. They still turn to Google and have to try different search terms to get the answers they need. The biggest mistake you can make is to pretend you know the answer. Don't do that. Another thing is to reach out often and communicate that you don't know because not communicating with people that you need help or that you don't know something is probably the largest hindrance you'll encounter. If you don't admit that you need to learn something, you won't be able to.

Cori Neslund
So, I want to give a big plus plus to Tessa right now because everything that she just said is an excellent representation of our culture at Palantir. So, plus plus, yes.

Yang Turner
This is a tough spot right now. I was going to say everything that Tessa just said. So, become good friends with Google. I literally have to Google a lot. When you have a lot of questions and even after people answer you, you'll often need more information to learn. Google is your best friend at this point. My advice, on top of what has already been said, would be to make sure you set up your Drupalize.me account. They have a lot of great learning resources there. I have learned so much going back and forth on that site. Since we have a company-provided discount, make sure to utilize that resource well.

Cori Neslund
So, the next question is for everyone. What other skills, not learned in the DrupalEasy course, have you leveraged or utilized while working here at Palantir?

Yang Turner
I learned HTML and CSS before this and I have to use it every single day now with Twig and theming in the frontend. Also PHP, I knew a little bit, but I use it a lot when I'm working on the backend. I feel like this knowledge, if you don't have it already, is good to learn outside of the DrupalEasy course.

Travis Porchia
A non-technical thing I've learned is how to work in an agile work environment. This is something I had never experienced before, with daily scrums, team chartering, and things of that nature. At first, it was intimidating because it felt like you had to show everyone what you'd done or hadn't done. But it also helps build a sense of camaraderie within your team and provides an open forum for assistance if you're blocked. It allows multiple people to contribute, which I think is awesome. It's something that I've learned and continue to utilize within Palantir, how to move a project along as a group, while working individually in an agile environment.

Tessa Bower
As for other skills, I have a background in IT support, so I've actually been able to utilize a lot of those general knowledge skills, especially once I started exploring DevOps. My networking background has really helped me understand a lot of our development flow with Acquia and getting projects moving. Another skill I would highlight is communication. Being able to articulate the problem you're running into so that you can get the right kind of help is really key. This way, you won't end up accidentally running in circles because you can't communicate properly. It's not the easiest skill to master, but it is a very useful one.

Cori Neslund
Adowa, as the person who has really helped shepherd this program and seen the iterations that Palantir has gone through, do you have any final advice or any comment that you'd like to provide to people who are considering applying?

Adwoa Kesse
I would advise having a growth mindset. Every day is an opportunity to learn something new in life. But sometimes, life experiences, be they negative or positive, can hinder you from wanting to start something new. So, if you go into this with a growth mindset, accepting that you don't know everything and that's OK, but you're going to approach it with the intent to learn and to soak in all the information, then you will go far. That's one of the principles here at Palantir. That would be my advice going into it.

Cori Neslund
Well, I want to say thank you to everyone. I really appreciate you all being here. Thanks so much.

(Music plays)

George DeMet
Today I'd like to catch up with two of Palantir's newest interns, Sarah Wiley and Christine Kitchens. Sarah and Christine were both recipients of the Palantir Fellowship and graduated from DrupalEasy Drupal Career Online course this spring. They've been interns at Palantir now for just over a month and are working on projects alongside our other team members. Sarah and Christine, welcome! What was your journey to the Palantir Fellowship program? Sarah, why don't you go first?

Sarah Wylie
I was in finance for about a decade and it was never really my jam. It just kind of got me through some important life stages and when I decided it was time for me to really take that leap into something I love, I did a boot camp in full stack, React, SQL, JavaScript, lots of other related technologies and I came out of that kind of just lost about where to go. So I did some other trainings and had never heard of Drupal before. But the Women Who Code group in Austin, somebody put up a notice about the fellowship and I applied without really knowing what I was getting myself into and it has been like the universe was just guiding me here.

George DeMet
Christine, how about you?

Christine Kitchens  
So I'm actually coming from a background in science. I worked as a research technician for a Great Lakes research organization for almost a decade and you know, science was my jam. Sarah’s was finance. You know, I really enjoyed you know a lot of the trailblazing and making up standard operating procedures and doing the chemistry, but it started to really wear on me after a while. Like just one too many times where you're up at 3:00 AM sampling and the bottom of a boat, and the water's terrible. And you start to have those thoughts of like man, I really need a new job. During the pandemic, when we had not quite as much in person time at the laboratory, we started directing a lot of efforts to doing data analytics. And I found that I was actually pretty good at coding. I had a head for it and my partner who was already in the IT field told me you need to go do this because your life will be so much better. So I went and I did a boot camp as well, and I did some prowling around trying to get in some places and my very good friend Tessa, who is a fellow Palantiri, she gave me a nudge and said hey, bt dubs there is this thing at my job that you should check out. And now here I am.

