Walmart to close three tech hubs, tells tech staff to return to offices

https://www.wsj.com/articles/walmart-to-close-three-tech-hubs-tells-tech-staff-to-return-to-offices-3fb131e4

by lxm • 3 years ago

149 269 3 years ago

cableshaft• 3 years ago

So yeah, they're just going to force us all to RTO because pretty much every single company is going to collectively decide to bully everyone into doing it, until there's hardly any companies left doing it, and certainly not enough for the demand for it since the pandemic. Great, just great.

Might be almost time to start looking into freelancing again.

robbintt• 3 years ago

This is going to drive salaries up in the hubs again.

jstx1• 3 years ago

Freelancing isn't exactly stable and reliable either.

eikenberry2• 3 years ago

I'd suggest, if you're looking, to take a job at a company that is remote first. Skip all these companies that are "allowing it" and go for the ones that make it a selling point. A company saying they are remote first with little office space should insulate you from these sorts of shenanigans.

aledalgrande2• 3 years ago

This. I worked at companies that are "remote" and their solution is to have 254 Zoom meetings per day.

evo_9• 3 years ago

No they’re not; some of us have become managers during all this and won’t stand for it. Not to mention we’ve hired quite a few out-of-state resources and simply can’t afford to lose them.

Some shitty companies will pursue this but the smart companies will stay the course and hire away their talent. It’s a competitive advantage and companies need to view it that way or suffer.

Also - this will now provide us with a very simple test, is this a shitty company that does not truly value its employees, or are they one of the good ones worthy of my attention.

operatingthetan7• 3 years ago

My question about these policies is are they actually applying them to everyone in the org, or is there a political mess of exceptions and 'key people' who can muscle their way out of the requirement? It seems like a lot of the recent layoffs are intended to give an attitude check to those who think they are essential, but surely these businesses actually have essential teams and specific engineers that would harm the org if they left?

mc323• 3 years ago

There are quite a few non-"shitty" companies mandating RTO for those not hired as remote workers. Classifying good companies as "shitty" because one doesn't like the original terms of employment agreed to by both parties is hyperbola. Sure, it's not your preference, but it does not make it a "shitty" company.

nice_byte• 3 years ago

they way I see it, having in-person workers is a competitive advantage for the company. those who figure out a way to keep their workers in office will be more competitive than those who don't. from the company perspective it definitely makes sense to push for in-person work as much as the workforce will tolerate.

darth_avocado• 3 years ago

Well they’re still going to, no matter how much you fight. WfH will be an exception rather than the default, that’s what they are trying.

dividefuel3• 3 years ago

In a large company like Walmart, do the managers really have enough power here to sway outcomes? Without a union, managers seem powerless here unless enforcement falls to them.

xdfgh11123• 3 years ago

As a lifetime remote dev it does kind of suck. People have been let in on my secret and now jobs have reduced, it'll be a lot more competitive.

On the other hand remote allows you to work for other countries. So there are still options if your cost of living is low.

Mountain_Skies11• 3 years ago

At a previous job, we seemed to have had a "don't ask, don't tell" policy when it came to remote workers logging in from outside of their home country. Then we had a member of the infosec team start logging in from a war zone and the policy suddenly because crystal clear that logins would only be accepted from the employee's home country unless permission was granted ahead of time and programmed into the VPN.

sokoloff• 3 years ago

Even with these waves of RTO, surely there will be vastly more remote jobs in 2024 than there were 5 years prior.

daseiner1• 3 years ago

I'd have to agree. If you're not more interested in working as a genuine team member than as a glorified anonymous contributor you should look into freelancing

whateveracct• 3 years ago

There were plenty of remote jobs before the pandemic. I'm sure that will continue.

linkjuice4all2• 3 years ago

Some of these companies have been "bullied" by the tax-receiving cities that they're based in. I hate commuting and getting interrupted by co-workers in the office as much as the next person but this change in working style has had a negative impact on the business that used to service office workers.

With the change in interest rates (let's not forget Jeremy Powell wants to use unemployment to cool inflation [0]), layoffs, and return to office mandates it seems like employees are losing the war.

I really hope that companies that aren't saddled with real estate and rental costs of having an office can continue to offer remote work - after all they have fewer costs and can draw from a larger pool of employees.

Management be damned - many people don't need to drive (and waste gas) just to sit in the same place at the same time as some other people.

[0] https://time.com/6253699/federal-reserve-inflation-interest-...

pinewurst4• 3 years ago

While it's true that "this change in working style has had a negative impact on the business that used to service office workers", it's not my personal cross to bear by enduring an obnoxious commute.

lolinder2• 3 years ago

No, companies are going to stabilize on one or the other. Just the other day GitHub announced they were closing all office space.

