Anduril's product engineering machine

44 bookofjoe 73 8/30/2025, 7:14:15 PM joincolossus.com ↗

Comments (73)

Aurornis · 10h ago
What’s the latest about Anduril’s work environment? They’ve been pushing vibes-heavy approaches to recruiting like making videos sneering at remote work and highlighting how quirky Palmer is, but the last I heard it wasn’t a great place to work. When I start seeing PR puff piece journalism about a workplace to make it seem extra fun, they’re usually compensating for something (low pay, long hours, bad work environment) in my experience.
mingus88 · 10h ago
It’s important to know that Andruil is culturally very similar to Palantir and is run by many ex-Palantir folk.

My experience with the latter is very outdated but assuming Andruil is at a similar phase of growth as Palantir was a decade ago, you pretty much nailed it

Someone correct me if I’m wrong:

Underpaid compensation, with a justification that they are only hiring people who are “mission driven”. Heavily military based culture with a “need to know” approach to projects and overreliance on acronyms to align thought. Perks are golden age startup perks with full meal service, massages, fitness classes, laundry because of you are looking for a 9-5 then this is not the job for you

rune-space · 10h ago
Compensation is essentially top-of-industry, maybe with the exception of the Big 3 AI companies (that’s assuming you believe their RSU valuations, and that an IPO will occur).

Some projects are OPSEC-restricted, yes.

No massages, classes, laundry.

Many 9-5 people.

fooker · 9h ago
> Compensation is essentially top-of-industry

For junior candidates yes. Anyone with 5+ years of good experience, no, it's about half of what you'd make at Google.

wildzzz · 6h ago
For those in the defense industry, Anduril pays pretty well.
fooker · 53m ago
I don't doubt it.

Still about half of what a senior role in big tech would amount to.

This is an interesting trend for a bunch of newer companies, pay competitively for junior roles but significantly below industry for experienced candidates.

rune-space · 9h ago
You’re talking Google L5? Anduril L5 is similar YOE. I’m seeing ~400k TC for L5 at Google in levels.fyi, Anduril is significantly higher.
togetheragainor · 4h ago
If you're using levels.fyi as a reference, Anduril pays its L5s significantly less, not more: https://www.levels.fyi/companies/anduril-industries/salaries...
fooker · 9h ago
No, when I say 5 years I mean something like a PhD + five years in a relevant job. That would be maybe L6 at Google unless you're coasting.
rune-space · 9h ago
Of all the moved goalposts…

No comments yet

Aurornis · 7h ago
> Compensation is essentially top-of-industry, maybe with the exception of the Big 3 AI companies (that’s assuming you believe their RSU valuations, and that an IPO will occur).

I guess it comes down to betting on the IPO then?

The two recent data points I have are from one person who interviewed, got an offer, and his only reaction was “lol, not a chance”. The other person I know who works there now (according to LinkedIn) was a coworker who was cut for underperformance when we worked together years ago. I’ve heard so many different stories about what it’s like that I don’t know what to believe any more.

Calling Anduril comp “significantly higher” than Google does go completely against what I’ve heard from others though. I’ll have to go look again.

EDIT: The levels.fyi data looks great for juniors but definitely isn’t higher than Google for L5+: https://www.levels.fyi/companies/anduril-industries/salaries...

crinkly · 10h ago
Sounds like when I worked for a defence contractor in the 90s. Felt owned from the moment I woke up until I fell asleep. Didn’t feel human.

Just woke up one day and thought fuck it and never went back in. Took 6 months off, went on holiday, slept on my parents sofa and eventually got a shit job wrangling C. Best job ever that was. Better money, unlimited decent coffee, 9-5 hours, a window, a phone on my desk and my own SPARCstation 20.

jdgoesmarching · 9h ago
Sounds insufferable, which is unsurprising since Parmer Lucky is the final boss of wannabe airsoft warriors who never served.

I’m sure it’s appealing to the Grunt Style vets and sweaty Call of Duty cosplayers they’re scooping up to build weapon systems.

