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I worked at the Richfield HQ in 2010 before Joly came in and it was a disaster working there. Environments would go down and stay down for hours or days. I woul

I worked at the Richfield HQ in 2010 before Joly came in and it was a disaster working there. Environments would go down and stay down for hours or days. I would come in at 8am and not be able to work until 1 or 2pm. They had such a consistent turn over, they would have 3rd party vendors and have no idea who the contact was or what company actually operated large chunks of their network. They essentially had a 70-80% contract workforce so the code was unbearable to deal with. Nobody cared about how bad the code was, they just cared the site looked nice. The amount of hacks I saw were shocking. Writing a 25 line script to indent an H3 title two spaces? Yeah, that was pretty common. I left after 8 months. Several of my friends stayed on and noticed how different it was when Joly came on. Several years on, things have gotten significantly better. They've modernized a lot of their apps (even through their website is still clunky and old) and are in the process of revamping their site to a far more modern stack. Joly cleaned house and brought in people who want to modernize their software, and from what I know now, the people who stayed on are a lot happier nowadays.

fma 8y ago
I noticed that in the article, Joly gave back the employee discount and said it was a big morale booster. I think morale is important, especially for retail. Employees run the business, and store floor employees are the face of the business. I've gone to Best Buy mainly for store pickups - but generally a good experience. One time I was there for pickups, and in general looking for a new vacuum cleaner...so I wandered over there. An employee approached me with a positive demeanor and asked if I had any questions, and even asked if I wanted a demo. I gently declined, she said I can find her if I have any other questions and she didn't bother me. I didn't buy my vacuum cleaner from there...I found a clearance at Walmart that had great reviews. But if I wanted to buy one at retail value (or at least, non-clearance price) I'd go to Best Buy...good customer service, and they'll match anyone. Happy employees = good business. I work for a big company, and management always does surveys. One of the biggest complaints is we don't get free coffee. The executives addressed it and responded...no free coffee. Would you rather want free coffee, or hire more employees? (funny thing is we're not hiring)
- mmt 8y ago
  > Would you rather want free coffee, or hire more employees? (funny thing is we're not hiring) Indeed, an amusing twist on the traditional false dichotomy: the truth isn't that you can actually have both, but, rather, that you can't have either one.
SteveNuts 8y ago
I was almost hired a few years ago to work on OpenStack at BB HQ, any word on how that project went? I've heard through the grapevine that the project was scrapped.
LargeWu 8y ago
I did a couple of 2-year stints there as a contractor; about a dozen years ago, and a few years ago. When I worked there most recently, my team was at first given a lot of leeway to use our own toolsets and and processes, things were going well, but then we got caught up in some turf battles between the IT and BBY.com organizations and everything kind of fell apart. Everybody left or got let go and they eventually offshored our team. Regardless I think things are way better than the Brian Dunn years.

fma 8y ago

I noticed that in the article, Joly gave back the employee discount and said it was a big morale booster. I think morale is important, especially for retail. Employees run the business, and store floor employees are the face of the business. I've gone to Best Buy mainly for store pickups - but generally a good experience. One time I was there for pickups, and in general looking for a new vacuum cleaner...so I wandered over there. An employee approached me with a positive demeanor and asked if I had any questions, and even asked if I wanted a demo. I gently declined, she said I can find her if I have any other questions and she didn't bother me. I didn't buy my vacuum cleaner from there...I found a clearance at Walmart that had great reviews. But if I wanted to buy one at retail value (or at least, non-clearance price) I'd go to Best Buy...good customer service, and they'll match anyone. Happy employees = good business. I work for a big company, and management always does surveys. One of the biggest complaints is we don't get free coffee. The executives addressed it and responded...no free coffee. Would you rather want free coffee, or hire more employees? (funny thing is we're not hiring)

mmt 8y ago
> Would you rather want free coffee, or hire more employees? (funny thing is we're not hiring) Indeed, an amusing twist on the traditional false dichotomy: the truth isn't that you can actually have both, but, rather, that you can't have either one.

SteveNuts 8y ago

I was almost hired a few years ago to work on OpenStack at BB HQ, any word on how that project went? I've heard through the grapevine that the project was scrapped.

LargeWu 8y ago

I did a couple of 2-year stints there as a contractor; about a dozen years ago, and a few years ago. When I worked there most recently, my team was at first given a lot of leeway to use our own toolsets and and processes, things were going well, but then we got caught up in some turf battles between the IT and BBY.com organizations and everything kind of fell apart. Everybody left or got let go and they eventually offshored our team. Regardless I think things are way better than the Brian Dunn years.