Remote work isn't ending, what's ending is companies having ambiguous temporary remote work policies. They're either coming down hard for or against.

Gigachad3• 3 years ago

This is good. Pretty much everyone has a preference one way or the other. No one like it mixed.

Xorakios• 3 years ago

It is generally illegally to freelance in California unless you're a journalist or an actor

BurningFrog• 3 years ago

Time will tell how well this remote work experiment works.

If it works well, it will grow and evolve, if not it will fade away.

eat• 3 years ago

I got my first remote job in 2011. Whatever is going on right now has very little to do with what works, and what doesn't.

ergvgdvgrd• 3 years ago

Only if they can all simultaneously execute the cooperation strategy of the Prisoner's Dilema. Meanwhe every corporation that defects gets to pick from the pool of remote workers with _reduced_ competition from the corporations choosing the "cooperate" strategy.

geraldwhen2• 3 years ago

This is a layoff, but it’s at least one that makes sense. Consolidating offices feels more reasonable to me than just slicing headcount randomly. I hope the severance package is good.

missedthecue• 3 years ago

This seems like a bad way to do a layoff (if that's your intent) because you can't target and cull the low performers. In fact, you're likely to disproportionately lose the employees that are most able to find new jobs, i.e. your best employees.

geraldwhen2• 3 years ago

Greatest potential and best employees aren’t the same at BigCo. Institutional knowledge is worth more the larger an organization is, and those willing to move may be more devoted to the company and willing to stay around long term.

In fact, if Walmart pays exponentially more for tenure as some bigcos do, the most willing to quit would be the most junior employees. There are many ways to skin the cat, but either way reducing office space to save costs makes sense, remote work policies aside.

And they did offer both relocation benefits and severance, which is about as ideal as this kind of thing can be.

dividefuel3• 3 years ago

Does it make sense? You're selecting workers based on where they already live or where they're willing to relocate to, not based on performance or strategic company need.

tirrellp• 3 years ago

Easy way to accelerate attrition (and thus, headcount reduction) without announcing layoffs.

tmpz22• 3 years ago

Except your best talent may have access to the most opportunities

eikenberry2• 3 years ago

Large enterprises don't recognize or even want "best talent"... they want replaceable resources that can be reorg'd with little thought.

cmsonger• 3 years ago

I think this is what's going on too. Easy way to have folks self select out.

LordKeren• 3 years ago

Easy way to kick start the Dead Sea effect and significantly reduce the amount of applicants to backfill

https://medium.com/geekculture/the-dead-sea-effect-d71df1372...

Yhippa• 3 years ago

It's a weird way of doing it though, right? This will surely push away your better workers who have options. You're going to be left with the worse employees who have no other options.

Aeolun8• 3 years ago

I’m not sure a company like wallmart sees anything other than headcount.

The effects will only be seen 5-10 years down the line when all their systems will have turned into a morass of madness

robotsquidward• 3 years ago

Exactly. I would rather be laid off with severance rather than be forced into the choice to be be offered a 100% on-site job across the country or quit. Cruel.

pinewurst4• 3 years ago

In either a place with an order of magnitude higher cost of living or an order of magnitude lower quality of life, too.

no_wizard• 3 years ago

I almost took a job at the Portland office and they said there was “no way we would do return to office”

Glad I didn’t do it now

xienze• 3 years ago

Well, they weren’t lying. No one will be returning to that office, after all.

waboremo• 3 years ago

What's that saying, only a sith deals in absolutes?

lolinder2• 3 years ago

Which has always been a rather ironic line lacking in self-awareness.

judge2020• 3 years ago

I imagine this is the case in most places: recruiters and managers are so far down in the chain that they can't be given information before the rest of the workforce, so they might legitimately not know whether or not a return-to-office plan is in action.

qbasic_forever2• 3 years ago

"Oh great! Well if there's no way you'd do a RTO then we shouldn't have any problem writing remote only into my employment contract! I've just sent over the document with this change. Let's sign it, I'm ready to get to work!"

walrus014• 3 years ago

Isn't it amazing what kind of actual blunt answer about somebody's intentions you can get back from people when you send them back a copy of their file with MS Word "Track Changes" enabled and marked up in color, and ask them to approve it before becoming an executed agreement?

rubidium• 3 years ago

Won’t matter in US. At will.

santoriv• 3 years ago

I can’t read the whole article but are they telling a bunch of people to move to Bentonville or Sunnyvale?

throwayyy4790872• 3 years ago

I know which one I’d take

tomcam2• 3 years ago

I assume you're being droll but to me (not a Walmart person) it seems like Bentonville would be better professionally since it's company HQ, and very much a company town? My completely unfounded theory is that it's generally a more savvy career move for your boss to see your face IRL? The thought is that if two candidates are equal, the one that actually shows up in the office is just going to be more likely to get the nod.

anthomtb• 3 years ago

Phenomenal mountain biking and corporate HQ? Sign me up for Bentonville.

fermentation• 3 years ago

Northwest Arkansas, while a boring little meth-riddled area, has housing that can actually be purchased by people like us.

