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!
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.
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.
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).
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".
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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
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.
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.
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.
Artificially aiming to increase natural attrition through requiring employees to make like-altering decisions (or else) is evil. At the bare minimum, it should be seen as a layoff.
Good for her. The exit tech alone should be proof enough that you don’t have to be physically close to tHe bUsINeSs to bring value to millions of customers.
Its just RIFs camouflaged as RTO mandates. Management loves this sort of thing, a karmic freebie.
Corpos don't want you to 'put down roots' unless they can keep you from leaving, gives them more leverage over you. Knock-on effect is atomized communities, made worse by internet-atomized culture. It's a version of providing meals/gyms/amenities: check out any time you want, never leave.
Remote work is so obviously better for society, efficiency, and costs that responsible executives and shareholders should demand it. Talented employees should turn down offers and tell recruiters why: RTO mandates are a sign of weak and even impotent management (you can tell by the hand-wavy B.S. they use to justify it btw).
> ...is leaving the company due to a policy requiring thousands of corporate employees to relocate to headquarters in Arkansas...
> Walmart has asked many of its employees from smaller offices, as well as remote workers around the US, to move to the company’s larger corporate offices. Most employees are going to Arkansas.
Wow. Just wow.
Let me get this straight -- Walmart management actually wants people to up-root their lives, take their kids out of school, re-arrange their routines with childcare, move away from family that may be nearby...I could go on and on...and move to Arkansas?
"Move or go fuck yourself."
Clearly, Walmart management does not care about their employees.
As a side note, while I acknowledge the benefits of RTTO, working remote is something that increased the quality of my life tremendously. But management-types just can't help make their employees miserable -- pathological.
There should be some sort of legal/comp guarantees for employees that go through with something this crazy... because the ones that do are the ones that are the most desperate.
I can't imagine what it must be like to do this just to be subjected to an actual layoff within the following year. Out of work in a tech wasteland, stuck with a lease/mortgage in a place no one wanted to be, kids in the middle of a school year, etc.
When you examine most of the Walton family's shenanigans, it becomes fairly apparent that they're on the narcissistic people-user side of things. This isn't surprising.
> Clearly, Walmart management does not care about their employees.
Well duh. They've been on the top 5 companies with employees on food stamps for years [1] and, like Amazon, just love to set up shop in areas with lots of unemployment to have a captive audience of employees who can't afford to escape.
Arkansas is a beautiful state with several reasonable people living there, and you can visit important historical sites like the place where an armed Titan missile exploded.
I live in SF. I actually thought about moving out for a little bit and realized California has some of the best protections and social safety net for entrepreneurs compared to other states.
I will never leave California.
It’s the best place for forward thinking individuals and the politics are what I imagine will lead to Star Trek and not a dystopian nightmare where we live under capital allocator warlords.
Arkansas currently has a 100% total abortion ban. They do not even allow abortion at any week if you’re raped, if you’re a child who has been raped, or if you’re a victim of incest. No woman in her right mind would ever move there, and this CTO is female.
And don't forget states with those policies are losing OB/GYNs and other medical professionals rapidly[0] so even if you don't care about abortion your medical care or the medical care of the women you love is going to be shit (even by US standards) if you get stuck there.
Women are dying not only because they have pregnancies that should be terminated due to nonviability but also because doctors are afraid of treating them while they're pregnant[1].
Any company with a shred of care for their female employees and the families of their male employess should be leaving those states.
What a ridiculous take. 50+% of women in Alabama think abortion should be illegal in most cases. And Alabama was in the top 10 for percent inbound migration last year, meaning there are tens of thousands of women who made the choice to move to Alabama.
And you're saying all of them must be "not in their right mind".
Maybe - instead of saying that a state of millions of people is filled with only helpless or mentally unwell women - maybe we can just say that different people can have different viewpoints on abortion while still being mentally normal.
There is a world of difference between (a) a 10 year old child being raped and needing an abortion, (b) woman who will die if she gives birth and (c) woman getting an abortion the day before the baby is due simply because she feels like it.
And yet the poll lumps all of those together. Such a complex issue needs far more nuance.