Animats · 10h ago
Watch a USMC recruiting video.[1] Same concept.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/@marinecorps/videos

foobarqux · 10h ago
Apparently Palmer Luckey doesn't have an official executive role at Anduril? He's listed as founder. Does he work there day to day?

https://www.anduril.com/leadership/

walthamstow · 50m ago
I don't think this is too uncommon. The last two startups I worked for had a founder who wasn't on the org chart but was very much involved.
edfletcher_t137 · 10h ago
"Amusement Park" has to be one of the worst headline choices here. So these people are amused by building killing machines? They are amused that their work is directly related to death & destruction? They are monsters if so.
thomascountz · 10h ago
I actually thought it was an excellent title! But then I read the article and realized there was no irony in it.
jijijijij · 9h ago
I hoped someone had hijacked that name for an actual "amusement park for engineers", coincidentally hitting all the right key words, but in terms of trademark protections occupying a completely unrelated commercial domain. Would be really, really funny if Anduril (not the amusement park) sales and marketing folks would have to append "not the amusement park", when speaking about Anduril (not the amusement park).
GaggiX · 10h ago
What's the acceptable state of mood that you are allow to be in when building killing machines?
walthamstow · 49m ago
Listen to a Joy Division record
maest · 9h ago
Dour.
davedx · 22m ago
> That makeshift tower, which we built on our own dime to prove what was possible, helped intercept nearly 1,000 pounds of marijuana and led to dozens of drug trafficking arrests—ultimately earning us a pilot program with Customs and Border Protection

Wow such high impact work. Surely making the world a more better place than those Silicon Valley leftists

howdyhowdy123 · 5h ago
This sounds like such a sad and awful place. Some brilliant yet naive young people are being taken advantage of. (source: I was just like that at that age)
conorh · 11h ago
It is a very interesting article, but I'm a little horrified at the amount of effort going into military projects to kill more efficiently.
spookie · 1h ago
Humans never learn, there will always be some crazy moron controlling some country.
Animats · 9h ago
"You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you."
fooblaster · 5h ago
Unfortunately, you don't get to choose how these weapons are used. Defense of Western Europe sounds noble. How does ethnic cleansing in the west bank?
XorNot · 9h ago
Yeah you might want to take a look at what's happening in Europe then. Because your options are "have an effective conventional military force, ideally enough to deter an invasion" and "have nuclear weapons and threaten Armageddon at the smallest of provocations" (which was correctly identified as impractical during the Cold War: would the US trade the Eastern Seaboard to protect Berlin? Fairly obviously no...)
650REDHAIR · 10h ago
An amusement park that kills people.

That doesn’t seem super fun to me.

ks2048 · 10h ago
More importantly to the plan than killing people - is running away with billions in tax dollars.
renewiltord · 42m ago
The point of war is to make the other dumb bastard die for his country. I think everything we make to kill should kill efficiently and well. Then we can choose not use the device. But whichever arm it is that is meant to do the job should do the job well. Then the civilian government arm can choose to not fight a war or engage in whatever.

Good for them. Sounds like a hell of an experience riding that train as employee #20. Haha, at $250 m one would have thought a lot of the growth was baked in. But it 100x from there. Very nice.

Yossarrian22 · 9h ago
>On a Saturday afternoon in April 2024, I was on the rooftop pool deck of a Marriott hotel, setting up radar equipment aimed above the Hollywood Hills in Burbank, California. My five-year-old son, still damp from swimming, darted around as I calibrated the system.

This has to be an FCC violation of some sort.

fooker · 9h ago
No, FCC doesn't care much about what you do with radar.
tho2i334324 · 1h ago
> Palmer and his team had already recognized the need for better defense technology to deter a greaey't power conflict and to maintain American hegemony.

I wonder if religious "saints" (nearly all of them were terror-mongering scum) of old had such confidence. Funnily, you'll even find "post-religious" liberals and Protestants defending their supposed enemies if they were killing/raping and plundering the "heathens" (forget Xtian-saints, they'll defend Islamic rampages and skull-mountain-building exercises the likes of which would have made both Genghis & Mohammed proud.)

"St. Xavier had already recognized on the need to start a inquisition against the heathens of Goa to maintain the hegemony of Christ so that the evil heathendom could not flourish any more in the piece of land Christ had promised."

Oh yes, we're so proud running 1000x foreign bases and dropping bombs on innocent civilians around the world for "freedom" - we definitely need to preserve our "hegemony".

Serious question - are Americans really this stupid ? I can remember 5-6 wars in the past 2 decades that all turned out to be regime-change ops because they wouldn't play ball to US diktats. Atleast British colonization of the world was honest (and those that were colonized were British subjects), without all this 3-d chess propaganda non-sense.

renewiltord · 22m ago
Stupid, perhaps. But the idiots have brought us Pax Americana - an unprecedented peace across the world, with technological innovation never seen before, and America has been a river to humanity: through research, development, and open market access to the world.

Ideally there are no hegemons and we live in a multipolar peace, but if there must be hegemonies then you can't do much better than this.

etjeyjeyjeyjrky · 10h ago
All I see are Indians assembling toy drones from Chinese components. This blog post is a total joke if you've ever been in a real defense production facility.
ramraj07 · 7h ago
One would think you'd need to be a citizen to work on defense stuff
sleazebreeze · 10h ago
Anduril employees think they're Tony Stark, but they're just cranking out cheap shit that kills people. America's enemies or whatever.