The also have Chuy’s and now a Torchy’s, so there’s that.

operatingthetan7• 3 years ago

From the article:

Walmart will pay for workers in those locations to transfer to other primary offices, such as San Bruno, Calif., or the company’s headquarters in Bentonville, Ark. The company hopes to relocate most of the workers, and some will be allowed to become full-time remote workers, a spokeswoman said. Those who leave will be given severance pay, she said.

datavirtue4• 3 years ago

Arkansas....LMAO!!! They have to be joking.

pavon• 3 years ago

It looks like they had 17 techhubs worldwide, and are closing 3 in the US. The remaining US ones are Atlanta GA, Bentonville AR, Charlotte SC, Dallas TX, Hoboken NJ, Reston VA, San Bruno CA and Seattle WA.

Given they just opened new locations in Atlanta and Seattle last year, this sounds more like Austin and Portland are getting too expensive (and aren't as essential of a labor market as SV), so they can save money by focusing on other locations.

Source: https://corporate.walmart.com/newsroom/2022/03/15/walmart-gl...

sarchertech• 3 years ago

The weird part to me is that in a company this large, you're going to mostly spend your days on zoom calls anyway.

bnert• 3 years ago

https://archive.is/MIB1W

Mc912• 3 years ago

I am a SWE at another Fortune 100 retailer...we have been told to start reporting to the office this month, after about three years of WFH. Two days a week to start with.

moneywoes3• 3 years ago

Is it team dependent or org wide

Mc912• 3 years ago

It is not team dependent in our division. I know it is happening in another division too, since late January they've been required to be back in the office for some days during the week.

Mountain_Skies11• 3 years ago

Interesting that they contacted me just last week about an open position. I thought it was odd that the inside recruiter included an obviously abbreviated version of the job posting in her email to me. When I looked up some of the key phrases, I found the posting, which was listed as hybrid while my profile clearly indicates I only work 100% remote. When I asked her about how many days per week hybrid means, she said "about three", which sounds an awful lot like four to me, which probably also means that one (possibly two) work from home days would soon go away. She didn't respond to my request for their location. If she wasn't an inside recruiter, I would have thought it was a scam attempt.

Got to wonder if the caginess is due to them having problems with finding people to take over the obviously on-site jobs. Sure, the initial contact could have been a simple mistake on her part, but then the editing of the job posting to exclude anything about hybrid and days in the office and then a resistance to explaining the details when I emailed her back is suspicious. I decided to not pursuit it further and now seeing this news, makes me feel like I made the right choice.

walrus014• 3 years ago

The short way of addressing this, if you are sufficiently senior in your position or in-demand for your tech skills, is to ensure that any offer letter has extremely unambiguous language written into it that your position is 100% remote and will remain remote. Tell that to the recruiter. If they don't do it, proceed with a short "thank you for your time but I am not interested" and move on.

operatingthetan7• 3 years ago

I think given at-will employment they can renege on that agreement whenever they want. Obviously it's best to have a meeting of minds, but can you really ever trust a corporation? Probably not.

jimbo9991• 3 years ago

I mean yeah that's exactly what the caginess was about.

Waterluvian• 3 years ago

Yeah I got contacted too. Weird.

skippyboxedhero2• 3 years ago

"About three" - mathematicians reconsidering the real line with this statement.

HyperSane• 3 years ago

That kind of caginess is so unbelievably disrespectful.

kneebonian• 3 years ago

Remember if it isnt in writing it isn't real.

jmathai• 3 years ago

If it's in writing, and you want to pay for lawyers, and things go your way, it's real.

ghaff2• 3 years ago

I expect we'll see a bifurcation between companies that were supposedly WFH/remote-friendly/tolerant and become increasingly less so. And a much smaller number that actually are supportive of remote work as the default. Of course, there's no guarantee that the latter will offer pay scales similar to the former.

walrus014• 3 years ago

Telling tech workers like that to return to office as a mandate is just another way of executing a massive layoff.