George DeMet
That's awesome. I have so many questions about lakes and testing water and things like that. But we can do that in a future episode. So yeah, so I'm curious what some of the most valuable things were that you learned in the DrupalEasy course?

Sarah Wylie
I think basically just being introduced to what Drupal is and how it works? Because when you when you take somebody who's learned coding languages and then you're like Drupal includes the full stack, you can choose what you want to specialize or you can, you know, do a little bit of everything and the concept of that is just kind of mind boggling when you're first introduced to it because you know coding is coding you, you code the back end or you code the front end or you code the full stack, but you don't do the whole thing in one. And so Drupal's kind of cool that way.

George DeMet
I remember back in the old days before we had tools like Drupal, you did have to kind of manage the full stack. So there's a kind of a joke that every web agency or consultancy at a certain age, you know, tried to develop their own CMS at some point. We did and then we were very grateful when Drupal came along and we realized it was far better than anything we could do ourselves. How about you, Christine?

Christine Kitchens
Honestly, I'm kind of coming from a similar place as Sarah, because again, a lot of my programming experience and background was in data analytics which is kind of a different ball game. I can make a dashboard like nobody, and it can be hot stuff, but I up until Tessa was giving me this nudge about this program. I had never even heard of Drupal. Not one bit, and I had some experience dealing with websites because I don't know how to not be busy and so I've worked on websites for some organizations I'm in in my personal time and so I had familiarity with like Wix and WordPress and things like that. But Drupal was just, I had never heard of it, although it was kind of amazing because as soon as I was telling people about the program, I was kind of shocked by the number of people who are like, “Oh yeah, I've totally heard of it. It's very flexible. That's awesome”. And so that was pretty cool and the Drupal Easy course did such a great job of leveling the playing field for people from all backgrounds, right folks like myself, who had never even heard of Drupal versus folks who had, you know, maybe interfaced with Drupal websites but had not really worked on the back end or anything like that before. So I think some of the most valuable things I learned was just how to even spin up a Drupal site. It gave me a lot of the foundational skills that I needed to start getting into a career as a Drupal developer.

George DeMet
So both of you are kind of making career shifts coming from other fields. I'm curious. What other skills outside of what you've learned in the course you've found useful in your internship journey so far?

Sarah Wylie  
Oh man, we had a crash course in Twig. And that was eye opening. It was it was great because I know that PHP is kind of the base language of Drupal and so I've kind of been trying to make sure that I learn some more PHP every time I have a little bit of downtime which you know isn't a lot, but that has been my primary focus of making sure I've got that PHP and so when we were thrown into some Twig, it was just like tossing you out into the middle of the ocean and hoping you can swim back to shore, but luckily we had been training, I guess for long enough cause we both did great at it. And it's funny because coming from a JavaScript base PHP has been very similar. It's been easy for me to pick up because once you really are immersed in one language, it's often easier to pick up on all the other object oriented programming languages. But Twig was just something else, and once I got into the logic of it, I was fine. It was just getting those syntax things down and figuring out how to play God with the words in front of me, because that's what we do, right?

George DeMet
Yeah, it's. And it's funny too, because Twig is a relatively recent addition to Drupal, and in fact one of the reasons Twig is in Drupal is because the previous templating system was seen by many as being too much like PHP. How about you, Christine?  

Christine Kitchens
I think for me actually taking a step back from the coding itself, one of the almost critical skills that I've found have been helpful in keeping things straight during this internship has actually been time management tools maybe? I'm like trying to find the right word here so you know how, like you got your computer set up and organizational, you could do all kinds of yeah, I've found the organizational tools have been extremely valuable because this is a fully remote job, right? And it it's been interesting kind of trying to find the best ways to keep up with getting notifications from Slack, getting Google Calendar notifications, getting notifications when you've had changes to a GitHub repo, getting notifications when you've had a Jira ticket changed because the job that I was previously in was a I guess to put it gently, was a bit of a cluster to organizing task and things like that. It was a lot of grabbing somebody in the hallway and saying, “hey, did somebody take care of this, like, what's going on?” And so integrating my Google Calendar into my Slack so that icons pop up next to my screen so that people can see when I'm in meetings and when I'm not, and finding ways to integrate Jira and GitHub into my Slack so that I can manage all these different tools that we use to do our job, I think, have been critical to me being able to get anything done because otherwise I think it could be very challenging to keep tabs on all of these changes that are happening in all of these different places.

