Hacker Remix

Sam's Club CTO to Exit Due to Walmart Relocation Policy

118 points by jihadjihad 3 days ago | 130 comments

archeantus 3 days ago

I spent 7 amazing years working for Walmart Labs (what they called it at the time) and it was a great place to work. I was being paid like I lived in the Bay Area, but I lived in a much lower cost of living area. I worked my tail off for them and got two promotions. On the second one they declined to increase my annual RSU target because I was making too much for my geo. I saw the writing on the wall regarding their plans for remote workers and left to a competitor that has been much more remote friendly.

I know so many amazing people that were doing the work of their lives that quit or were laid off because of the RTO mandate. I can’t believe that they are doubling down on this, despite the human and financial costs associated with it.

Ultimately it highlights an important fact about working at WM (and lots of other companies, I am sure): you aren’t as special or irreplaceable as you think you are. Look out for yourselves and do what makes sense for you, always!

Aurornis 3 days ago

This comment is interesting to me because I know a lot of people who went to Walmart Labs with similar stories: Amazing at first, then sudden drop in compensation when they didn't refresh RSUs, then slow slide into being pushed out.

The strange part is that all of the stories I've heard covered different time periods, often not overlapping. Off the top of my head I can think of 4 people I've run into at local meetups who went from thinking Walmart Labs was a great place to work, to having nothing good to say about the place at all.

It's natural for new jobs to have a honeymoon period that wears off over time, but I've heard this same story arc so many times that, as an outsider, it feels like something must be wrong with how they approach long-term employees. Obviously the RTO mandate is a huge blow to one of their original selling points, too.

awill 3 days ago

I think it's straight forward. They made a decision to pay top dollar because they had ambitious plans, and wanted the silicon valley types. All went well.

Then, as this part of the company grew, some bean counter decided it was a huge expense, and something had to be done.

I suspect these walmart labs people were costing triple the standard walmart webdev, and so to the bean counters, the path forward was obvious.

It's really unfortunate when non tech people make decisions like this. I've worked at a FAANG for 10 years, and before that was at HP and other mid-sized companies. HP's average principal engineer would be outperformed by our interns.

harrisi 3 days ago

This doesn't make sense given what the person you're responding to is claiming. If several people over several non-overlapping time periods have the same positive experience then decline, what you're stating is that the company is having memory loss every few years, decides to go for the pros, then remembers they didn't actually like doing that.

Maybe that is what's happening, and management is just cycling through the same way the engineers are. Walmart does have plenty of money to relearn lessons every few years, but I also would be surprised for the same reason - they didn't find billions of dollars under a rock. They're good at making money. Making the same mistake with personnel repeatedly is not a good way to make money (or maybe it is, what do I know).

kev009 2 days ago

As an employee, you are generally evaluated based on your perceived impact, at any level up to and including the CEO. This is easily twisted into change for the sake of change.

For a software engineer this does lead to some pear shaped decision making, like adopting new UI frameworks every few years, or whatever the case may be but these kinds of things are overall pretty benign compared to the same problem in the management of the business.

In the management of the business, the correct decision may be to stay the course on something a lot of outsiders and pundits and new grads want to pot shot and second guess like what industry you should even be in or how you should structure the company itself.

Let's say you are Visa and your transaction processing runs on IBM mainframes as an example. Everything is working with known parameters and risks, has a long and predictable roadmap, whatever. Being the guy that says "ok we are going to keep doing this for 10 years and evaluate again periodically if needed but this is the plan of record" takes massive guts, and should be paid at least as well as the guy that says "throw everything out and do this risky untested thing instead" but very few managements actually work like that.

The same waffling happens with remote vs RTO and either having the guts to make a particular stand or kowtowing to what you preceive to be the popular/prevailing opinion one ought to have as a CEO at this moment.

It can also lead directly to the situation you are describing where a decision keeps getting remade, perhaps even in a flip flop loop, to the benefit of multiple generations of "decision makers".

harrisi 2 days ago

I appreciate the added context. I agree, this kind of flip-floppy, turbulent thing does of course happen. My whole comment was poorly written. I was mostly trying to say that it seems unlikely that some time ago someone said "we should hire people and treat them well for a while then treat them poorly and do it all over again."

Except, I don't even really agree with that. That's how companies treat employees all the time. Not just in software, but floor workers and warehouse folk and anything else.

kev009 2 days ago

Yeah and my comment is addressing some of the broader motif of the thread and article since I didn't want to leave multiple. Addressing your hypothetical thought quotation the "we should hire people..." I agree that it would rarely to never go down like that. Instead, the impact on people's lives and livelihoods is collateral damage to the need to be perceived as a change maker or in charge or whatever. The fact that it is repeating is just an artifact of people being rewarded to retread the same ground because institutional memory is for whatever reason not in the control system's feedback design.

delichon 3 days ago

I picked an outfit where the CEO, CTO and everyone else is remote. There is no office to return to. I'm not a second class citizen as remote staff. Recommended.

slyall 3 days ago

I worked at a company like that. This was 10 years ago when remote was less common but the company was in the work-from-home space so it was sort of in line with the product.

We got a new CEO from Austin. They opened a new office there. Over the next few years they closed most of the other offices and stopped WFH.

datavirtue 2 days ago

Living this. Very nice.

neduma 2 days ago

Nice or Start you own.

red-iron-pine 2 days ago

easier said than done mon ami

kubectl_h 3 days ago

Did the work that WM Labs did influence the Sams club mobile experience? It (the app) is so much better than Costco and is one of the reasons I still pay for a Sams membership even though Costco has now moved into my area.