They have to know that a huge percentage of people will resign (or wait to be dismissed from their position for refusing) rather than uproot themselves and move their whole family to go work in a cubicle farm for Walmart.

The people who will be left afterwards that happily do want to go live in Bentonville, AR and report to office 5 days a week will be the ones who have drunk the Walmart koolaid.

That's my own idea of a personal hell.

monksy2• 3 years ago

I just got a recruiter reach out to me about a Scala/Haskell oporturnity at Disney. Their claim was this was a "hybrid" position and required a relo to Sea, LA, SFO, NYC, or Orlando of 4x a week in office.

Considering how much it's documented on how hard it's to find scala engineers... their demands of RTO _and_ a relo is laughable. Everyday, it feels like the corp's claims of a money crunch is self inflicted.

Mountain_Skies11• 3 years ago

With a large brand like Disney, there's probably some arrogance involved too, believing they can alter the world to their liking. If the company was something like "Data Image Formatting Corporation of Delaware", I'd expect they'd be a bit more realistic about their ability to get people to accept such a deal outside of their local area.

Aeolun8• 3 years ago

Does 4 days a week in the office constitute hybrid now? That’s full time office with a rest day.

monksy2• 3 years ago

That's the casual dress version of rto.

johnvanommen• 3 years ago

Disney is the worst place I've ever worked.

Reptur• 3 years ago

I don't work for Walmart, but I'd expect pay increase to cover gas, car maintenance, and duration of drive to/from work. The drive to/from work has always been a freebie for companies, but they are depreciating your vehicle and you are working unpaid for travel time.

MaxHoppersGhost2• 3 years ago

Did you or anyone else take a pay decrease when you went remote because you weren’t paying for gas/depreciation/time anymore? Otherwise this point is moot.

Aeolun8• 3 years ago

Of course not, now you need to pay for heating and electricity, which the company also doesn’t refund.

Mountain_Skies11• 3 years ago

I was remote for five years before the pandemic, so for people like me, that's not applicable. At that particular company, they had ended or subleased most of their existing office space (maybe 80%) before the pandemic, which was very fortuitous for them. They still have a handful of offices, probably always will since their physical equipment needs are extensive, but no doubt they've enjoyed the savings from getting so much office space off their books.

deadmutex• 3 years ago

Heh, I remember a similar argument for WFH.

"I have to pay for HVAC, increased electricity usage, etc."

TBH, I don't think companies think about it in this fine grained way. They will just increase/decrease pay to get the level of demand they desire for their job openings.

gedy• 3 years ago

you are working unpaid for travel time

Not if you start counting the commute time in the 8 hours you are supposed to work. Needs an org that does not micromanagement you, but it's what I did when it was important to be in office.

brewdad2• 3 years ago

Live walking distance from the office. Any other choice that leads to a long commute is a YOU problem.

lvl102• 3 years ago

Walmart only started these initiatives to APPEAR as Amazon competition. The company has some deep issues including BS they pull on hidden inventory across all of their stores.

Mountain_Skies11• 3 years ago

Walmart recently shut down permanently the store I shopped at in my old town. At the time, there were already three cargo containers on the edge of the parking lot apparently holding excess stock that had been pushed down to the store over the years that they couldn't put out on the floor anymore due to space constraints. I've heard stories about pretty much every store having similar containers because the stock keeps on coming and if they can't get anyone to buy that ancient 500 meg external drive, they are also not able to just dispose of it either.

I wonder what's happening with those containers and if the number grew since I moved away half a decade ago. Does some other store get that inventory dumped on it?

doitLP• 3 years ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20230214000353/https://www.wsj.c...

nemo44x3• 3 years ago

I’ve been to their offices in San Bruno and they’re quite nice. Good food service.

Tech companies have to be feeling miffed about making these dream like places to work only for many people wanting to not go in.

I feel like if I were young or old I’d want an office in large part to socialize. But anyone with kids probably really likes the flexibility of working at home. It’s life changing if you have a family.

Mountain_Skies11• 3 years ago

The head of my department at my last company has three teenagers, all of which play sports. Working from home allowed him to take over the very extensive laundry duties that come with having three sports playing teens. Since laundry has lots of hands off waiting, it worked out perfect as most of his days are spent in meetings. He can change loads in between calls. It also meant we all knew not to let our meetings go over time, which was really a bonus to the rest of us.

nemo44x3• 3 years ago

Sounds like it is time to teach your teens how to do their laundry.

bhhaskin3• 3 years ago

If you want to work remotely, make sure it is stated in your employment contract. If it isn't then it's temporary and at the complete discretion of your employer.

frankbreetz• 3 years ago

What does it matter? In your contract or not, almost everything in the US is "At will", so they can just get you to accept another contract or stop your current one.

lotsofpulp4• 3 years ago

It would ensure you are eligible for unemployment benefits in the event you are terminated because of the employer changing the work location.