George DeMet
For sure. And it was actually one of the things I also wanted to ask you both about what experience you've had or not working in a fully remote working environment and if that's not something you've had experience with, like what was it like to manage that transition?

Sarah Wylie
For me, the first big kid job that I had was running the entire outreach program for the Milwaukee Public Library. And you know, I took over this huge job that nobody was there to hand off and say, like, “here's the template”. They were more like, “figure it out, good luck to you,” and they followed up with, “we don't have an office for you or anywhere for you to work but you're welcome to sit on the floor here with your computer anytime you'd like”. And so my introduction to the big kid work world was remote, and I learned quickly how to balance being a young person without a dedicated space just carving out that space to be able to work and get things done and making sure that my brain was processing things in a very organized manner to be able to meet every thing, every expectation, every goal that I needed to meet. And you know, having whatever tools at my disposal I needed to make that happen, whether it be checking off lists, calendars, spreadsheets of whatever I needed to do to stay on top of everything. And so it's, you know, I transitioned from that role into the finance role where there was a big, huge tower in downtown Chicago where I worked. And on the first day, my boss was like, “You know what? If it’s snowing, just don't come in. If it's raining a little bit, just don't come in. You’ve got a laptop, you're fine”. And it was a lot of well, just keep on continuing with polishing these remote work skills because that's what I did for most of my career and I'm pretty good at it by now.

George DeMet
And actually really great that you had that flexibility at your previous position because I know a lot of places, they insist that folks come in and have the facetime and everything. So Christine, you talked a little bit about just kind of getting used to the organizational aspect of remote work. Are there other things that you've had to learn or as part of the transition?

Christine Kitchens
Oh yeah for sure. So I think probably one of the more challenging things I've had to deal with being in this fully remote position is the fact that all of my work tasks feel very cerebral, which I know sounds like a weird word, but so for example, when I was working in my position as a research specialist if I had days where my brain just had zero interest in trying to do any sort of complex work there were tasks that I could do. I could go into the laboratory, I could do dishes, I could organize samples. I could run like all of this stuff where you can kind of throw yourself on autopilot and, you know, still be productive, I think. I don't want to say it's been a complete challenge because in a weird way, the pandemic gave me a leg up because so many of us were forced to start working from home at that point that it did give give me the space to cultivate those skills a little bit, but I think that's the thing I still currently struggle with right now is when you have those days where your brain just does not want to work, and you're firing on half cylinders is finding ways to be productive so that you're not just sitting and staring at your screen and running in circles and not getting me in anything done. And so I'm still working on that a little bit and figuring out what are kind of less brain sensitive, menial tasks that can be done when your brain just isn't all the way there and I think the other thing too is learning how to put boundaries on your space and time, right? Because now my workplace is also my home and you know that can be kind of detrimentall to work life balance, to learn how to set rate being on the clock versus off the clock when you don't even have that spatial delineation, you can work with. I mean, even on this computer when I'm doing stuff on my personal computer, I just swap out laptops on my dock and keep sitting in the same place. And so it can be challenging, I think to learn how to delineate my space and time in a healthy way. And I'm getting there, but that's definitely been one of the challenges I've been facing so far, this being my first fully remote position.

George DeMet
Yeah, for sure. And I think it's something all of us face, right. And sometimes it's really great. You just gotta take a break from the screen. Go and do the dishes or have a meal or whatever it is. But not finding yourself, being constantly in one place for 18 hours or whatever I mean. And everyone deals with it differently, you know, I know folks who are like, “No, I must have this very clear delineation between I'm at work and now I'm not at work”. And then there are other folks who find other ways to sort of integrate it. You know, they might set aside some time to do some work tasks, even if it isn't part of work hours, right? Just because they're dealing with other things during work hours. So, yeah, it's all about finding the way that works for you I guess, right?

George DeMet
So my next question I'm curious for both of you. What has surprised you most about your time at Palantir so far?

