The hottest role in tech — the forward-deployed engineer — was "the ugliest duckling" for a decade. In this conversation, Akshay Krishnaswami, Chief Architect of Palantir, joins a16z GP Erin Price-Wright to cover: - Why a good team of engineers is like a hive mind - The archetypes of people that thrive as FDEs - Why pain tolerance is a hiring filter - Managing high-agency engineers without hierarchy and more. 00:00 Introduction 02:17 Defining forward-deployed engineering 04:49 Differences between FDE and other roles 06:09 Building and managing teams 09:55 Challenges and evolution of FDE 15:27 Maintaining product focus and customer relationships @hyperindexed @espricewright(a16z)