71a54xd• 3 years ago

If people just don't fold we can still save remote work.

brewdad2• 3 years ago

People need to eat. They will fold. Not everyone obviously but enough to see RTO pushes succeed.

aledalgrande2• 3 years ago

My 2c is that hybrid doesn't work. The company would never turn the dial to 100 on remote tools, policies and rituals. And it's still tied to hubs so it's hard to hire from other geographical areas, in the same country or overseas. It's not freedom, it's a mess.

dividefuel3• 3 years ago

Lots of companies calling workers back to the office these days. Did these companies originally commit to allowing permanent remote workers? Or were they unofficial policies due to the pandemic that kept getting extended?

softwaredoug• 3 years ago

The remote job market is going to get quite interesting.

Would you create an in-person startup these days? Is that how you would start a company? My guess is you start a company remote first - if for no other reason to avoid the office cost, and be open to any talent.

If many larger companies are in person - what does that mean for how things look in 10 years?

With startups being more remote, would there be a bias towards remote workers, living in lower cost of living areas, actually being the hub of innovation? Making the "cities" a kind of anti-innovation-hub of more humdrum corporate work?

TylerE• 3 years ago

It it were me and I was truly starting a start up, I would do it in person, at least while we’re in the single digit employees, but it sure as hell wouldn’t be anywhere close to SF, where costs are just insane.

It’s be somewhere with a reasonable CoL but still nice to live in… Charlotte/RTP, Nashville, maybe Chicago or Philly if you really wanted to be in a big metro.

Alternative would be remote, but try to cluster the employees so you could get together in person a few times a month with no one (ideally) having to drive much more than an hour or so round trip.

techsupporter• 3 years ago

It’s be somewhere with a reasonable CoL but still nice to live in…

The funny thing is, this is why companies were in San Francisco. Back when the tech industry was far less than it is now, San Francisco was "a reasonable CoL but still nice to live in" even though it was all the way over there in California.

Then San Francisco got expensive so people tried Seattle...then Denver...then Austin...and so the wheel turns. And each time, we fail to learn the lessons of what made those places get more expensive as more people wanted to move there. Then we try again somewhere else, expecting that new people won't have the back story and existing people will happily move.

I've been working on computers for a job for decades and we still haven't gotten it right.

ei8htyfi5e• 3 years ago

I am starting one in person. It’s so much more efficient when it comes to getting things done. I’m sorry quality of life folks.

alexchantavy• 3 years ago

+1, would like to hear more from remote-only early stage startups. I would imagine in the early stage you'd want everyone in-person to keep everything in sync more easily, but a lot of new companies seemed to come out of 2020 doing really well with full remote.

tinyhouse• 3 years ago

Office space cost is not an issue for startups. Talent is the big thing. You can get pretty cheap co-working space including a private office without committing to a long term lease (a 6 months lease is pretty common).

You raise a good point. If most startups start remote these days, then next decade most tech companies will be remote. They are (at least some) are the big companies of the future.

I think for startups it really depends on how they start. Sometimes it's a few student friends building a company together and in that case they start in-person and likely to stay like that. In other cases it's one person looking for a co-founder and they meet someone Online who is in a different location and the company stays remote because of that. Then it also depends how they grow. Many hire a lot of contractors in the early days and it's mostly remote folks in other countries.

ericmcer2• 3 years ago

This doesn't take into account that C-suites might like going into big offices in the city and walking around seeing all the people who work under them. Maybe being an executive lacks panache when it involves leading Zoom meetings in your pajamas.

Mountain_Skies11• 3 years ago

Before 2010, urban planners complained that CEOs tended to relocate offices from the urban core and out to whatever suburb on the edge of the metro gave them a short commute, while screwing over the rest of the workers who then had to commute either from the city or from other far-flung suburbs, few of which had transit connections to that suburb, even if they had transit into the city. Interesting to see it change to CEOs wanting offices in urban cores.

ravagat6• 3 years ago

If I were making a startup involving anything hardware/physical/analog material then yes in-person for sure, I'd let some work remotely but fly them in when needed. The in-person network+agency+build effects is too demoted, sometimes just you can't beat the effectivity and efficiency of being close to one another.

I don't have an answer for your 10 yrs outlook.