To expand on this, just to push off the inevitable: it’s not just about abortions, it’s about women’s healthcare overall. It turns out there’s a whole shitload of grey areas, doctors aren’t willing to go to jail, and it puts women’s lives in danger to have this theocratic bullshit in place.
I did not get that impression from seeing a recent photograph from her, and this might be missing the point. Imagine that the law on the matter would be hostile towards a younger aspiring-professional image of her. Is Bentonville only going to be okay for women who've "made it" and lived past their child-bearing years?
The longest drive from within Arkansas to an out of state abortion clinic is about five hours. There is no place to live without compromises. I'm in a state with free choice and the nearest to me is a three hour drive. My distance to access is greater than 90% of the population of Arkansas. I can understand not wanting to live there due to that policy on principle but not on practicality.
No medical provider in one of these garbage states will offer any type of procedure for fear of being sued to oblivion. These states banning this are filled with garbage people.
Have they turned those squishy-sounding different views into horrifically inhumane absolute laws that affect every female person in the state, passing through the state, or considering taking a job (or keeping an existing job) in the state?
That shit means, in practice, that if you're in bad shape and will obviously need an abortion; the hospital will wait until you are nearly dead before they perform it.
It happens every day, and vile, dishonest, woman-hating pieces of shit like you lie lie lie to defend it.
I am much more pro choice than you are if you are anywhere near the Overton Window. Every single state has laws that shock my conscience as much as the Arkansas abortion ban shocks yours. If you don't have to make such compromises I envy you.
For example, Idaho became the first state to outlaw “abortion trafficking,” which it defined as “recruiting, harboring or transporting” a pregnant minor to get an abortion or abortion medication without parental permission. Which is obviously a problem if your parent raped you.
Do you fail to see the irony in comparing abortion to a weapon and not meaning the actual killing of the fetus? (Abortions to save the life of the mother are a very small percentage of abortions)
Words mean things, and the four-week fetus of a raped eleven-year-old is not a “baby”. Medical care to terminate that pregnancy and that fetus is literally medical care — and is illegal in Arkansas.
I haven't done a deep-dive on this subject, but it appears adolescents under 15 are 0.2% of US abortions according to the CDC.[1] So raped children needing medical interventions is some sub-fraction of 0.2%, which is less than 1,200 abortion across the entire country. It seems like such an extreme edge case that it is highly irrational to tar the adults of the entire state of Alabama as "garbage people" over these highly irregular scenarios.
And yet the elected leaders of Arkansas purposely rejected a bill that would have allowed these children -- excuse me, these edge cases -- to be allowed abortions if they were raped. They voted the bill down eighteen months ago.
That isn't really an answer to the statement about moving their life.
If they have been well compensated, they likely have other prospects and don't really care about money, so their friends and other relationships could be a priority.
Going to chime in. Young(ish) person in tech. Have heard nothing but great things about Bentonville.
I'm into mountain biking and the city is like a spiderweb of awesome looking biking/walking trails built by the Waltons.
Yeah but I imagine CTOs of fortune 50 companies are paid more than enough to relocate and probably have a golden parachute package that more than compensates for any relo costs and job search time.
I haven't work with Cheryl for probably 15 years now, but at the time her family was very important to her and I don't imagine that has changed. There are more than just monetary costs for relocating.
Ok, I'm speaking to the parent comment about looking for another job. Of course there are always reasons not to move somewhere specifically, but the vast majority of executives in the world are required to work at their companies headquarters, wherever that may be. And all of the largest companies pay executives handsomely. More than enough to make up for cost of relocation or time lost to job searching.
As an avid mountain biker and having been to bentonville twice, the trails are just ok. Immaculately maintained and there are some neat features, but the hills there are seriously lacking elevation.
The small downtown area of bentonville is neat, but the greater area is… meh.
She has probably gotten accustomed to living somewhere where you can comfortably be outside more than 4 months out of the year. Or, you know, maybe she doesn't want to move her family across the country.
I think the implication was that the majority of the demographic will find a deep red state governor a non-starter. Perks of a given city aside, for decades their tax dollars will get thrown away fighting causes like trans rights, same as with all the losing battles against civil rights, interracial marriage, gay marriage, heavy metal, video games, etc.
