Walmart to close three tech hubs, tells tech staff to return to offices | Hacker News Reader

Walmart to close three tech hubs, tells tech staff to return to offices

wsj.com

149 pointslxm269 comments

Interesting that they contacted me just last week about an open position. I thought it was odd that the inside recruiter included an obviously abbreviated version of the job posting in her email to me. When I looked up some of the key phrases, I found the posting, which was listed as hybrid while my profile clearly indicates I only work 100% remote. When I asked her about how many days per week hybrid means, she said "about three", which sounds an awful lot like four to me, which probably also means that one (possibly two) work from home days would soon go away. She didn't respond to my request for their location. If she wasn't an inside recruiter, I would have thought it was a scam attempt.

Got to wonder if the caginess is due to them having problems with finding people to take over the obviously on-site jobs. Sure, the initial contact could have been a simple mistake on her part, but then the editing of the job posting to exclude anything about hybrid and days in the office and then a resistance to explaining the details when I emailed her back is suspicious. I decided to not pursuit it further and now seeing this news, makes me feel like I made the right choice.

The short way of addressing this, if you are sufficiently senior in your position or in-demand for your tech skills, is to ensure that any offer letter has extremely unambiguous language written into it that your position is 100% remote and will remain remote. Tell that to the recruiter. If they don't do it, proceed with a short "thank you for your time but I am not interested" and move on.

I think given at-will employment they can renege on that agreement whenever they want. Obviously it's best to have a meeting of minds, but can you really ever trust a corporation? Probably not.

They can terminate you instead of allowing you to work remote, but they cannot renege on the agreement to allow you to work remote.

I don't think those represent differing options. A corporation's power over workers takes the forms of adjusting comp or termination.

The worker's power over corporations is a willingness to say "no" and walk away.

A person I know related that his employer said they were going to cut his salary. He said "do that and I quit". The cuts were rescinded.

Yeah nothing wrong with playing hardball, but if someone doesn't have retirement / 'f-you money' type savings then maybe they will be willing to take less risks.

If you have good job skills, it isn't much of a risk.

> adjusting comp or termination.

These usually have legal strings attached. The contract saying "it has to be remote" should restrict comp adjustment without negotiating. Termination may mean a severance, depending on the locality and laws and the contract.

Wait, what's the difference? "We will be terminating you instead of allowing you to work remote, but if you'd like to re-negotiate the terms to no longer be remote, then..."

They have to pay you out before rehiring if that is part of your agreement or your society has made laws that pay you a certain minimum

The difference is that they may be hesitant to fire you just because you work remote.

If the terms aren’t in your contract the situation inverts, where the company can unilaterally change the terms and bet you’d be hesitant to leave.

Which means that they can terminate you if you insist on working remotely, even after an agreement to allow you to work remotely.

Sure, but termination is a much larger step than unilaterally adjusting working conditions.

You might be able to include a compensation package requirement if they violate that part of the contract, but would have a difficult time forcing them to continue to employ you.

Right, if you can get them into a contract it's a poison pill for your employment to enforce it with lawyers. Perhaps the math works out, but given we are seeing a turning tide in the tech labor market, I'd say it would be difficult to attain a contract like that now.

> I think given at-will employment they can renege on that agreement whenever they want. Obviously it's best to have a meeting of minds, but can you really ever trust a corporation? Probably not.

Sure.

But part of those precautions are so that you have a good story to tell your next company why you only worked somewhere for 4 months.

Although I suppose it's not necessary to include such short jobs on your resume at all.

It's not really a problem in today's market, IMO.

I've yet to have my string of short tenures ever really hold me back. The biggest issue is that you will have to regrind the leetcode gauntlet and go through a dozen more onsites to get that reasonable job offer again. That is the true pain.

might be a problem now that 10s of thousands of ex faang are back on the market.

> I think given at-will employment they can renege on that agreement whenever they want.

“at-will” employment refers to the laws setting the baseline conditions that apply absent a specific contract to the contrary.

An offer and acceptance of employment on specific terms, if it meets the requirements for contract formatiom trumps the default terms unless it is blocked by something in the law. That’s why important employees (e.g., top execs, 9f nothing else) in most firms have specific contracts with terms that are not at-will employment (and why union contracts exist, too.)

Depending on the exact facts of a particular case that would be considered constructive dismissal under the labor laws in most US states. Employers can terminate at-will employees at any time for any reason or no reason (with a few limited exceptions). But if an employer substantially changes the terms of your employment — like by forcing you to work in an office — and fires you for cause then you should still be able to obtain unemployment insurance. Of course, as a practical matter it's better to just avoid the whole mess if you have better options.

But if/when you decline to work in an office you'll have documentation making it much more difficult for them to try and deny an unemployment insurance claim if you put one in.

I mean yeah that's exactly what the caginess was about.

Yeah I got contacted too. Weird.

"About three" - mathematicians reconsidering the real line with this statement.

That kind of caginess is so unbelievably disrespectful.

So yeah, they're just going to force us all to RTO because pretty much every single company is going to collectively decide to bully everyone into doing it, until there's hardly any companies left doing it, and certainly not enough for the demand for it since the pandemic. Great, just great.

Might be almost time to start looking into freelancing again.

This is going to drive salaries up in the hubs again.

Freelancing isn't exactly stable and reliable either.

I'd suggest, if you're looking, to take a job at a company that is remote first. Skip all these companies that are "allowing it" and go for the ones that make it a selling point. A company saying they are remote first with little office space should insulate you from these sorts of shenanigans.

This. I worked at companies that are "remote" and their solution is to have 254 Zoom meetings per day.

No they’re not; some of us have become managers during all this and won’t stand for it. Not to mention we’ve hired quite a few out-of-state resources and simply can’t afford to lose them.

Some shitty companies will pursue this but the smart companies will stay the course and hire away their talent. It’s a competitive advantage and companies need to view it that way or suffer.

Also - this will now provide us with a very simple test, is this a shitty company that does not truly value its employees, or are they one of the good ones worthy of my attention.

My question about these policies is are they actually applying them to everyone in the org, or is there a political mess of exceptions and 'key people' who can muscle their way out of the requirement? It seems like a lot of the recent layoffs are intended to give an attitude check to those who think they are essential, but surely these businesses actually have essential teams and specific engineers that would harm the org if they left?