Sarah Wylie
I immediately know my answer to that one. It's the culture. When you were talking about remote work and how a lot of employers just don't get it, don't buy into that, especially pre-pandemic, I had that experience. You know, when I moved down to Austin, I was still working in finance and I had to tell my employer that, "Sorry, I'm gonna work from home sometimes, because that's just how I am more productive." And that is where I get the most focus, the most done. Then, coming into Palantir, it was, you know, our first meeting with you was just like, I remember your exact words. "Isn't it strange that companies don't treat people like adults when we're all grown-ups doing jobs?" Or, you know, I don't know if I'm grown up yet, but we're all adults doing jobs and that's how we should be treated. People here really, genuinely respect each other and strive to get along, instead of just putting on facades. And that's so refreshing coming out of a very Caucasian, very masculine, very businessy setting.

George DeMet
We do spend so much time outside of our jobs adulting, as it were. It still boggles my mind that just because you're at your job, that you're being paid for, suddenly you're less responsible. I don't get it. How about you, Christine? What surprised you most so far?

Christine Kitchens
Oh, definitely how social you all are with each other. Honestly, but it's a delight because, again, coming from my previous job where sometimes it kind of felt like a workers in the mine situation because we would be so overstretched and overburdened with various projects and tasks. We were a grant funding agency, so there was kind of this really strong impetus to be constantly working all the time, working on papers, working on lab stuff. There, it felt like people really didn't spend a lot of work time just being social with each other. You know, like that water cooler talk. And that used to really dishearten me because I'm very much a, I don't know if I want to say casual, like that doesn't sound quite right, gregarious. I like talking to people, right? I like talking to people. I like hearing about what's going on with your life. Like I'm terrible at small talk. I'm always like, "Tell me how your family life is going," and stuff like that. But, you know, people were so overworked and overburdened that it felt like trying to have any conversations that were not immediately surrounding the topic of work or the topic of how terrible work was, didn't happen very often. And I love on the Slack, you know, we have channels for pets, and video games, and books, and knowing that we're encouraged to talk about things that are not strictly work, and that people are so engaged in it too, is so nice. It goes so far to make me feel a lot more connected to my coworkers, which was something I was kind of worried about. Because I was like, "Well, we don't see each other. We're never in the office. How are we gonna, how does it feel like I'm not just talking to that GPT robot while I'm doing my job all the time?" So that was a very wonderful surprise.

George DeMet
It's something, again, as being a remote company, we have to work at it. We have to prioritize it because, yeah, it would be very easy to just kind of get lost, right? And, you know, my best friend is Chad. GPT. It sounds so sad. We're actually gonna be talking about ChatGPT on our next episode of our podcast, you know?

Sarah Wylie
Thank you, folks.

George DeMet
So, that'll be a little teaser there. Thank you. So my final question is, what piece of advice would you give to future applicants or recipients of the Palantir Fellowship?

Sarah Wylie
Light a fire and keep it going, cause I don't imagine people really want this if they're going through the class. Going through the internship and, you know, not even being guaranteed a job. It's all about performance and how you display yourself, and you learn it on, but you only get out of anything that you put into it. So keep that fire going. Strive to be learning all the time because there is so much opportunity, but not if you don't seize it.

George DeMet
I'm so inspired, I'm getting chills now, thank you. How about you, Christine?

Christine Kitchens
Yeah, that was so inspiring. And I'm sitting here with my deadpan advice. I really would have two pieces of advice for somebody going through this fellowship. One, for the class portion of this fellowship: if you can, save your life and get a Mac, because if you're the one solo person who's developing on a PC for that class, there are about 20 more extra steps to do anything, and if something goes wrong, you're kind of on your own. Two, use all of the Slack integrations forever, because again, when we're on our computers, and especially for the portion of the job where you are actually at Palantir and you're managing projects, we have a lot of different tools we used to be successful. The way you can channel those tools into a singular location so that it's easy for you to see when changes are made will make your life easier when you're managing things like pushes to your git repo, comments on push, pull requests, and changes to Jira tasks. It's just going to be good. Get all those integrations. Make your life better.

Sarah Wylie
The only advice I’ve gotten, no, the most prevalent advice I've gotten from everyone at Palantir, is "Oh, there's a Slack integration for that if you haven't found it yet”. Constantly.

George DeMet
I was laughing, Christine, because you were saying earlier how you were so great at putting together dashboards. It almost sounds like you've made Slack your personal dashboard. That's pretty cool. Sarah and Christine, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me today. We'll be opening up applications for the 2024 Palantir Fellowship cohort at the end of this year. In the meantime, the next session of Drupal Career Online begins in August. Just go to drupaleasy.com to learn more.

And to learn more about what it's like to work at Palantir, check out our website at palantir.net. And of course, don't forget to like and subscribe to this podcast. We'll be back in a couple weeks with another fresh episode delving into the rapidly evolving world of generative AI technology. We’ll see you then!

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