At least Mississippi has some coastline. Also, it's close to some interesting places: the northern part of MS is close to Memphis, and (even better) the southern part of MS is close to New Orleans.
Depends on the person. Northwest arkansas is a beautiful place with tons of outdoor activities and the ability to live like a king on a major company CTO salary. I'd rather live there than Seattle or San Francisco.
That link is for the CTO of Walmart, but TFA is about the CTO of Sam's Club.
It looks like they're one rung down the ladder so I'm sure they're doing just fine even in California, but they're probably making quite a bit less than $15M/year.
Both JB Hunt and Tyson Foods are nearby. Both very large Fortune 500 companies. Lots of smaller companies that work with Walmart have offices there, too.
And as others have said, it's mountain bike heaven. Super low cost of living, too.
Not my thing and I wouldn't move there, but for some folks it's very attractive.
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!
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.
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.
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).
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".
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.
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.
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.
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.
Nice or Start you own.
Living this. Very nice.
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.
> 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.
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.
Were you writing Clojure there?
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.
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.
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.
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."
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?
Pretty standard due dilligence work. I was pulling court records looking for conflicts of interests and found the other scandalous sort.
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
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.
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.
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.
They are promoting from within, presumably someone who is already going to be in Bentonville.
Good. If you're going to require RTO, don't exempt higher ups from it. Looking at you, Starbucks
Starbucks' CEO famously commutes to Seattle from Newport Beach in California, which is like a thousand miles.
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.
And commuting in a private jet is either expensible or tax deductible, neither of which apply to actual commuters.
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...
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.
Artificially aiming to increase natural attrition through requiring employees to make like-altering decisions (or else) is evil. At the bare minimum, it should be seen as a layoff.
Or at least recognized as constructive dismissal.
It probably already is constructive dismissal. But we could do better. Ballot measures here in CA only need 200,000 signatures.
Nice, meanwhile the bigger CTO (Suresh Kumar) can stay in Sunnyvale
Unless he’s recently relocated, Suresh lives in the Seattle area. Also, bear in mind he’s an EVP so he gets to use the corporate jet.
https://archive.is/fY0jZ
Good for her. The exit tech alone should be proof enough that you don’t have to be physically close to tHe bUsINeSs to bring value to millions of customers.
I wonder who the highest-ranking employee will be who actually does move to Bentonville, Arkansas.
Its just RIFs camouflaged as RTO mandates. Management loves this sort of thing, a karmic freebie.
Corpos don't want you to 'put down roots' unless they can keep you from leaving, gives them more leverage over you. Knock-on effect is atomized communities, made worse by internet-atomized culture. It's a version of providing meals/gyms/amenities: check out any time you want, never leave.
Remote work is so obviously better for society, efficiency, and costs that responsible executives and shareholders should demand it. Talented employees should turn down offers and tell recruiters why: RTO mandates are a sign of weak and even impotent management (you can tell by the hand-wavy B.S. they use to justify it btw).
its not really RTO, Walmart had a lot of remote sites in different cities and countries and they've decided to shut those sites down.
Walmart management is capable of seeing many combinatory benefits regardless of what they're calling it.
> ...is leaving the company due to a policy requiring thousands of corporate employees to relocate to headquarters in Arkansas...
> Walmart has asked many of its employees from smaller offices, as well as remote workers around the US, to move to the company’s larger corporate offices. Most employees are going to Arkansas.
Wow. Just wow.
Let me get this straight -- Walmart management actually wants people to up-root their lives, take their kids out of school, re-arrange their routines with childcare, move away from family that may be nearby...I could go on and on...and move to Arkansas?
"Move or go fuck yourself."
Clearly, Walmart management does not care about their employees.
As a side note, while I acknowledge the benefits of RTTO, working remote is something that increased the quality of my life tremendously. But management-types just can't help make their employees miserable -- pathological.
There should be some sort of legal/comp guarantees for employees that go through with something this crazy... because the ones that do are the ones that are the most desperate.