Yes. At GE (yes, the real GE Aviation that still exists) we just said "Yessa master" and then ignored the three day per week in-office "requirement." The managers (directors and lower C-levels) in the trenches had zero interest in enforcing it. Though, that place is a den of malicious compliance throughout.

Just nod, and then do what you want. No need to keep bringing it up.

I agree that some of these instances won't have teeth. I think for companies who already have aggressive attrition policies like Microsoft, Amazon, and perhaps Walmart they will though.

Long before covid I did the same thing, I just started working from home and got some flak for it, but it never entered into my performance equation and I remained employed there.

Apple is giving verbal notices for not complying 3 days RTO, I heard on blind. Here, HR is forcing the attrition: either come 3 days to office or quit.

Everyone’s situation is different, but I know people at a big tech company you’ve heard of who are infamous for being, well, kind of assholes, who when given a similar offer by HR have said no I’m not coming to the office and no I’m not quitting and that has worked for over a year so far.

Of course that’s all predicated on your manager wanting to keep you and at least somewhat go to bat for you. Otherwise I expect it’ll lead to dismissal rather rapidly.

I know some people at amazon, which also has a long-standing RTO policy, that it effectively doesn't apply to engineers, since they were too important to risk attrition.

I don't know why anyone would voluntarily quit though: force them to make a scene and fire you for WFH. Best case you call their bluff, worst case you get severance.

> Yes. At GE (yes, the real GE Aviation that still exists) we just said "Yessa master" and then ignored the three day per week in-office "requirement." The managers (directors and lower C-levels) in the trenches had zero interest in enforcing it. Though, that place is a den of malicious compliance throughout.

Sounds like Kodak in the 90s. The CEO would announce company wide job reductions and the department heads ignored it and kept hiring.

There are quite a few non-"shitty" companies mandating RTO for those not hired as remote workers. Classifying good companies as "shitty" because one doesn't like the original terms of employment agreed to by both parties is hyperbola. Sure, it's not your preference, but it does not make it a "shitty" company.

> Classifying good companies as "shitty" because one doesn't like their terms of employment is hyperbola.

I think most people care quite a lot about their "terms of employment": pay, working hours, work location, etc.

No doubt, but the companies being referred to are generally companies people are looking to be hired at, you know, the FAANG sort who are now bringing up the original terms as agreed upon.

Now, if the poster is referring to some contract shop, sure, their terms are usually lousy, but here the poster is referring to the FAANGs of the world who are now asking many employees to RTO on some frequency basis.

Which companies are you referring to?

they way I see it, having in-person workers is a competitive advantage for the company. those who figure out a way to keep their workers in office will be more competitive than those who don't. from the company perspective it definitely makes sense to push for in-person work as much as the workforce will tolerate.

That’s only if being in the office gives you a competitive advantage. I don’t think I’ve seen anything that bears that out so far.

I think it is an advantage if you are building new, complex systems and need to move fast. In that case, you won't need to ask anyone to come in...they just will. Most places don't have that requirement but some managers drool over any chance to cargo cult.

Myself and two other devs are building everything from scratch for a new company involving US direct deposits. We come into the office one or two days per week to demo and meet with managers and operations people.

If I were just supporting a system I would never go in.

There's a good deal of debate over if in-person or remote is more productive but there's zero debate that paying for physical offices is much more expensive than paying for a VPN connection.

Rents will find a level for this. It seems interesting that in NY, which overindexes for executives, the office market is not coming back and will have to reduce supply significantly. Is this rule being applied outside the c-suite?

I think there are massive practical issues with remote work. But I am not sure there weren't significant issues with the: paying $10m/year in rent, so your manager can look up and see if you are at the desk...and, presumably, working.

Well they’re still going to, no matter how much you fight. WfH will be an exception rather than the default, that’s what they are trying.

In a large company like Walmart, do the managers really have enough power here to sway outcomes? Without a union, managers seem powerless here unless enforcement falls to them.

As a lifetime remote dev it does kind of suck. People have been let in on my secret and now jobs have reduced, it'll be a lot more competitive.

On the other hand remote allows you to work for other countries. So there are still options if your cost of living is low.

At a previous job, we seemed to have had a "don't ask, don't tell" policy when it came to remote workers logging in from outside of their home country. Then we had a member of the infosec team start logging in from a war zone and the policy suddenly because crystal clear that logins would only be accepted from the employee's home country unless permission was granted ahead of time and programmed into the VPN.

I've seen folks solve for this by VPNing into a family member's residential connection in an acceptable (to the business) jurisdiction before connecting to the corp VPN. Risk tolerance decision. Like having to VPN home so Netflix doesn't take your password sharing away. I make no judgement either way on the topic; I'm simply speaking in technical capability terms.

Edit: @Aeolun https://old.reddit.com/r/YouShouldKnow/comments/10zvbgf/ysk_... (from a quick google search vs an in thread explanation)

> Netflix doesn't take your password sharing away

That's a weird way to frame Netflix enforcing the ToS users like you agreed to.

Market activity

The same tos they changed to say that? The same company who's ceo encouraged this at the peak of everyone signing up?

It's a little bit creepy that you used the word weird in a negative way here.

It's not even that shocking of a term. Pretty much every single gym these days uses facial recognition on their CCTV to prevent key sharing.

Certainly, doable and possibly detectable if one knew to look for it, but likely would work in 99% of cases. Does seem prone to breakage.

That only really works if you can leave your office PC somewhere in their house?

Not necessarily, you create a VPN to go through the house first (leave a server for it there, configured for high uptime), VPN through there first and then tunnel the office/work VPN through that tunnel.

My contract says "anywhere with a decent internet connection" for location.

Even with these waves of RTO, surely there will be vastly more remote jobs in 2024 than there were 5 years prior.

I think the point is that if remote roles have 10xed in this time, the number who consider themselves remote-only have 20xed.

Exactly. I'd wager more than 20x - precovid remote work was very much a niche thing, now it's almost expected by a large percentage of devs.

I'd have to agree. If you're not more interested in working as a genuine team member than as a glorified anonymous contributor you should look into freelancing

There were plenty of remote jobs before the pandemic. I'm sure that will continue.

Some of these companies have been "bullied" by the tax-receiving cities that they're based in. I hate commuting and getting interrupted by co-workers in the office as much as the next person but this change in working style has had a negative impact on the business that used to service office workers.

