Possibly relevant, but they seem to have a hard time hiring and retaining talent. There's been a consistent player in my LinkedIn inbox from 2018 to present (even post-ZIRP) and that's Kroger engineering recruiters.
Seems they want to pay folks < 100K onsite in LA? And only marginally more in Seattle?
Combine that with the fact the vast majority of jobs are hybrid in what appears to be middle of nowhere Ohio(Blue Ash, correct me if I'm wrong I'm looking at a map), I can take a few guesses as to why.
I had an interview at Kroger HQ out of college and it was probably the most depressing office building I had ever been in. That combined with the type of work encountered at legacy industry bigco and it has to be hard to recruit anyone decent. (This coming from someone who is wildly inept, too :D)
Their analytics company 84.51/dunnhumby was always the flashier option that could recruit at a national level.
Proximity to the airport isn't really a big deal -- the airport isn't even in Ohio and is far away from literally everything. City center isn't a big deal -- that's more important for night life, and it's a pain to get in and out of. Believe it or not, Blue Ash has always felt way more accessible to me than downtown.
The most "happening" shopping center in Cincinnati right now is Kenwood, which is right next to Blue Ash -- overall located near far better retail biomes than downtown. Not everything in Cincinnati is going on in the suburbs (downtown and Newport have seen a big resurgence in years of late), but the north suburbs (like Sharonville, Blue Ash, Fairfield, Kenwood) are still some of the more "up" places in the city.
They seem to be optimized for discarding the best candidates. It's comical.
No, groceries aren't sexy. But everyone needs to eat, and Kroger will be around long after all of the stupid startups these SWE grads choose to work for have died.
Back in 1992(!) they rolled out a smart-cart system that I can't find any references to because its new (2021) release dominates the SEO.
It was an LCD tablet mounted to the cart that would let you look items up, see a map of the store, and (I think?) play trivia games. I think they showed ads too when idle IIRC.
If you knew to look for them, there were stalactite-looking antennas hanging from the ceiling in a grid pattern all over the store to do triangulation.
It was pretty nifty until they stopped maintaining it.
The reality is that lots of different industries employ software engineers, and many/most of those industries are doing really cutting-edge and interesting things, often much more interesting than your standard SV-style software company.
And quite frankly, what Kroger is offering would have been considered a decent, even good, starting salary before the COVID tech hiring froth warped tech employees' salary expectations.
Whoooooooooooooooooole bunch of people work at a whooooooooooooole bunch of places you've never heard of, man. There are so very many companies out there that employ programmers... it's nice if you can get a big Silicon Valley Darling on your resume, but not many folks can, so prestige isn't all that important.
- Kroger