The employees seem to be laboring under the idea they're a family and the author sure seems to think so, but the 10% desired attrition rate and the weeks without sleep is really just an indicator they're expendable resources. They don't love you like that, man.

terminalshort · 10h ago
If the Ukraine war teaches us anything, cranking out large amounts of cheap shit that kills people is incredibly important.
bigyabai · 9h ago
If the Chinese trade war taught us anything, cranking out large amounts of cheap shit is something America cannot even threaten to do.
galacticaactual · 10h ago
Ironic that everyone talking shit about "building killing machines" probably also has Ukraine flags next to their PFPs. How you think Ukraine fighting their war right now fam - with sticks and bottle rockets?
elliotto · 37m ago
There's perhaps another war going on right now that's a bit less popular, and a lot more profitable, that these guys are making bank on. I hope you sleep well knowing you support this team
wildzzz · 5h ago
I work in the defense industry. I have a personal philosophy that I will never work on a platform that could be used to directly or even indirectly harm an individual person (like a fighter jet radar system). So far I've been able to stick to it. While I do think offensive weapons are a necessary part of life in these times, I don't want any of my work going towards building them. Of course some of the profit I help my company make likely goes towards developing new offensive weapons, my taxes will always fund my government's purchase and use of these weapons no matter who I work for.
galacticaactual · 3h ago
A luxurious position bred of first world arrogance.
rasz · 4h ago
Ukraine fights off aggressor.

Ukraine doesnt use Anduril drones, maybe with the exception of some PR contracts.

Anduril seems to be all about killing brown people forcing themselves over the border to "eat the cats".

galacticaactual · 4h ago
> Ukraine fights off aggressor.

Using what, Field Marshal?

torginus · 39m ago
Mostly old Soviet stock, decades old Western surplus, and homegrown drones made from mostly Chinese parts.
kg · 10h ago
Some people really sincerely do believe in pacifism. That doesn't seem misaligned with 'the victim of an immoral war should win'.

One can also believe multiple things at the same time, like:

* Waging war is immoral

* If someone wages war on you, it's acceptable to defend yourself instead of allow them to kill you

* Enabling war for personal profit (by selling weapons) is immoral

* Making weapons for self-defense is acceptable

i.e. during WW2, many countries repurposed existing industry in order to build all the weapons that were needed to win the war. That's a very different thing from spinning up a new startup with the stated goal of making weapons to sell for money. You can personally think it's okay but it seems totally reasonable to me that someone would believe "weapons should not be manufactured for personal profit the way we manufacture toys or food".

galacticaactual · 10h ago
Cool. How should they be manufactured? You know. For the self defense in the immoral war you mention.
dotnet00 · 9h ago
Try reading the last bit
galacticaactual · 9h ago
So you want a bombed out shell of a country to repurpose a destroyed industrial base and ramp up manufacturing for a technology it has no history of producing. Very logical.
XorNot · 7h ago
To some extent Ukraine has also given people are very distorted impression of what a modern war in other contexts would look like, adding an unhelpful data point to the other outdated one which is WW2.

WW2 was probably the last time you could fight a war, and do things like convert your local industry to produce weapons and tanks that were relevant. And even then, it only really happened because the US mainland was not contested territory during the conflict - it had the luxury of choosing when to enter the war.

Ukraine is simply not a "normal" looking modern conventional war. Both sides have receiving significant external imports which are various reasons are mostly untouchable by kinetic strikes till they cross the relevant borders (in this way it is much more like Vietnam in logistical respects). So you see assumptions like "mass production of drones will be key to the future!" in a context where the bulk of the critical components - microprocessors, cameras etc. - are not produced in the countries in conflict, and are imported from factories which are in no danger of ever being directly targeted.

So cheap mass producable systems have held the line in areas, but they're obviously drop ins for something you'd prefer to use instead - i.e. artillery - but there's a shortage of that. But conversely they haven't moved the line in a lot of areas - some of the biggest strikes of the war have been from conventional exploitation of defensive failures - i.e. the Kharkiv breakthrough, or from espionage operations which might be notable for using a lot of drones but the real accomplishment was getting them in position and the real success was still very typical: Operation Spidersweb taking out a large number of Russian long range strategic bombers.

Now people will point to the latter and say "see! strategic bombers are useless!" ... and yet that can hardly be true if a substantial operation to destroy strategic bombers was worth doing. A system being vulnerable in a way it previously wasn't does not make it ineffective (i.e. if strategic bombers at airfields intact would endanger the Ukranian position, then they're still an obviously necessary system, but they now need better protection then they had - or Russian counter-espionage just sucks).

bigyabai · 9h ago
You know, America had to coerce Ukraine into disarmament in 1994 because they had too many killing machines. You'd be surprised how quickly national defense becomes a touchy subject, on both sides of the aisle.