With the change in interest rates (let's not forget Jeremy Powell wants to use unemployment to cool inflation [0]), layoffs, and return to office mandates it seems like employees are losing the war.

I really hope that companies that aren't saddled with real estate and rental costs of having an office can continue to offer remote work - after all they have fewer costs and can draw from a larger pool of employees.

Management be damned - many people don't need to drive (and waste gas) just to sit in the same place at the same time as some other people.

[0] https://time.com/6253699/federal-reserve-inflation-interest-...

While it's true that "this change in working style has had a negative impact on the business that used to service office workers", it's not my personal cross to bear by enduring an obnoxious commute.

No, companies are going to stabilize on one or the other. Just the other day GitHub announced they were closing all office space.

Remote work isn't ending, what's ending is companies having ambiguous temporary remote work policies. They're either coming down hard for or against.

This is good. Pretty much everyone has a preference one way or the other. No one like it mixed.

It is generally illegally to freelance in California unless you're a journalist or an actor

Time will tell how well this remote work experiment works.

If it works well, it will grow and evolve, if not it will fade away.

I got my first remote job in 2011. Whatever is going on right now has very little to do with what works, and what doesn't.

I created my own in 2004

Only if they can all simultaneously execute the cooperation strategy of the Prisoner's Dilema. Meanwhe every corporation that defects gets to pick from the pool of remote workers with _reduced_ competition from the corporations choosing the "cooperate" strategy.

This is a layoff disguised as RTO. Part of the giveaway is that there are some exemptions being made to keep some employees on full WFH.

Ianal but pretty sure you can’t just move the work site halfway across the country and then fire everybody who doesn’t show up for cause.

You don't have to fire them. Some will quit because fuck that, and others will cave under the pressure and acquiesce or quit later. And maybe you can fire them, I don't know.

"For cause" isn't relevant here. The point is that whoever doesn't want to move will be terminated, which is perfectly legal.

Walmart is betting that a big chunk of its employees in places like Portland OR aren't going to move to Bentonville, AR, and then it can terminate them and have an effective layoff that doesn't look like a layoff. Pretty safe bet.

If that were the plan, would Oregon officials (for example) pressure to treat it as a layoff?

On what basic would/could they make this argument?

Constructive Dismissal is a thing.

I mean, as someone who just made almost that exact move... (and not even into the relatively blue by comparison Bentonville area) I think more people might be willing to make the move than you'd think. I mean, it's probably still under 50%. But that area of AR isn't too bad.

Leaning on the stereotypes - I regularly saw more confederate flags and 'lets go brandon' type stuff in the Portland metro area than I have in AR (and I've spent a fair bit of time here) and I've been met with minimal grief here in spite of being the weird dude in the area with an electric car and shoulder length purple hair. Yes, Harrison still has their billboards that are pro white pride radio but there's other places in the state.

I'm a full time remote person but my move here was prompted by a combination of finding a place here that met our criteria and being nearer to my other half's family.

Where did you end up? I’m west of Centerton, out in the country. For non locals, I’m like 5 miles from Bentonville.

About 40 minutes outside Little Rock.

Same thing happened to a buddy of mine when the software company he worked for was purchased. The first thing the new owners did was move HQ from California to Texas; they told all the employees, "Move to Texas or you're losing your job." My friend moved. The company rewarded him by cutting his salary in half. He moved back to California in less than a year.

That's why you never move in this sort of situation.

Also, remote work eliminates all the risk and power games companies like to play around employee (re)location.

The advice "never go to a second location" applies in multiple situations!

Never is a strong word. I've been involved in a relocation that worked out amazingly well.

It can work well for example if the relocation is to somewhere you would have wanted to move to anyway, and now you get the company to pay for it. It works less well if you're going somewhere you have no other interest in.

Such as a white van, or an unfinished basement.

Or San Francisco.

And, these days, Austin

Right. New company basically advertises their character by making the ultimatim in the first place. You already know you won't be treated like a human, since you're already not.

What company

Actually you can. Legally it’s considered eliminating the office, and then extending an offer to the old workers at the new office.

Anyway fire for cause is meaningless with at-will employment.

> Anyway fire for cause is meaningless with at-will employment

For cause prevents the employee from collecting unemployment; and also saves the company money on what they need to pay into unemployment (iiuc).

You absolutely can, especially with at will employment laws. There are very few things that actually stop a layoff or firing... a strong union is one thing that can though.

That's exactly what AT&T was doing right before the pandemic, different groups were being assigned to specific offices and if you weren't willing to relocate to where your group was being moved to you would (if you were lucky) get laid off but many were simply let go for refusing to relocate without any kind of package. They ended up outsourcing about 1/4 of their IT dept to IBM in 2019 after they had done about 7 rounds of layoffs due to geographic consolidation.

Ultimately, was the move prudent?

If the goal was to get rid of mostly older (40+) year old employees who had families and didn't want to move, sure. Since the pandemic they have allowed most people to work remote, some are on a hybrid 1-3 days in the office schedule and they are supposedly planning on trying to tell everyone to start coming to the office full time in April. They lost a lot of elderly employees at the end of 2022 due to retirement plan changes that encouraged many to retire early and they're probably about to do another big layoff in March. They still haven't returned to a geo-centralized skill strategy. AT&T has been unloading real-estate since before the pandemic, they are consolidating into 6 data centers down the dozens they currently have. If they get a bunch of stealth layoffs out of the deal, they're quite happy with that.

They are not planning to fire people for cause. Their own statement said anyone who doesn't want to move will get severance.

I am not a lawyer either, but we can deduce logically that Walmart's lawyers approved it, so it's cool.

If companies are "allowed" to lay people off, then why not this? I'm pretty sure this is within the boundaries of "at will employment". You'd have to show some kind of civil rights violation.

Companies don't have to show cause to fire anyone. That's a cover your ass situation. This ass-covering makes sense with more than half of the US population now falling into some kind of protected class.

Ironically, here in the United States, they have everyone distracted with race wars and gender ID while workers' rights are still nonexistent.

That's why corporations love Corporate Black History Month and Corporate LGBTQ Month so much. They get to virtue signal that they don't discriminate while continuing to rob everyone blind.

Ding ding ding. The employees Walmart actually wants will continue full remote work, those that it doesn't really want to keep will be told to move to Bentonville, AR, they will refuse and get terminated or leave.

The remote job market is going to get quite interesting.

