DigitalGeppetto

Looking at Walmart pay reports: https://www.levels.fyi/companies/walmart/salaries/software-e...

I see many engineers with 10+ years of experience earning ~$200k in the Bay. No disrespect for your friends, but if you're a talented engineer at this level of experience, you can do a lot better than working for $200k in silicon valley.

There are many other companies that will substantially beat this kind of pay. If you failed to get an offer at all of them, the problem is probably not "inconsistent hiring practices."

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

Its general reputation is strictly worse than Amazon.

That's why you never move in this sort of situation.

Also, remote work eliminates all the risk and power games companies like to play around employee (re)location.

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.

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.

"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.