America has, for decades, has been trying to bilk Ukraine into forgoing free Soviet surplus to buy NATO-standardized equipment, only to remotely disable their material while they're using it. Because America was so fickle in providing defense, we've guaranteed that all future peace treaties (eg. one in Ukraine) necessitates direct American intervention, and not vague "security" agreements. That's probably why Trump is brooding over his options right now instead of arranging a ceasefire - he can't get peace without trading away something absurd like US naval assets or direct satellite intel.

galacticaactual · 9h ago
Okay. Russia drone go boom in Ukraine. Ukraine have no drone. How get drone.
bigyabai · 9h ago
I just explained it to you and you ignored my comment. Here is a simplification if it helps:

1991-1994: They nuke Moscow.

1994-present day: American strategic deterrence takes over.

If any part of that is unclear to you then I urge that you reread the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances and return to the discussion with the rest of the context.

Anduril does not manufacture strategic deterrents. If you think they're the solution to the Budapest Memorandum then you're the sort of armchair YouTube General that the Army filters out in officer school. It's not hard to understand, anyone can Google the difference between strategy and tactics.

pseudo0 · 8h ago
Ukraine keeping the nukes was never going to happen. The US, EU, and Russia were all in agreement on that. Ukraine was in shambles at the time, and no one wanted the risk of nukes getting transferred or sold outside of the existing nuclear club.

Ukraine had physical possession of the nukes, but their ability to actually use them was highly suspect. They might have been able to circumvent the security measures given enough time, but if anything such an attempt would have sparked an international "peacekeeping operation" to make sure the nukes didn't fall into the wrong hands.

https://cisac.fsi.stanford.edu/news/budapest-memorandum-myth...

galacticaactual · 9h ago
Excellent. So following your own logic Anduril - and similar - are a necessity to provide hardware for said deterrence. Glad we sorted that out.

Edit: oh I see, you only support strategic deterrence which equates to “standby until we have to nuke them.”

jonplackett · 9h ago
> I spent my paternity leave developing a 3D radar system

This just makes me so, so sad.

This person no matter what they may or may not achieve has all their priorities upside down.

renewiltord · 29m ago
The first three months of childcare are practically memoryless for the child. Provided they are cared for, you're not usually going to do any damage to their lives. An absent father during that period will be irrelevant so long as the child is fed, clothed, and kept comfortable. It's more about mechanical things.

It's pretty reasonable choice.

ramesh31 · 9h ago
A 3D radar system intended to better facilitate the more efficient vaporization of third world orphans, too, no less. Amazing the knots one can work themselves up into imagining they are doing something worthwhile.
john-h-k · 9h ago
> A 3D radar system intended to better facilitate the more efficient vaporization of third world orphans, too, no less.

This feels like something I’d read on twitter, not HN. Literally zero substance, just designed to be as controversial sounding as possible

GuinansEyebrows · 8h ago
It’s true. Ghoulish work.
bigyabai · 9h ago
Nobody builds a classified synthetic aperture radar for the public good.
XorNot · 7h ago
Because everyone knows the best way to run a military is to ensure at all times your adversaries are fully informed of the full scope and capability of all your systems. /s
RealityVoid · 2h ago
Are those orphans flying in a drone by any chance?
yahoozoo · 5h ago
The author seems to be really happy helping Israel commit genocide.
ohdeargodno · 10h ago
The amount of variants of "I missed <X> important event of my life to build a drone made to [kill people|break shit|arrest small time drug dealers]" in that article makes me think of complete fucking insanity instead of amusement park, but sure.

Skipping your paternity leave to release a shitty SaaS for a startup is already dumb shit, but doing so for the US military is some sociopathic behavior.

Also, for all their jerking off: congrats, you reinvented Skunkworks. Inevitably, in a few years, Anduril will be captured by political interests greater than them, and will become the same kind of crap company that Lockheed Martin is. And the world will be better off knowing there's fewer people making things to bomb brown people.

(And before any "uuuh but what about ukraiiine" response: the US will. never. be. attacked. Its conventional force is plenty enough to threaten any adversary. You can relax, the Chinese aren't coming to conquer Alaska, put down the power armor)

bsaul · 25m ago
the us have already been attacked. Terrorists don't care about conventional forces.
delta_p_delta_x · 9h ago
> the US will. never. be. attacked. Its conventional force is plenty enough to threaten any adversary.

That's what the Romans, the Spanish, the Portuguese, and the British said. There's no need to attack an 'empire' that implodes from within.

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