Aloisius 3 days ago

> I was being paid like I lived in the Bay Area, but I lived in a much lower cost of living area

I'm a little confused as to why a company would pay bay area rates for remote workers given the higher competition for jobs.

OkayPhysicist 3 days ago

Bay Area workers don't get paid well just because of the higher cost of living. They also have a lot more options, so you have to pay more to keep them. Those factors combine to lead to inflated salaries which in turn attracts a disproportionate concentration of high quality workers. Companies then follow and or spring up from the talent pool, and boom, you've got yourself a tech hub and a positive feedback loop.

Living on a private island in the South Pacific is expensive, too, but most companies wouldn't pay a premium to employ you.

I'm not saying that if you pick two random software developers, one from Nebraska and the other from San Francisco, that the SF dev will always be better. I am saying that, if we track a population of 100 developers from Nebraska and SF, more of the top 20 devs from Nebraska than those in the bottom 20 are going to move to SF, and in the SF group more of the bottom quintile is going to leave than in the top quintile, leading to better median developers in the Bay.

Centigonal 3 days ago

This isn't your typical RTO story. Walmart is asking their staff to move across the country to the home office in Bentonville, AR.

Bentonville is a company town with not too much nearby. It's a nice enough place, with good schools, a few surrounding towns, and a fantastic art museum, but above all it's Walmart town. If you move there from another state and ever decide to work somewhere else, you're probably going to want to uproot your life again and move your family across the country. It's a great retention strategy for Walmart, and the lower CoL doesn't hurt either. If you prefer a more cosmopolitan lifestyle and the option to work elsewhere without moving, the Bentonville deal is a pretty unattractive one.

At least they've put windows in some of the office buildings now, that's a plus.

from-nibly 3 days ago

I thought that's what is making this typical. It's a layoff in disguise like most of the other RTOs we've been seeing.

Centigonal 2 days ago

I think the "layoff in disguise" aspect is true for sure. I'm saying there's a big difference between Amazon asking people who WFH to hoof it 10-40 minutes each way to their nearest office, versus Walmart asking people who might already commute to a Walmart office to move to Bentonville.

ahi 3 days ago

Some 20 years ago I was doing competitive intelligence on them. After finding the third or fourth affair/divorce/chicanery among executives in a week of digging I asked my veteran boss, like, wtf, why is this company so gross? "It's Bentonville. They recruit cosmopolitan MBAs and the only thing to do is each other."

androiddrew 3 days ago

I am surprised this hasn’t gotten any comments. This sounds like some corporate espionage by a different name. How do I get in on this?

ahi 2 days ago

Pretty standard due dilligence work. I was pulling court records looking for conflicts of interests and found the other scandalous sort.

486sx33 2 days ago

I have to say I’ve driven nearby on the interstate and a side road, highway? That adjoins the Walmart distribution center and my goodness I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many tractor trailers in one place, let alone the sheer volume of the truck and trailer that I’m sure are constantly coming and going. Truly amazing. And I’d want to be at least 50 miles from there

Tostino 3 days ago

I hope they have to offer some significant compensation to find a competent replacement willing to move to Arkansas.

Companies need to be humbled a little with these policies they want to force.

awill 3 days ago

they don't care. It's not like the person making this decision will then be held accountable for having the pay a replacement more.

hparadiz 3 days ago

It goes both ways. The comps being paid in the tech industry right now would pay off an average single family home in California in under 5 years. At this point these people are driving around in Porsches with second homes choosing to retire at 45.

midnitewarrior 3 days ago

They are promoting from within, presumably someone who is already going to be in Bentonville.

ian-g 3 days ago

Good. If you're going to require RTO, don't exempt higher ups from it. Looking at you, Starbucks

datavirtue 2 days ago

I'm watching Starbucks, like a hawk. I find this episode of their history rather interesting and I don't have warm fuzzies about this new CEO, yet. All these Chipotle people are showing up now. I hope they can innovate and iterate quickly.

I remember the 1990s when it was common to see the same baristas day after day for years. Everyone seemed to enjoy working there. It's a bleak, dystopian contrast as of late.

fragmede 3 days ago

Starbucks' CEO famously commutes to Seattle from Newport Beach in California, which is like a thousand miles.

sksxihve 3 days ago

Weekly in a private jet, while still having an at-home office for days he isn't in Seattle. All because he didn't want to relocate.

olliej 2 days ago

And commuting in a private jet is either expensible or tax deductible, neither of which apply to actual commuters.

sksxihve 2 days ago

It's a corporate jet from Starbucks, he pays nothing for it, and actual can use it for personal travel up to $250,000 per year.

> You will be eligible to use the Company aircraft for (i) business-related travel in accordance with the Company’s travel policy, (ii) travel between your city of residence and the Company’s headquarters in Seattle, Washington and (iii) your personal travel in accordance with the Company’s policies, up to a maximum amount of $250,000 per year, which amount will be based on the aggregate incremental cost to the Company.

His offer letter [1] is available on edgar

[1] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/829224/0001193125242...

EasyMark 2 days ago

This was RTA though, return to Arkansas

red-iron-pine 2 days ago

Not just Arkansas, but the company town in AR not near anything else of note.

You want me to move to Austin... Maybe. My wife and I could make it work, probably. Bentonville, AR? Nah.