Would you create an in-person startup these days? Is that how you would start a company? My guess is you start a company remote first - if for no other reason to avoid the office cost, and be open to any talent.

If many larger companies are in person - what does that mean for how things look in 10 years?

With startups being more remote, would there be a bias towards remote workers, living in lower cost of living areas, actually being the hub of innovation? Making the "cities" a kind of anti-innovation-hub of more humdrum corporate work?

It it were me and I was truly starting a start up, I would do it in person, at least while we’re in the single digit employees, but it sure as hell wouldn’t be anywhere close to SF, where costs are just insane.

It’s be somewhere with a reasonable CoL but still nice to live in… Charlotte/RTP, Nashville, maybe Chicago or Philly if you really wanted to be in a big metro.

Alternative would be remote, but try to cluster the employees so you could get together in person a few times a month with no one (ideally) having to drive much more than an hour or so round trip.

> It’s be somewhere with a reasonable CoL but still nice to live in…

The funny thing is, this is why companies were in San Francisco. Back when the tech industry was far less than it is now, San Francisco was "a reasonable CoL but still nice to live in" even though it was all the way over there in California.

Then San Francisco got expensive so people tried Seattle...then Denver...then Austin...and so the wheel turns. And each time, we fail to learn the lessons of what made those places get more expensive as more people wanted to move there. Then we try again somewhere else, expecting that new people won't have the back story and existing people will happily move.

I've been working on computers for a job for decades and we still haven't gotten it right.

> San Francisco was "a reasonable CoL but still nice to live in" even though it was all the way over there in California.

Can you provide some citations on this? I've been told San Francisco has always been expensive.

You are correct, SF and coastal California has been the most expensive real estate in the US many decades. The price premium has widened quite a bit though.

> And each time, we fail to learn the lessons of what made those places get more expensive as more people wanted to move there

I don't understand what you're saying. Most people want to have bought California property 30-40 years ago. "Don't do that or you'll retire in an inflation adjusted $5MM home!" is a strange pitch to get people to do what you want.

To say nothing of the fact that all the other interests (city planners, developers, etc.) also want that outcome.

I thought things got started in silicon valley because it was cheap with Stanford nearby. Then hardware slowly changed to software. As things grew people moved to San Francisco to enjoy life of the big city and still be close silicon valley. Microsoft moved to Seattle because it was Gates's home. And Nintendo was there because Seattle was closer to Japan. Microsoft grew and created a mini silicon effect in Seattle. The growth of Seattle had nothing to do with the prices in San Francisco. I think prices have very little bearing on this kind of things.

I am starting one in person. It’s so much more efficient when it comes to getting things done. I’m sorry quality of life folks.

+1, would like to hear more from remote-only early stage startups. I would imagine in the early stage you'd want everyone in-person to keep everything in sync more easily, but a lot of new companies seemed to come out of 2020 doing really well with full remote.

Office space cost is not an issue for startups. Talent is the big thing. You can get pretty cheap co-working space including a private office without committing to a long term lease (a 6 months lease is pretty common).

You raise a good point. If most startups start remote these days, then next decade most tech companies will be remote. They are (at least some) are the big companies of the future.

I think for startups it really depends on how they start. Sometimes it's a few student friends building a company together and in that case they start in-person and likely to stay like that. In other cases it's one person looking for a co-founder and they meet someone Online who is in a different location and the company stays remote because of that. Then it also depends how they grow. Many hire a lot of contractors in the early days and it's mostly remote folks in other countries.

This doesn't take into account that C-suites might like going into big offices in the city and walking around seeing all the people who work under them. Maybe being an executive lacks panache when it involves leading Zoom meetings in your pajamas.

Before 2010, urban planners complained that CEOs tended to relocate offices from the urban core and out to whatever suburb on the edge of the metro gave them a short commute, while screwing over the rest of the workers who then had to commute either from the city or from other far-flung suburbs, few of which had transit connections to that suburb, even if they had transit into the city. Interesting to see it change to CEOs wanting offices in urban cores.

If I were making a startup involving anything hardware/physical/analog material then yes in-person for sure, I'd let some work remotely but fly them in when needed. The in-person network+agency+build effects is too demoted, sometimes just you can't beat the effectivity and efficiency of being close to one another.

I don't have an answer for your 10 yrs outlook.

Having spent time in developing countries, for atleast a quarter of the year, recently I still have not found the consistency of agency comparable to what we have in the US. There's a lot of factors that play into that could be another thread in itself. I did meet and see a lot of American expats/educated/-background people who were largely magnets and hubs of innovation for some of these developing/lower COL areas. And I have and do applaud them for their tenacity and work but the network effects still end up fighting/resisting them locally. So to answer I think there will not be a bias towards remote workers in macro scale and I think could be bias towards remote workers being the hub of innovation in very specific niches, only one I can think of right now is vehicular and automotive design is but I could be bias.

Keen to discuss more!

I almost took a job at the Portland office and they said there was “no way we would do return to office”

Glad I didn’t do it now

Well, they weren’t lying. No one will be returning to that office, after all.

What's that saying, only a sith deals in absolutes?

Which has always been a rather ironic line lacking in self-awareness.

I imagine this is the case in most places: recruiters and managers are so far down in the chain that they can't be given information before the rest of the workforce, so they might legitimately not know whether or not a return-to-office plan is in action.

"Oh great! Well if there's no way you'd do a RTO then we shouldn't have any problem writing remote only into my employment contract! I've just sent over the document with this change. Let's sign it, I'm ready to get to work!"

Isn't it amazing what kind of actual blunt answer about somebody's intentions you can get back from people when you send them back a copy of their file with MS Word "Track Changes" enabled and marked up in color, and ask them to approve it before becoming an executed agreement?

Won’t matter in US. At will.

Sure it does. It means they have two options. Let you stay remote, or fire you, but not “for cause” so you still can file unemployment. Otherwise you won’t be able to file.

If a company was truly worried about paying unemployment, they would never bake that into an employment contract. If they aren’t worried about paying unemployment and they want you to RTO, it doesn’t matter what your contract says about your location.

That is a basically a feel good for you, it would mean literally nothing to the company.

Easy way to accelerate attrition (and thus, headcount reduction) without announcing layoffs.

Except your best talent may have access to the most opportunities

Large enterprises don't recognize or even want "best talent"... they want replaceable resources that can be reorg'd with little thought.

