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Comment by madamelic | Hacker News Reader

Either I am mistaken that Walmart was offering store associate type jobs or the author doesn't realize Walmart has software engineering teams. Quite a few non-tech companies have very hip, modern, and high-power tech teams behind them.

https://github.com/walmartlabs

Walmart has been doing this level of work since at least 2013/2014 to my knowledge so it's not something new.

Getting a job on the Walmart engineering team doesn't seem like such an awful thing. Other notable call-out: Domino's. A few years back (... like a decade ago ._.) I had done a re-write of a node.js wrapper for the Domino's API and the team seemed very supportive and proud of what people did with it. The REST API was actually quite good and didn't try to throw up roadblocks.

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Walmart Global Tech (what Labs was called) got gutted in the layoff-palooza last year. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/walmart-tech-layoff-corporate. Heavy outsourcing, too, so I've heard. I also believe that Walmart is trying to consolidate everyone into their Bentonville HQ; gl trying to get engineers in SFBA to move out to Arkansas!

They don’t want SFBA engineers for the most part now, they want so called “dark matter” developers, meaning they’re primarily recruiting from the Midwest, upper South, and rust belt states where opportunities are more scarce

Honestly, that's great. Lots of smart folks in the Prairies/Ozarks, and much cheaper to live there also.

Bentonville is quite nice all things said

Having your job abruptly changed to force you to move far away from family and friends is not nice at all, though.

Bentonville is quite nice, and the opportunities on that team are incredible. Tech problems you’d never think Walmart would be solving. Great facilities. And not a small number of veterans that used to do exquisite things for their country.

Bentonville Arkansas is basically like a cheaper Denver Colorado.

They have one of the best coffee roasters/shops out there, tons of bike and hiking trails, you're in the Ozarks, a major university is next door in Fayetteville. You're not that far away from doing a float trip on the buffalo river either (1.5 hours). They have tons of concerts there too in Walmart's ampitheater. Also, there is some industry for sure and decent schools (for the south anyway).

It is very trendy. Northwest Arkansas is nothing like south Arkansas. Not geographically or politically. I wouldn't expect it to be THAT difficult to convince folks to relocate to somewhere like that. Walmart does pump a lot of money into the area.

For people that care, the state is politically a no go.

Even if it was a liberal bastion, I am absolutely not moving out of state for a tech company in this period of rampant layoffs. I don't want to be out of a job and in a new, unfamiliar city.

With how hostile state politics have become though, there's no amount of pay that could get me to move out to Arkansas. Learned my lesson after living in Austin for a few years.

Good point. The state's government is in Little Rock in the middle of the state and pretty conservative.

lol, truth. Austin is great until you drive 30 minutes out in any direction... (Houston is better anyway; not biased or anything!)

Living in Denver and having gone to Bentonville, I definitely see the similarities - but they're very much in 2 different leagues. Coors holds the economy up here a lot though; and everything in the hometown of Coors (Golden) is only owned by like 3 families - Coors, Foss and Rooney.

It's like Denver except for the "rest of Arkansas being shiny ruby blood red" part

Does Colorado have an equivalent to Harrison, AR[^0], the most racist town in America?

[^0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison,_Arkansas

Walmart's backoffice functions are great jobs...if you want to live in Bentonville.

The issue is that you have to live in Bentonville. They don't allow remote work, and they're willing to let a position remain open for years for a candidate to arrive willing to move to Bentonville. They recruited me for a role several years ago and that position is still unfilled.

If you read the OpenAI blog post the article links to (https://openai.com/index/expanding-economic-opportunity-with...), their quote from Walmart is talking about retail associate jobs, not cushy corporate-level engineering etc jobs.

> OpenAI is committing to certifying 10 million Americans by 2030. And we’ll be doing it with our launch partners, including the biggest private employer in the world: Walmart. Here’s what Walmart had to say in their own words:

> “At Walmart, we know the future of retail won’t be defined by technology alone—it will be defined by people who know how to use it. By bringing AI training directly to our associates, we’re putting the most powerful technology of our time in their hands—giving them the skills to rewrite the playbook and shape the future of retail.” —John Furner, CEO, Walmart U.S.

Yup, software was one of the keys to Walmart being able to expand as much as it did in the 1980s-90s. Their advanced (for the time) inventory & sales systems could tell when some products were selling well in one region and not in another (due to stylistic preferences, prevailing weather, etc.), and they could arbitrage that and move inventory to optimize sales for each location.

It was a major advantage over any other store who didn't have such data and would be out of inventory in the hot region while the same items were on markdown sale a few states over. Walmart maximized profits while the blind competitors bump along with losses.

Their internal software was so good that their website and online store was an absolute embarrassment for so many years.

They finally seem to have turned that around, though I heard they did it buy just buying someone.

Yup.

"In the world of the blind, a one-eyed Jack is King."

Their web stuff was indeed terrible (& still isn't great), and I'd bet management had to do a LOT of wrangling to get the reports, but it still gave them an advantage over those who didn't have the (near-)live data.

I wouldn’t say they have turned it around. Just a few weeks ago I was at a Walmart without my wallet. Went to use my phone to pay at the self-checkout. Can’t do it, you have to pay through the Walmart app. Downloaded the app. It had my payment information saved from my account. Didn’t work, it was an old card that had expired. Tried to update it with new card information. Errored out every time. Literally couldn’t pay, and was too annoyed to ask for help, so I left what I was going to buy there and just left.

I was referring to Walmart dot com, which used to be absolute shit and now is at least competitive with Amazon.

The Walmart refusal to embrace Apple Pay is infuriating.

Walmart even used clojure at one stage, possibly still does.

It’s got a metaphorical name - a bait - for your clicks.

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