Having spent time in developing countries, for atleast a quarter of the year, recently I still have not found the consistency of agency comparable to what we have in the US. There's a lot of factors that play into that could be another thread in itself. I did meet and see a lot of American expats/educated/-background people who were largely magnets and hubs of innovation for some of these developing/lower COL areas. And I have and do applaud them for their tenacity and work but the network effects still end up fighting/resisting them locally. So to answer I think there will not be a bias towards remote workers in macro scale and I think could be bias towards remote workers being the hub of innovation in very specific niches, only one I can think of right now is vehicular and automotive design is but I could be bias.

Keen to discuss more!

cooperadymas• 3 years ago

I think what everyone is missing is the timing of these RTO orders.

There's a huge swath of tech playoffs right now. Tens or hundreds of thousands of devs are out of work and looking. Many, many others are worried they are next on the chopping block.

There's no better time for big corps to make unpopular decisions like this.

Many employees will be scared to refuse the mandate, because they see the layoffs. They fear for their job. They see the market is tough for getting hired elsewhere. They'll go back to the office out of fear.

If devs leave, it will be easier than ever to replace them.

pcan77• 3 years ago

This, and most of the recession was manufactured to take worker power away that was gained during WFH/pandemic times. It's not a coincidence that the FAANG companies were fined a combined 45M (chump change to them) when caught colluding to stagnant tech worker wages. I almost guarantee they colluded in layoffs/getting people to RTO.

umeshunni• 3 years ago

It's 415M, not 45M and it's technically not FAANG companies - it was Apple, Google, Intel and Adobe.

If anything Facebook is responsible for the vast increase in tech comp over the last 12 years.

kcplate2• 3 years ago

I find it remarkable the level of arrogance that the pandemic shift to WFH has given the tech community. Both my wife and I WFH and certainly want to continue it, but if our companies tomorrow told us they were doing RTO we’d be disappointed but would of course go. We spent decades of our careers in an office and only 3 short years outside of one.

Some folks on HN do not realize yet that well paying WFH employment opportunities will become scarce in 2023, and if your default position is to demand WFH, companies will just move on to the next candidate of the 100k that are available that can do your job just as well as you can and are willing to show up at an office.

purple_ferret• 3 years ago

Isn't there a tech hub in Jersey City at the old Jet office? What's with forcing people to move to Arkansas?

Ancalagon3• 3 years ago

No competition for talent in Arkansas. It’s quite simple. Keeps their employment costs down.

bigbillheck• 3 years ago

Considering how Walmart treats their other workers, it shouldn't be any surprise how they treat tech workers.

ericmcer2• 3 years ago

I wonder if this is somehow correlated with all the layoffs. Return to the status quo, cut down the massive hiring during the pandemic, scare everyone into RTO, get back to pre-pandemic worker relations.

jrs2352• 3 years ago

This is the next wave: soft layoffs. Reducing headcount without "having to pay" severance and allowing for some self-selection. "We didn't fire them! They chose to go!" and saves money at the same time.

Ancalagon3• 3 years ago

I worked in one of those locations being shut down. Suresh’s leadership and direction - or lack thereof - made it pretty clear to me that investment in the US would wane under his rule.

Needless to say, I do not work for Walmart anymore.

hlship• 3 years ago

I wonder what the real story is here. When I left Walmart last June, the Portland office was already 100% remote, with no intention of reopening the office (it had been WeWork space before the pandemic). My team had been 100% remote since it was formed.

I’m pretty bad at the rumors game, but even so, by the time I left, it was clear to me that Walmart considered its IT future to be based in India.

actionablefiber• 3 years ago

This is a layoff disguised as RTO. Part of the giveaway is that there are some exemptions being made to keep some employees on full WFH.

dilyevsky• 3 years ago

Ianal but pretty sure you can’t just move the work site halfway across the country and then fire everybody who doesn’t show up for cause.

MathMonkeyMan• 3 years ago

You don't have to fire them. Some will quit because fuck that, and others will cave under the pressure and acquiesce or quit later. And maybe you can fire them, I don't know.

DigitalGeppetto6• 3 years ago

"For cause" isn't relevant here. The point is that whoever doesn't want to move will be terminated, which is perfectly legal.

Walmart is betting that a big chunk of its employees in places like Portland OR aren't going to move to Bentonville, AR, and then it can terminate them and have an effective layoff that doesn't look like a layoff. Pretty safe bet.

jimt1234• 3 years ago

Same thing happened to a buddy of mine when the software company he worked for was purchased. The first thing the new owners did was move HQ from California to Texas; they told all the employees, "Move to Texas or you're losing your job." My friend moved. The company rewarded him by cutting his salary in half. He moved back to California in less than a year.

jonathankoren• 3 years ago

Actually you can. Legally it’s considered eliminating the office, and then extending an offer to the old workers at the new office.