True. Walmart puts up a quote in their store breakrooms that goes something like "Don't be creative, follow the procedures". While that's aimed at retail workers, not the people in tech centers, it was interesting to see actually turned into a poster with Sam Walton's face on it. Suspect that it permeates the culture of the company.

I think this is what's going on too. Easy way to have folks self select out.

Easy way to kick start the Dead Sea effect and significantly reduce the amount of applicants to backfill

https://medium.com/geekculture/the-dead-sea-effect-d71df1372...

It's a weird way of doing it though, right? This will surely push away your better workers who have options. You're going to be left with the worse employees who have no other options.

I’m not sure a company like wallmart sees anything other than headcount.

The effects will only be seen 5-10 years down the line when all their systems will have turned into a morass of madness

Exactly. I would rather be laid off with severance rather than be forced into the choice to be be offered a 100% on-site job across the country or quit. Cruel.

In either a place with an order of magnitude higher cost of living or an order of magnitude lower quality of life, too.

I just got a recruiter reach out to me about a Scala/Haskell oporturnity at Disney. Their claim was this was a "hybrid" position and required a relo to Sea, LA, SFO, NYC, or Orlando of 4x a week in office.

Considering how much it's documented on how hard it's to find scala engineers... their demands of RTO _and_ a relo is laughable. Everyday, it feels like the corp's claims of a money crunch is self inflicted.

With a large brand like Disney, there's probably some arrogance involved too, believing they can alter the world to their liking. If the company was something like "Data Image Formatting Corporation of Delaware", I'd expect they'd be a bit more realistic about their ability to get people to accept such a deal outside of their local area.

Does 4 days a week in the office constitute hybrid now? That’s full time office with a rest day.

That's the casual dress version of rto.

Disney is the worst place I've ever worked.

I think what everyone is missing is the timing of these RTO orders.

There's a huge swath of tech playoffs right now. Tens or hundreds of thousands of devs are out of work and looking. Many, many others are worried they are next on the chopping block.

There's no better time for big corps to make unpopular decisions like this.

Many employees will be scared to refuse the mandate, because they see the layoffs. They fear for their job. They see the market is tough for getting hired elsewhere. They'll go back to the office out of fear.

If devs leave, it will be easier than ever to replace them.

This, and most of the recession was manufactured to take worker power away that was gained during WFH/pandemic times. It's not a coincidence that the FAANG companies were fined a combined 45M (chump change to them) when caught colluding to stagnant tech worker wages. I almost guarantee they colluded in layoffs/getting people to RTO.

It's 415M, not 45M and it's technically not FAANG companies - it was Apple, Google, Intel and Adobe.

If anything Facebook is responsible for the vast increase in tech comp over the last 12 years.

I find it remarkable the level of arrogance that the pandemic shift to WFH has given the tech community. Both my wife and I WFH and certainly want to continue it, but if our companies tomorrow told us they were doing RTO we’d be disappointed but would of course go. We spent decades of our careers in an office and only 3 short years outside of one.

Some folks on HN do not realize yet that well paying WFH employment opportunities will become scarce in 2023, and if your default position is to demand WFH, companies will just move on to the next candidate of the 100k that are available that can do your job just as well as you can and are willing to show up at an office.

This is a layoff, but it’s at least one that makes sense. Consolidating offices feels more reasonable to me than just slicing headcount randomly. I hope the severance package is good.

This seems like a bad way to do a layoff (if that's your intent) because you can't target and cull the low performers. In fact, you're likely to disproportionately lose the employees that are most able to find new jobs, i.e. your best employees.

Greatest potential and best employees aren’t the same at BigCo. Institutional knowledge is worth more the larger an organization is, and those willing to move may be more devoted to the company and willing to stay around long term.

In fact, if Walmart pays exponentially more for tenure as some bigcos do, the most willing to quit would be the most junior employees. There are many ways to skin the cat, but either way reducing office space to save costs makes sense, remote work policies aside.

And they did offer both relocation benefits and severance, which is about as ideal as this kind of thing can be.

Does it make sense? You're selecting workers based on where they already live or where they're willing to relocate to, not based on performance or strategic company need.

Telling tech workers like that to return to office as a mandate is just another way of executing a massive layoff.

They have to know that a huge percentage of people will resign (or wait to be dismissed from their position for refusing) rather than uproot themselves and move their whole family to go work in a cubicle farm for Walmart.

The people who will be left afterwards that happily do want to go live in Bentonville, AR and report to office 5 days a week will be the ones who have drunk the Walmart koolaid.

That's my own idea of a personal hell.

I interviewed to work with Walmart's tech group many years ago. It was not a great experience. I admit that part of that was me (I was eager to leave my current role, but my heart wasn't really in this). The thing that stands out most to me is that I was asked to do some sort of data transformation and pointed out that there was a severe issue with the task they were asking me to do. Apparently they "asked everyone to do this" but I was the only person who'd ever brought it up. It felt really weird to me, but they weren't interested in moving forward, and I wasn't really either.

Would you say their interview process is similar to FAANG? I've had recruiters reach out but I have yet to take up an interview

The only FAANG I've ever interviewed at was Amazon, and the Walmart Tech stuff did not feel like that at all. Which is to say, Amazon was far more challenging and time consuming. Walmart felt like interviewing at any large company that has a software group.

Interesting! Thanks for following up.

I’ve been to their offices in San Bruno and they’re quite nice. Good food service.

Tech companies have to be feeling miffed about making these dream like places to work only for many people wanting to not go in.

I feel like if I were young or old I’d want an office in large part to socialize. But anyone with kids probably really likes the flexibility of working at home. It’s life changing if you have a family.

The head of my department at my last company has three teenagers, all of which play sports. Working from home allowed him to take over the very extensive laundry duties that come with having three sports playing teens. Since laundry has lots of hands off waiting, it worked out perfect as most of his days are spent in meetings. He can change loads in between calls. It also meant we all knew not to let our meetings go over time, which was really a bonus to the rest of us.

Sounds like it is time to teach your teens how to do their laundry.

I think they’re at school?

At some point they come home and can do it then. Any parent that becomes a servant to their teenager is doing a disservice to them. Your job is to teach them skills so they can become self sufficient adults.

I am a SWE at another Fortune 100 retailer...we have been told to start reporting to the office this month, after about three years of WFH. Two days a week to start with.

