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Alex Karp, the CEO of defense tech and software company Palantir, thinks the value of skilled workers is spiking, even as Big Tech companies, possibly his own, may shrink.
“Workers become more valuable,” Karp said on Thursday on “TBPN,” a tech talk show live from Palantir’s customer conference, AIP Con 8. “The person at the top is actually crazy valuable. People with technical expertise are crazy valuable.”
As skilled workers become essential to tech companies like his own, Karp thinks they’ll also get more expensive. “Artist-shaped people are going to be incredibly valuable, and they’re going to demand to be very highly paid,” he added. (Karp and Palantir employees sometimes refer to the company’s culture as “an artist colony.”)
And after an AI frenzy of a summer, higher pay isn’t all that surprising. With that said, as the chosen few AI researchers netted hundred-million-dollar paydays from Big Tech behemoths like Meta, most techies sat on the sidelines. Some were booted from the game entirely, with thousands laid off from Big Tech companies like Microsoft.
While Palantir crushed analysts’ estimates for second quarter earnings — notching over $1 billion in revenue for the first time and nearly doubling US commercial revenue from the same quarter last year — Karp hinted that his company may follow the lean teams trend that’s on the up in Silicon Valley.
“Our revenue is going up; our sales force is going down,” he said. “The number of people we plan to have in the future is less than now.”
While top talent may soon get top dollar, they may have to subscribe to tech’s hardcore culture reset: “We don’t do holidays,” Karp said of Palantir. “I’m working all the time.”
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