Anyway fire for cause is meaningless with at-will employment.

qbasic_forever2• 3 years ago

You absolutely can, especially with at will employment laws. There are very few things that actually stop a layoff or firing... a strong union is one thing that can though.

Sylamore2• 3 years ago

That's exactly what AT&T was doing right before the pandemic, different groups were being assigned to specific offices and if you weren't willing to relocate to where your group was being moved to you would (if you were lucky) get laid off but many were simply let go for refusing to relocate without any kind of package. They ended up outsourcing about 1/4 of their IT dept to IBM in 2019 after they had done about 7 rounds of layoffs due to geographic consolidation.

smnrchrds• 3 years ago

They are not planning to fire people for cause. Their own statement said anyone who doesn't want to move will get severance.

cik2e• 3 years ago

I am not a lawyer either, but we can deduce logically that Walmart's lawyers approved it, so it's cool.

If companies are "allowed" to lay people off, then why not this? I'm pretty sure this is within the boundaries of "at will employment". You'd have to show some kind of civil rights violation.

Companies don't have to show cause to fire anyone. That's a cover your ass situation. This ass-covering makes sense with more than half of the US population now falling into some kind of protected class.

Ironically, here in the United States, they have everyone distracted with race wars and gender ID while workers' rights are still nonexistent.

That's why corporations love Corporate Black History Month and Corporate LGBTQ Month so much. They get to virtue signal that they don't discriminate while continuing to rob everyone blind.

DigitalGeppetto6• 3 years ago

Ding ding ding. The employees Walmart actually wants will continue full remote work, those that it doesn't really want to keep will be told to move to Bentonville, AR, they will refuse and get terminated or leave.

victor9000• 3 years ago

Everyone hop on the brain drain express

-Walmart Recruiters

bdcravens• 3 years ago

Not sure what you mean by that. I understand that Walmart is kind of a low reputation retailer, but the tech side of things has always been ahead of the curve.

DigitalGeppetto6• 3 years ago

Walmart was never a prestigious or highly desirable employer for engineers.

Its general reputation is strictly worse than Amazon.

NDizzle5• 3 years ago

They want people in Bentonville. The new headquarters is being built faster than anything of that size that I've ever seen being built. There's something like a dozen buildings going up at once. Maybe more, it's hard to keep track.

kylehotchkiss2• 3 years ago

What’s the draw to get tech workers to migrate there, other than lower home prices? Seems like a notable decline in quality of life compared to their soon to be closed hubs.

SV_BubbleTime• 3 years ago

It may be hard to believe, but there are lifestyles that don’t thrive in California.

jkdufair• 3 years ago

Heard they have outstanding mountain bike trails and other good outdoor activity options.

yCombLinks• 3 years ago

Not that I'm saying Bentonville is my dream destination, but it's a lot more like my ideal place than San Francisco or any major tech hub is. Being in a dense metro isn't everyone's idea of "quality of life".

mc323• 3 years ago

It depends. Some people don't care about surf or hot new holes in the wall for grub. They are happy in a low key town with a couple of strip malls a brewery and peace and quiet and especially look forward to less city grime and crime.

Pegasus930• 3 years ago

While I don't have any plans of working for Walmart, a nice campus and decent pay in an affordable, beautiful, very low cost location is alluring.

fencepost• 3 years ago

I've not been there, but Bentonville sounds like a combination of suburbia plus cultural options you'd expect in a much more urban area. If you're interested in living in a semi rural smaller town (~55k) it's probably among the more stable options you'll find in the US.

MaxHoppersGhost2• 3 years ago

I’ve heard it’s a pretty nice town with good outdoors options. If you have a family it’s probably a better option than overpriced Austin or the concrete jungle of Dallas (just to pick on two popular transplant options recently).

sakopov• 3 years ago

Arkansas is beautiful but of course the quality of life doesn't come close to watching a homeless person shit on your driveway and pitch a tent on your front yard.

dougmwne• 3 years ago

Honestly, you’d have to be a sucker. Imagine you have an established life in a well regarded city at a nice salary. You have friends, a home, hobbies, a routine, local knowledge. The job market is the best it’s been since your parents were kids. Then suddenly you are told you need to leave that all behind, take a massive cost of living paycut (because no corporation will pay you CA rates to live in AR), and move to one of the most economically troubled states in the country. Why would you let some amorphous entity jerk you around like that, upturn your life, without any appreciation of the sacrifice?