Is it team dependent or org wide

It is not team dependent in our division. I know it is happening in another division too, since late January they've been required to be back in the office for some days during the week.

Maybe they know something I don't, but Walmart doesn't strike me as the kind of company or location that a lot of good talent would go back to the office for. The decision to close the hubs at least makes some sense; exactly how much technology has Walmart been getting out of them?

It's not the kind of company great talent would have chosen in the first place. However, their best talent will be allowed to continue working remotely so they don't leave.

Especially for Bensenville

I think Walmart was one of the first to roll out real time inventory tracking/ tagging. In my experience big distopian megacorps are pretty enthusiastic on tech.

If you have any interest in supply chain or logistics, Walmart would be among the top places in the world to work.

I am in tech. I have had Walmart as a customer. Their use of technology is amazingly complex and challenging. They are on the bleeding edge on a number of things. Just because they do not look like Amazon publicly, does not mean they are not privately.

I know that Walmart Labs India office is good.

A quick internet search gives me these things.

[1] https://github.com/orgs/walmartlabs/repositories

[2] https://corporate.walmart.com/IRL/

[3] https://medium.com/walmartglobaltech

Based on these, I would say they're investing heavily in tech. And their tech is interesting in some ways.

Edit: formatting

For awhile, starting around 2016, they poured money into an attempt to compete with Amazon. Not just compete, but get ahead of Amazon. They wanted to invent a 3D online retail experience, sort of like what Facebook started to do, but specific to retail. I was offered a job at the New Jersey office. They offered me $225, back in 2016, which is good and was very good for 2016.

But now I suspect they've given up on the effort.

Still happening I believe. Data scientist roles are around 260.

That's a little harsh, there's a lot of industries/niches that Walmart has stake and/or operate in that would require "good talent".

They want people in Bentonville. The new headquarters is being built faster than anything of that size that I've ever seen being built. There's something like a dozen buildings going up at once. Maybe more, it's hard to keep track.

What’s the draw to get tech workers to migrate there, other than lower home prices? Seems like a notable decline in quality of life compared to their soon to be closed hubs.

It may be hard to believe, but there are lifestyles that don’t thrive in California.

California became so popular because it accommodated lots of different lifestyles, its main drawback ATM is that it’s too popular (so lots of people are priced out).

Bentonville is us in northwest Arkansas, right in the Ozarks, I wouldn’t really consider it in the same boat with the rest of the state. I hear it’s actually a nice place to live if you can bare living in a red state (which, these days, has lots of legal drawbacks).

Heard they have outstanding mountain bike trails and other good outdoor activity options.

Yep, one of the Walmart heirs is big into biking and they have apparently sunk a whole lot of money into trails and amenities in NW Arkansas.

There are some other good things happening here and there in that area, like Fayetteville getting rid of arbitrary, expensive, parking requirements: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUhOFUQDLQk

Yes, I have heard there are a large number of bike trails and mtn biking. I would like to visit and see for myself.

Also Walmart was a major sponsor of the Cyclocross World Championships last year. https://www.cyclocrossfayettevillear2022.com/

Not that I'm saying Bentonville is my dream destination, but it's a lot more like my ideal place than San Francisco or any major tech hub is. Being in a dense metro isn't everyone's idea of "quality of life".

It depends. Some people don't care about surf or hot new holes in the wall for grub. They are happy in a low key town with a couple of strip malls a brewery and peace and quiet and especially look forward to less city grime and crime.

Carlsbad, CA is pretty laid back and not associated with city grime and crime.

Source: I live in Encinitas on the edge of the border with Carlsbad.

It’s so green too compared to San Diego a few minutes down the road!

While I don't have any plans of working for Walmart, a nice campus and decent pay in an affordable, beautiful, very low cost location is alluring.

I've not been there, but Bentonville sounds like a combination of suburbia plus cultural options you'd expect in a much more urban area. If you're interested in living in a semi rural smaller town (~55k) it's probably among the more stable options you'll find in the US.

I’ve heard it’s a pretty nice town with good outdoors options. If you have a family it’s probably a better option than overpriced Austin or the concrete jungle of Dallas (just to pick on two popular transplant options recently).

> I’ve heard it’s a pretty nice town with good outdoors options.

A US military vet once told me that "the base has good hunting and fishing" is code for "it's in the middle of nowhere".

Arkansas is beautiful but of course the quality of life doesn't come close to watching a homeless person shit on your driveway and pitch a tent on your front yard.

You’ve been to Little Rock or west Memphis before? There is a reason north west AK is popular these days while the rest of the state has huge problems.

Honestly, you’d have to be a sucker. Imagine you have an established life in a well regarded city at a nice salary. You have friends, a home, hobbies, a routine, local knowledge. The job market is the best it’s been since your parents were kids. Then suddenly you are told you need to leave that all behind, take a massive cost of living paycut (because no corporation will pay you CA rates to live in AR), and move to one of the most economically troubled states in the country. Why would you let some amorphous entity jerk you around like that, upturn your life, without any appreciation of the sacrifice?

The only people taking this deal are either at a career inflection point or completely trapped.

Median income in Bentonville is $83k. You might be surprised.

Requiring hires to live in Bentonville is one way to ensure they are a "culture fit."

Other sibling comments are mentioning what a nice place Bentonville is compared to California/Texas/any other major population center.

I’m sure there are a lot of nice things but what happens when you and Walmart split ways? There’s not a ton of other employers so you’re back to remote work. So then why even move there in the first place?

This area has a lot of options really. Tysons foods, JB Hunt, Simmons Foods, and of course you also have the companies that have a local presence to support Walmart.

This is what I wonder. It’s in a conservative state, which is a bad thing for a lot of tech workers. They would have to pay me at least 500k/year to convince me to move to the Bible Belt. Even then…

There's a world class art museum there, if that's your thing. Funded by the Waltons, of course :)

Ozarks are beautiful but that's gotta be a total culture shock. Biggest issue is - what do you do when you want to leave Walmart? You'll have to move again, or work remotely.

https://crystalbridges.org/

They must be building and working on something very important there. Lots of interesting hardware-tech companies in Arkansas now

Walmart only started these initiatives to APPEAR as Amazon competition. The company has some deep issues including BS they pull on hidden inventory across all of their stores.

