
Wal-Mart to cut 200 e-commerce jobs in California - lxe
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/wal-mart-to-cut-200-e-commerce-jobs-in-california-2017-01-24
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wmtthrowaway
> We don't need as many senior people and there is some aspect that is
> performance related.

I wasn't directly impacted by this, but from the few instances I've seen, the
people being ousted seem to be those that had questioned tech. decisions. They
were people who did badly during our review process.

For instance we have a brand new react server side rendering based platform. I
think the performance of that framework is somewhere around 2 concurrent
requests per virtual machine. And we're bragging about our performance chops
publicly: [https://medium.com/walmartlabs/using-electrode-to-improve-
re...](https://medium.com/walmartlabs/using-electrode-to-improve-react-server-
side-render-performance-by-up-to-70-e43f9494eb8b#.2raryap9b)

Wal-Mart has many problems, I don't think too many experienced engineers is
one of them.

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throwaway390472
Created a throw away just to agree with you. Maybe 10% of the technical
"talent" is worth keeping.

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nsxwolf
Are these the people that make that e-commerce site that doesn't know if its
trying to be Amazon or Wal-Mart?

I shop in-store, so when I use the site it's because I want to see if they
have something before I go. But they make that practically impossible and they
just show me a bunch of crap they don't carry.

And now they have third party sellers or something, with these ridiculous
jacked up prices just mixed in with everything else.

~~~
bdcravens
I'd consider the two option separate.

Even though it's not the same, I often use their grocery pickup. All the time
I'm able to buy products that aren't in the same grocery store I'm picking up
from; products that I know are on the shelves aren't available for pickup. I
presume they're using a warehouse and distributing order to stores, using the
building infrastructure, but for the most maintaining them as separate
operations.

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tyingq
_" We don't need as many senior people..." said Mr. Toporek._

Interesting. I wonder if that's management, or senior technical roles. Not
surprising that there's some overlap after the jet.com acquisition though.

~~~
Raphmedia
How many senior developers do you need to maintain an existing e-commerce
site? Not that much. The can hire entry-level / students to do the content.
They can re-use the print designers to make the banners. They can automatize
catalog management or dumb it down enough so that a manager can do it.

I've spent a lot of time developing e-commerce website for (smaller) companies
and none of them required 200+ seniors. Most were small highly skilled teams
of individuals with large skill sets.

~~~
tyingq
I think maybe WalMart is back and forth on whether they want to be "Target,
but Cheaper" or Amazon.

They do have some features that aren't standard ecom, like in store delivery,
3rd party seller marketplace, Vudu video, Straight Talk phones, etc, so I can
see more senior staff than usual...but perhaps not what they have now.

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drharby
This time last year they were aggressively hiring - was there FY that bad in
earnings?

~~~
marktangotango
Seems like around 2010 they had a big dev layoff in Bentonville, and then were
hiring soon after, which I remember as being quite pecluliar.

Is this layoff a leading indicator of the dev job market bubble bursting?

~~~
jerrycruncher
I think it's more likely an indication that the folks in Bentonville figured
out that their expensive SV shop spent a lot of time and money doing things
(like, oh, writing their own app server[1]) that weren't critical to improving
sales on Wal-Mart's website.

[1] [http://electrode.io](http://electrode.io)

~~~
laredo312
I'm wondering if that's a symptom of too many people and therefore more free
time for open source projects like electrode. If that's the case, I wonder if
hiring decision makers are held accountable for over-hiring?

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geodel
From linkedin I gather they have around 3000 people. Not sure if that includes
jet.com employees also. So <1% are laid off. I got a call few months back for
position in Reston VA. They never proceeded after initial call.

Edit: It should <10% or ~7% as another commenter corrected me.

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cm2012
200 of 3000 is around 7%, not .7%

~~~
geodel
You are of course right. I was talking to my brother about some other layoffs
and there it was around 1% and so I just plopped that number here without
calculating.

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abiox
walmart is a massive outlet for chinese manufacturing.

if trump interferes with chinese imports... it will not be good for walmart.

it will also be bad for those who invested billions in china for
manufacturing.

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IanDrake
Does anyone here use Jet.com?

Not "have you ever used it?", but do you use it religiously like I use
Amazon.com.

~~~
rubicon33
No.

A while back I did a fairly exhaustive price comparison for groceries and
household goods, between Amazon and Jet.

My anecdotal experience was that Jet.com was almost never better priced.
Couple that with the extremely fast delivery of Amazon, and it was a no
brainer...

Also worth adding that their "price drop as you shop" felt like a gimmick.
Yea, the price did drop as you added new items to your cart. But it was
pennies. Literally, pennies.

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BinaryIdiot
I'm assuming this is out of Walmart Labs? Pretty interesting place! I had no
idea they had so many people there. Unless this is referring to something
bigger than WalMart Labs.