The only people taking this deal are either at a career inflection point or completely trapped.

justin66• 3 years ago

Requiring hires to live in Bentonville is one way to ensure they are a "culture fit."

linkjuice4all2• 3 years ago

Other sibling comments are mentioning what a nice place Bentonville is compared to California/Texas/any other major population center.

I’m sure there are a lot of nice things but what happens when you and Walmart split ways? There’s not a ton of other employers so you’re back to remote work. So then why even move there in the first place?

irrational• 3 years ago

This is what I wonder. It’s in a conservative state, which is a bad thing for a lot of tech workers. They would have to pay me at least 500k/year to convince me to move to the Bible Belt. Even then…

dcchambers• 3 years ago

There's a world class art museum there, if that's your thing. Funded by the Waltons, of course :)

Ozarks are beautiful but that's gotta be a total culture shock. Biggest issue is - what do you do when you want to leave Walmart? You'll have to move again, or work remotely.

https://crystalbridges.org/

ravagat6• 3 years ago

They must be building and working on something very important there. Lots of interesting hardware-tech companies in Arkansas now

ravenstine• 3 years ago

Maybe they know something I don't, but Walmart doesn't strike me as the kind of company or location that a lot of good talent would go back to the office for. The decision to close the hubs at least makes some sense; exactly how much technology has Walmart been getting out of them?

DigitalGeppetto6• 3 years ago

It's not the kind of company great talent would have chosen in the first place. However, their best talent will be allowed to continue working remotely so they don't leave.

benced• 3 years ago

Especially for Bensenville

porknubbins• 3 years ago

I think Walmart was one of the first to roll out real time inventory tracking/ tagging. In my experience big distopian megacorps are pretty enthusiastic on tech.

Consultant32452• 3 years ago

If you have any interest in supply chain or logistics, Walmart would be among the top places in the world to work.

myrandomcomment• 3 years ago

I am in tech. I have had Walmart as a customer. Their use of technology is amazingly complex and challenging. They are on the bleeding edge on a number of things. Just because they do not look like Amazon publicly, does not mean they are not privately.

foobazzy• 3 years ago

I know that Walmart Labs India office is good.

A quick internet search gives me these things.

[1] https://github.com/orgs/walmartlabs/repositories

[2] https://corporate.walmart.com/IRL/

[3] https://medium.com/walmartglobaltech

Based on these, I would say they're investing heavily in tech. And their tech is interesting in some ways.

Edit: formatting

lkrubner• 3 years ago

For awhile, starting around 2016, they poured money into an attempt to compete with Amazon. Not just compete, but get ahead of Amazon. They wanted to invent a 3D online retail experience, sort of like what Facebook started to do, but specific to retail. I was offered a job at the New Jersey office. They offered me $225, back in 2016, which is good and was very good for 2016.

But now I suspect they've given up on the effort.

NDizzle5• 3 years ago

Still happening I believe. Data scientist roles are around 260.

ravagat6• 3 years ago

That's a little harsh, there's a lot of industries/niches that Walmart has stake and/or operate in that would require "good talent".

analognoise• 3 years ago

"A ResumeBuilder.com survey of 1,000 business leaders found that 90 percent plan to require employees to return to the office at least some of the time in 2023. Twenty-one percent plan to separate from workers who refuse to come back to work in person."

Just don't listen if they ask you to come back and you've got ~4/5 chance of it not being an issue; they'll give up eventually.

sircastor2• 3 years ago

I interviewed to work with Walmart's tech group many years ago. It was not a great experience. I admit that part of that was me (I was eager to leave my current role, but my heart wasn't really in this). The thing that stands out most to me is that I was asked to do some sort of data transformation and pointed out that there was a severe issue with the task they were asking me to do. Apparently they "asked everyone to do this" but I was the only person who'd ever brought it up. It felt really weird to me, but they weren't interested in moving forward, and I wasn't really either.

ravagat6• 3 years ago

Would you say their interview process is similar to FAANG? I've had recruiters reach out but I have yet to take up an interview

sircastor2• 3 years ago

The only FAANG I've ever interviewed at was Amazon, and the Walmart Tech stuff did not feel like that at all. Which is to say, Amazon was far more challenging and time consuming. Walmart felt like interviewing at any large company that has a software group.

theowawayasd• 3 years ago

I will resign if iam forced to work from home.

saos• 3 years ago

Basically a way to layoff staff.

ravagat6• 3 years ago

I might be alone in this and I am completely unaware of what the work that goes on in Walmart under tech/software but I wouldn't mind RTO if there are some higher-level interesting work being done along logistics, manufacturing, efficiency-related work

Walmart to close three tech hubs, tells tech staff to return to offices

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