Walmart recently shut down permanently the store I shopped at in my old town. At the time, there were already three cargo containers on the edge of the parking lot apparently holding excess stock that had been pushed down to the store over the years that they couldn't put out on the floor anymore due to space constraints. I've heard stories about pretty much every store having similar containers because the stock keeps on coming and if they can't get anyone to buy that ancient 500 meg external drive, they are also not able to just dispose of it either.

I wonder what's happening with those containers and if the number grew since I moved away half a decade ago. Does some other store get that inventory dumped on it?

"A ResumeBuilder.com survey of 1,000 business leaders found that 90 percent plan to require employees to return to the office at least some of the time in 2023. Twenty-one percent plan to separate from workers who refuse to come back to work in person."

Just don't listen if they ask you to come back and you've got ~4/5 chance of it not being an issue; they'll give up eventually.

I wonder what the real story is here. When I left Walmart last June, the Portland office was already 100% remote, with no intention of reopening the office (it had been WeWork space before the pandemic). My team had been 100% remote since it was formed.

I’m pretty bad at the rumors game, but even so, by the time I left, it was clear to me that Walmart considered its IT future to be based in India.

I expect we'll see a bifurcation between companies that were supposedly WFH/remote-friendly/tolerant and become increasingly less so. And a much smaller number that actually are supportive of remote work as the default. Of course, there's no guarantee that the latter will offer pay scales similar to the former.

Everyone hop on the brain drain express

-Walmart Recruiters

Not sure what you mean by that. I understand that Walmart is kind of a low reputation retailer, but the tech side of things has always been ahead of the curve.

Walmart was never a prestigious or highly desirable employer for engineers.

Its general reputation is strictly worse than Amazon.

Despite the impression that Amazon is a hellplace, it remains one of the most desired places in the world for software engineers to work, so being "worse than Amazon" isn't saying much.

Walmart's tech side of things is very highly regarded both for the work, as well for the pay. They pay $200-300k for people from 5-10/yrs experience, which despite being below FAANG level, still puts it squarely among the top paying companies for software development.

They are also a great place to cut your teeth on the FAANG type problems because, as it turns out, they face similar scale issues.

There's a lot of "second tier" tech companies that have some really cool problems at massive scales that also pay really well. Not as obviously sexy as FAANGs though.

> it remains one of the most desired places in the world for software engineers to work

The word desired here feels weird to me. I just wouldn’t describe it as people desiring to work there. People desire to work at Apple. People desire to work at Meta even.

Amazon to me seems kinda like a pit stop FAANG wise? Maybe it’s the PIP culture there that taints my view

This is remarkably presentist and uninformed.

Walmart pays well (especially for their HQ area) and solves some of the most complex problems one can imagine, technologically speaking.

I've never personally taken a role there, but know several people who have. All of them would be top of FAANG recruits if FAANG knew how to recruit well instead and had consistent hiring processes (looking at you, ghosting Google).

Perfect, Walmart is not. Definitely corporate. But it's mistaken to think them globally undesirable.

Looking at Walmart pay reports: https://www.levels.fyi/companies/walmart/salaries/software-e...

I see many engineers with 10+ years of experience earning ~$200k in the Bay. No disrespect for your friends, but if you're a talented engineer at this level of experience, you can do a lot better than working for $200k in silicon valley.

There are many other companies that will substantially beat this kind of pay. If you failed to get an offer at all of them, the problem is probably not "inconsistent hiring practices."

My 2c is that hybrid doesn't work. The company would never turn the dial to 100 on remote tools, policies and rituals. And it's still tied to hubs so it's hard to hire from other geographical areas, in the same country or overseas. It's not freedom, it's a mess.

This is the next wave: soft layoffs. Reducing headcount without "having to pay" severance and allowing for some self-selection. "We didn't fire them! They chose to go!" and saves money at the same time.

I worked in one of those locations being shut down. Suresh’s leadership and direction - or lack thereof - made it pretty clear to me that investment in the US would wane under his rule.

Needless to say, I do not work for Walmart anymore.

If you want to work remotely, make sure it is stated in your employment contract. If it isn't then it's temporary and at the complete discretion of your employer.

What does it matter? In your contract or not, almost everything in the US is "At will", so they can just get you to accept another contract or stop your current one.

It would ensure you are eligible for unemployment benefits in the event you are terminated because of the employer changing the work location.

It blows my mind that in the US you can both lose your job for no reason at any time, and you also need to have an approved reason to collect welfare payments.

Sounds like almost everyone is a few unfortunate events away from disaster.

Unemployment insurance isn't welfare. It's insurance that you ultimately pay into via your employer and employment taxes.

You can't claim unemployment if you quit.

It also makes it harder to terminate. Yes the us is at will, but most orgs do not want to fire someone without cause. Wrongful termination is a thing.

Wrongful termination only comes into play when labor laws are being violated, such as discrimination against protected classes.

As we see from the layoffs now, businesses are free to terminate any number of employees anytime they want. There would be zero legal recourse outside of Montana (the only non at will employment state) if a business decided to terminate all remote employees at any time.

I might be alone in this and I am completely unaware of what the work that goes on in Walmart under tech/software but I wouldn't mind RTO if there are some higher-level interesting work being done along logistics, manufacturing, efficiency-related work

I can’t read the whole article but are they telling a bunch of people to move to Bentonville or Sunnyvale?

I know which one I’d take

I assume you're being droll but to me (not a Walmart person) it seems like Bentonville would be better professionally since it's company HQ, and very much a company town? My completely unfounded theory is that it's generally a more savvy career move for your boss to see your face IRL? The thought is that if two candidates are equal, the one that actually shows up in the office is just going to be more likely to get the nod.

Setting aside the dubious merits of Arkansas (and yes I've been to Bentonville), why would a technology person move to where he'll never rise up that high in the greater organization? I think the answer to your question, is to recognize that you shouldn't put yourself into such a position.

Because internal promotions are so rare these days in tech. You have a much better chance at getting a promotion by getting another offer from a different company.

If you plan on being a Walmart lifer, sure. But what about your next job if that isn’t true?

Better to be central to where the majority of companies and candidates are, where your ex-colleagues, parents of your children’s friends, and casual acquaintances (proverbial bowling league) all are part of a broader and accessible network for future job prospects.

It also keeps you culturally (professionally) more similar to your next job’s culture.

I know someone who had a non-technical corporate management role in Bentonville. The company basically decided to eliminate the group and he needed to move somewhere else to even job hunt because there sure wasn't anything else locally.