I can't imagine what it must be like to do this just to be subjected to an actual layoff within the following year. Out of work in a tech wasteland, stuck with a lease/mortgage in a place no one wanted to be, kids in the middle of a school year, etc.
When you examine most of the Walton family's shenanigans, it becomes fairly apparent that they're on the narcissistic people-user side of things. This isn't surprising.
> Clearly, Walmart management does not care about their employees.
Well duh. They've been on the top 5 companies with employees on food stamps for years [1] and, like Amazon, just love to set up shop in areas with lots of unemployment to have a captive audience of employees who can't afford to escape.
[1] https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/walmart-mcdonalds-larges...
> employing an estimated 14,500 workers who received food stamps, according to the GAO report’s findings.
14,500 out of 1.6 million US employees (i.e. less than 1%).
For comparison there are over 40 million people getting SNAP.
Aren’t the people who make the bulk of what Walmart sells remote workers? It’s not like they go into the office…
According to LinkedIn they live in San Jose.
Wonder why they wouldn’t work out of the Sunnyvale office then?
Who can you get to move from California to Arkansas
especially if they can already afford to live in California
even the few wage workers subject to California’s taxes at higher brackets can become aware of all the other places with lower taxes
But on the salary they are willing to pay you can have like five bass boats.
And in Arkansas there’s no salt water, so upkeep on the boats will be a lot cheaper!
That totally makes up for moving to Arkansas.
Arkansas is a beautiful state with several reasonable people living there, and you can visit important historical sites like the place where an armed Titan missile exploded.
"There's not enough money to get me to move my life to Arkansas."
I live in SF. I actually thought about moving out for a little bit and realized California has some of the best protections and social safety net for entrepreneurs compared to other states.
I will never leave California.
It’s the best place for forward thinking individuals and the politics are what I imagine will lead to Star Trek and not a dystopian nightmare where we live under capital allocator warlords.
I just have to say that from my perspective it's the Bay Area politics that has produced the capital allocator warlords.
Gig work did not sprout from places like Arkansas.
Can't speak for Bentonville, but Little Rock is awesome!
Arkansas currently has a 100% total abortion ban. They do not even allow abortion at any week if you’re raped, if you’re a child who has been raped, or if you’re a victim of incest. No woman in her right mind would ever move there, and this CTO is female.
And don't forget states with those policies are losing OB/GYNs and other medical professionals rapidly[0] so even if you don't care about abortion your medical care or the medical care of the women you love is going to be shit (even by US standards) if you get stuck there.
Women are dying not only because they have pregnancies that should be terminated due to nonviability but also because doctors are afraid of treating them while they're pregnant[1].
Any company with a shred of care for their female employees and the families of their male employess should be leaving those states.
0: https://www.wired.com/story/states-with-abortion-bans-are-lo... 1: https://sph.tulane.edu/study-finds-higher-maternal-mortality...
What a ridiculous take. 50+% of women in Alabama think abortion should be illegal in most cases. And Alabama was in the top 10 for percent inbound migration last year, meaning there are tens of thousands of women who made the choice to move to Alabama.
And you're saying all of them must be "not in their right mind".
How many are moving there because their husbands are moving there and don't want divorces?
50%+ of them being in favor of restricting abortion means the rest don't like restricting abortion, but may not have the means to leave.
Probably some, but no where near all.
Maybe - instead of saying that a state of millions of people is filled with only helpless or mentally unwell women - maybe we can just say that different people can have different viewpoints on abortion while still being mentally normal.
That Pew Alabama poll you are likely referring to is absolutely ridiculous:
https://www.pewresearch.org/religious-landscape-study/databa...
There is a world of difference between (a) a 10 year old child being raped and needing an abortion, (b) woman who will die if she gives birth and (c) woman getting an abortion the day before the baby is due simply because she feels like it.
And yet the poll lumps all of those together. Such a complex issue needs far more nuance.
Some people are so stuck in their bubbles that they can’t imagine anything else.
To expand on this, just to push off the inevitable: it’s not just about abortions, it’s about women’s healthcare overall. It turns out there’s a whole shitload of grey areas, doctors aren’t willing to go to jail, and it puts women’s lives in danger to have this theocratic bullshit in place.
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CTO in the article appears to be beyond the age at which pregnancy is possible?
So? She certainly has one or more daughters, or neices, or is a god parent, or has friends with kids...
I did not get that impression from seeing a recent photograph from her, and this might be missing the point. Imagine that the law on the matter would be hostile towards a younger aspiring-professional image of her. Is Bentonville only going to be okay for women who've "made it" and lived past their child-bearing years?
This will probably be a huge surprise for you, but some people care about other people.
The longest drive from within Arkansas to an out of state abortion clinic is about five hours. There is no place to live without compromises. I'm in a state with free choice and the nearest to me is a three hour drive. My distance to access is greater than 90% of the population of Arkansas. I can understand not wanting to live there due to that policy on principle but not on practicality.
And what if it's an emergency?
Some compromises are not worth making when it could kill you.
Note this law is actually working as designed - they want pro-choice people to leave their state so they can entrench their power there.
Here's the first sentence of the law:
https://law.justia.com/codes/arkansas/title-5/subtitle-6/cha...No medical provider in one of these garbage states will offer any type of procedure for fear of being sued to oblivion. These states banning this are filled with garbage people.
Thanks, appreciate being called a garbage person. Have you considered having empathy for people with different views than you?
> Have you considered having empathy for people with different views than you?
This is an interesting response in a thread defending an abortion ban.
Have they turned those squishy-sounding different views into horrifically inhumane absolute laws that affect every female person in the state, passing through the state, or considering taking a job (or keeping an existing job) in the state?
> Have you considered having empathy for people with different views than you?
No. On this topic I don't give a damn about people who have the wrong point of view.
We get it: YOU ARE DISHONEST.
That shit means, in practice, that if you're in bad shape and will obviously need an abortion; the hospital will wait until you are nearly dead before they perform it.
It happens every day, and vile, dishonest, woman-hating pieces of shit like you lie lie lie to defend it.
> The longest drive from within Arkansas to an out of state abortion clinic is about five hours.
Arkansas isn't so bad because I can drive 300 miles to a different state if I need medical care. Ok.
> There is no place to live without compromises.
Sure but calling an abortion ban a compromise is like calling a nuclear warhead a nonlethal weapon.
I am much more pro choice than you are if you are anywhere near the Overton Window. Every single state has laws that shock my conscience as much as the Arkansas abortion ban shocks yours. If you don't have to make such compromises I envy you.
> Arkansas isn't so bad because I can drive 300 miles to a different state if I need medical care
Would just add that Republican lawmakers are trying to ban you doing this:
https://www.law.georgetown.edu/gender-journal/in-print/volum...
For example, Idaho became the first state to outlaw “abortion trafficking,” which it defined as “recruiting, harboring or transporting” a pregnant minor to get an abortion or abortion medication without parental permission. Which is obviously a problem if your parent raped you.
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Do you fail to see the irony in comparing abortion to a weapon and not meaning the actual killing of the fetus? (Abortions to save the life of the mother are a very small percentage of abortions)
do you really think people are falling for this? especially on this forum?
You can get medical care there. You just can't end the life of a baby, unless the mother's life is in danger.
Words mean things, and the four-week fetus of a raped eleven-year-old is not a “baby”. Medical care to terminate that pregnancy and that fetus is literally medical care — and is illegal in Arkansas.
I haven't done a deep-dive on this subject, but it appears adolescents under 15 are 0.2% of US abortions according to the CDC.[1] So raped children needing medical interventions is some sub-fraction of 0.2%, which is less than 1,200 abortion across the entire country. It seems like such an extreme edge case that it is highly irrational to tar the adults of the entire state of Alabama as "garbage people" over these highly irregular scenarios.
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/72/ss/ss7209a1.htm
And yet the elected leaders of Arkansas purposely rejected a bill that would have allowed these children -- excuse me, these edge cases -- to be allowed abortions if they were raped. They voted the bill down eighteen months ago.
This is who they are. https://www.ualrpublicradio.org/local-regional-news/2023-03-...