You've never been to Arkansas... There is much more to factor in. If you have a family, it's literally one of the worst places to live/work. The median pay is under 30K, and it's almost dead last in health care and education. There are about 45 other states where you would be better off.

To add to the above poster:

https://www.kark.com/news/state-news/report-ranks-arkansas-a...

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – Based on a recent report, Arkansas ranked next to the bottom on good states for millennials to live in.

In a recent report by Scholaroo, all 50 states were ranked from best to worst states to live in as a millennial. Study ranks Arkansas school districts on equity, ranks state #2 in US

Each state was judged on multiple metrics, from affordability and safety to their political and social environments.

With two exceptions, Arkansas ranked near or at the bottom of all the metrics with an overall ranking of 47.

At its highest, Arkansas ranked 13th on affordability of living and 25th in employment. Otherwise, it was mostly rock bottom.

Arkansas ranked 42nd on its political/social environment and 49th in quality of life.

At the absolute worst, Arkansas ranked 50th health-wise.

===================================

I would have to be offered a truly absurd amount of compensation (as a W2) to live and work in a Walmart office in Bentonville, AR.

I don't have kids but if I did there is no way in hell that I would want them attending any AR public school system.

I'd have them calculate the post income tax cost of a daily plane ticket to and from Arkansas for my commute, plus the cost of all other transportation and meals, add that to 150% of my current salary, and then we can talk about whether the job opportunity makes sense.

Might also want to add in morbidity/mortality costs from the extra solar radiation.

My lumber dealer gets his cedar cants from Arkansas, so that would probably cut out more than half of my lumber costs and save me around $600 per year currently, but if my CoL dropped so significantly, I could probably retire to furniture making a lot sooner too.

Are the Bentonville schools bad? I was there last year and it felt like Schaumburg or Rosemont, IL. It had all the trappings of a white collar suburb.

I have been to Arkansas as a tourist and loved it. But ngl, your answer and all the others set me straight.

Walmart and the Waltons dump gobs of money on Northwest Arkansas. It doesn’t make much sense to compare it to the rest of the state. Bentonville is a pretty nice place to raise a family. Public museums, schools, parks, bike trails, all really nice.

Traffic getting kind of nuts though.

What else is in Bentonville? Seems pretty risky, you’d basically be dependent on working at Walmart forever if there’s nothing else around.

Literally nothing. It's just chain restaurants and vendor offices servicing Walmart (but not in the way they service their own vendors :)

> Bentonville [is] very much a company town

Living in a town dominated by the company I work for sounds like my own personal version of hell.

Phenomenal mountain biking and corporate HQ? Sign me up for Bentonville.

Ironically, that’s what I meant. I left it intentionally ambiguous but Bentonville is lovely. The Bay is dystopian.

Northwest Arkansas, while a boring little meth-riddled area, has housing that can actually be purchased by people like us.

The also have Chuy’s and now a Torchy’s, so there’s that.

Have you been to northwestern Arkansas? It is beautiful and has some word class mountain biking.... And some eye popping prices on real estate.

Prices are already highly speculative in that region and this move by Walmart will further fuel speculators who think will try to squeeze a quick buck flipping or renting to a new wave of captive out of town techies.

From the article:

>Walmart will pay for workers in those locations to transfer to other primary offices, such as San Bruno, Calif., or the company’s headquarters in Bentonville, Ark. The company hopes to relocate most of the workers, and some will be allowed to become full-time remote workers, a spokeswoman said. Those who leave will be given severance pay, she said.

Arkansas....LMAO!!! They have to be joking.

It looks like they had 17 techhubs worldwide, and are closing 3 in the US. The remaining US ones are Atlanta GA, Bentonville AR, Charlotte SC, Dallas TX, Hoboken NJ, Reston VA, San Bruno CA and Seattle WA.

Given they just opened new locations in Atlanta and Seattle last year, this sounds more like Austin and Portland are getting too expensive (and aren't as essential of a labor market as SV), so they can save money by focusing on other locations.

Source: https://corporate.walmart.com/newsroom/2022/03/15/walmart-gl...

The weird part to me is that in a company this large, you're going to mostly spend your days on zoom calls anyway.

Lots of companies calling workers back to the office these days. Did these companies originally commit to allowing permanent remote workers? Or were they unofficial policies due to the pandemic that kept getting extended?

I wonder if this is somehow correlated with all the layoffs. Return to the status quo, cut down the massive hiring during the pandemic, scare everyone into RTO, get back to pre-pandemic worker relations.

Isn't there a tech hub in Jersey City at the old Jet office? What's with forcing people to move to Arkansas?

No competition for talent in Arkansas. It’s quite simple. Keeps their employment costs down.

Considering how Walmart treats their other workers, it shouldn't be any surprise how they treat tech workers.

I don't work for Walmart, but I'd expect pay increase to cover gas, car maintenance, and duration of drive to/from work. The drive to/from work has always been a freebie for companies, but they are depreciating your vehicle and you are working unpaid for travel time.

Did you or anyone else take a pay decrease when you went remote because you weren’t paying for gas/depreciation/time anymore? Otherwise this point is moot.

Of course not, now you need to pay for heating and electricity, which the company also doesn’t refund.

I was remote for five years before the pandemic, so for people like me, that's not applicable. At that particular company, they had ended or subleased most of their existing office space (maybe 80%) before the pandemic, which was very fortuitous for them. They still have a handful of offices, probably always will since their physical equipment needs are extensive, but no doubt they've enjoyed the savings from getting so much office space off their books.

Heh, I remember a similar argument for WFH.

"I have to pay for HVAC, increased electricity usage, etc."

TBH, I don't think companies think about it in this fine grained way. They will just increase/decrease pay to get the level of demand they desire for their job openings.

> you are working unpaid for travel time

Not if you start counting the commute time in the 8 hours you are supposed to work. Needs an org that does not micromanagement you, but it's what I did when it was important to be in office.

Live walking distance from the office. Any other choice that leads to a long commute is a YOU problem.

If people just don't fold we can still save remote work.

People need to eat. They will fold. Not everyone obviously but enough to see RTO pushes succeed.

I will resign if iam forced to work from home.

Remember if it isnt in writing it isn't real.

If it's in writing, and you want to pay for lawyers, and things go your way, it's real.

Basically a way to layoff staff.

https://web.archive.org/web/20230214000353/https://www.wsj.c...

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