It's always fun to see how elected 'leaders' of this ilk (privately) change their tune when their mistress needs an abortion.
Or their daughter. Or when it's them.
There's a reason this twenty-four-year-old article is a classic: https://joycearthur.com/abortion/the-only-moral-abortion-is-...
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That isn't really an answer to the statement about moving their life.
If they have been well compensated, they likely have other prospects and don't really care about money, so their friends and other relationships could be a priority.
All you did was say you like Little Rock. What is this place becoming, Reddit?
Can't speak for Bentonville, but Little Rock is awful.
A good way to tilt the political makeup of your workforce, if you were so inclined, would be to move to a red state.
Oh, everyone has a number....
I mean, being forced to move is bad enough, but Arkansas? That’s a tough one for someone in tech I feel.
Going to chime in. Young(ish) person in tech. Have heard nothing but great things about Bentonville. I'm into mountain biking and the city is like a spiderweb of awesome looking biking/walking trails built by the Waltons.
It's great until you find yourself looking for another tech job, particularly with another RTO company.
Yeah but I imagine CTOs of fortune 50 companies are paid more than enough to relocate and probably have a golden parachute package that more than compensates for any relo costs and job search time.
I haven't work with Cheryl for probably 15 years now, but at the time her family was very important to her and I don't imagine that has changed. There are more than just monetary costs for relocating.
Ok, I'm speaking to the parent comment about looking for another job. Of course there are always reasons not to move somewhere specifically, but the vast majority of executives in the world are required to work at their companies headquarters, wherever that may be. And all of the largest companies pay executives handsomely. More than enough to make up for cost of relocation or time lost to job searching.
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As an avid mountain biker and having been to bentonville twice, the trails are just ok. Immaculately maintained and there are some neat features, but the hills there are seriously lacking elevation.
The small downtown area of bentonville is neat, but the greater area is… meh.
She has probably gotten accustomed to living somewhere where you can comfortably be outside more than 4 months out of the year. Or, you know, maybe she doesn't want to move her family across the country.
I think the implication was that the majority of the demographic will find a deep red state governor a non-starter. Perks of a given city aside, for decades their tax dollars will get thrown away fighting causes like trans rights, same as with all the losing battles against civil rights, interracial marriage, gay marriage, heavy metal, video games, etc.
That's an interesting objection so I asked ChatGPT to clarify:
California Attorney General's Office (2024-25 Budget): $1.28 billion total
California per capita spending: Approximately $32.92 per person, based on a population of 39 million.
Arkansas Attorney General's Office (2024 Budget): $36 million total.
Arkansas per capita spending: Approximately $12 per person, based on a population of 3 million.
Having been to AK, all I can say is it's a toilet. I wouldn't ever want to suffer living there. Only MS is worse in my estimation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thank_God_for_Mississippi
At least Mississippi has some coastline. Also, it's close to some interesting places: the northern part of MS is close to Memphis, and (even better) the southern part of MS is close to New Orleans.
AK is Alaska. Arkansas is AR.
Apologies to all Alaskans (expect Palin).
Bentonville is being gentrified by the Walton Family philanthropy. I hear young people talking about how great Bentonville is.
Depends on the person. Northwest arkansas is a beautiful place with tons of outdoor activities and the ability to live like a king on a major company CTO salary. I'd rather live there than Seattle or San Francisco.
You'd live like a king on $14.5 million/year, regardless of where you lived.
https://www1.salary.com/Suresh-Kumar-Salary-Bonus-Stock-Opti...
That link is for the CTO of Walmart, but TFA is about the CTO of Sam's Club.
It looks like they're one rung down the ladder so I'm sure they're doing just fine even in California, but they're probably making quite a bit less than $15M/year.
Yeah especially because it’s a “company town” feels like putting literally all your eggs in the Walmart basket.
Both JB Hunt and Tyson Foods are nearby. Both very large Fortune 500 companies. Lots of smaller companies that work with Walmart have offices there, too.
And as others have said, it's mountain bike heaven. Super low cost of living, too.
Not my thing and I wouldn't move there, but for some folks it's very attractive.
This still sounds like a "Walmart" company town