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I don't know why, but for some reason the juxtaposition of traditional, brick-and-mortar brand images with tech blogs about building modern application technolo

I don't know why, but for some reason the juxtaposition of traditional, brick-and-mortar brand images with tech blogs about building modern application technologies is amusing to me. It's seeing two completely different sides of the same organization. There's 0 condescending sentiment behind it, it's just like "wow, that was unexpected."

RandallBrown 8y ago
I worked for Nordstrom for several years and whenever I describe their technology department to another developer they're always pretty shocked. It was pretty shocking to me when I started there too.
- Aloha 8y ago
  I'm curious about Nordstrom, I know nothing of their infrastructure.
  - theossuary 8y ago
    I was surprised too, when I saw their name in the Devops Handbook; apparently they were one of the pioneers of Devops. Talking with a previous employee, it sounds like they really reinvented themselves from an IT department to a little tech oasis within the company.
    - GFischer 8y ago
      You can find some pretty awesome work on "traditional" companies. There are some pretty cutting-edge projects where I work too :) (but way more legacy migrations and boring financial CRUD apps).
      - saalweachter 8y ago
        I think one thing that doesn't always occur to programmers who haven't experienced is that really boring problems can be really interesting to work on. (And really interesting problems can be really boring to work on, and really interesting companies can have a lot of cruft and technical debt under the hood.)
  - RandallBrown 8y ago
    Their tech stack is similar to what you'd expect from any large tech company. I can't speak much to the server side of things (I worked on the iOS app) but I know they had everything ranging from older monolithic .NET apps to Node and Go micro services. Their GitHub page (https://github.com/Nordstrom https://github.com/Nordstrom) doesn't have much in the way of internal projects, but it has lots of forks that will give you an idea of some of the tools they used.
    - rmason 8y ago
      Actually they're a bit of a pioneer in Serverless computing: https://serverless.com/blog/rob-gruhl-serverless-event-sourced-nordstrom-emit-2017/ https://serverless.com/blog/rob-gruhl-serverless-event-sourc...
    - tomnipotent 8y ago
      Nordstrom also does polymorphic React with server-side rendering via .NET [0]. I've always been impressed with this part of their stack. [0] https://libraries.io/github/Nordstrom/React.NET https://libraries.io/github/Nordstrom/React.NET
      - voltagex_ 8y ago
        Latest commit e56c9be on 24 Apr 2015 - wonder if it's still in use internally?
  - caniszczyk 8y ago
    We did a case study on Nordstrom recently in the CNCF, check it out: https://www.cncf.io/case-study-nordstrom/ https://www.cncf.io/case-study-nordstrom/ Here's a recent talk from KubeCon/CloudNativeCon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=5&v=xZO9nx6GBu0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=5&v=xZO9nx6GBu0
  - tomatotomato37 8y ago
    To add to the curiosity, how is Nordstrom doing anyway, compared to other mall-type retail? I'm wondering if this forward-thinking in tech is allowing them to successfully fight "new" ecommerce such as Amazon
    - Kagerjay 8y ago
      Nordstrom is doing pretty well for their online stores. I have to order things there for family every so often
    - RandallBrown 8y ago
      As far as retail companies go, they’re doing well. Stock isn’t doing great, but as far as I know they’re still quite profitable. Being forward thinking in tech has helped them a lot with regards to being able to move pretty fast on new things. At the same time, a website as old as theirs has a LOT of legacy.
  - arthurcolle 8y ago
    What's interesting to think about is how, in the lead up to the dotcom bubble/bust, I would think execs at tons of traditional retail/brick and mortar/consumer brands would have probably been like shit shit and then put more IT-focused organizational architecture components in place, which probably lead to many interesting technical solutions to many of the problems they faced (if they did it the right way). It would be cool to see different branching that lead to different technical solutions for common problems. Unfortunately, as this was before the OSS boom that came later, we probably will never see these solutions out in the open.
- atwebb 8y ago
  Ha, y'all were an AWS/clickstream example at the Nashville Analytics Summit yesterday, granted it wasn't a new deck so maybe you've heard that before.
  - cosmie 8y ago
    Which session was that? The Kinesis/Lambda one?
    - atwebb 8y ago
      The 4 hour workshop/hello world for AWS, it was in the intro deck on why you should be doing analysis and what not. Probably preaching to the choir for most of the room.
- selimthegrim 8y ago
  Word of mouth tells me they are underpaying people for Seattle-area CoL
- mountainofdeath 8y ago
  It's almost like being down the street from 2+ major technology companies might have rubbed off on them...
- 616c 8y ago
  Recently at work someone used JS tooling from their Github org and I was like what!? Found a lot of good stuff there. Seeing down thread they were big DevOps adopters changes my mind of how I saw them as stodgy. Too bad I dislike pretty much all they sell!
wuliwong 8y ago
I'm in Atlanta and have had a few discussions with people at Chik-fil-A (CFA) about joining on of their teams. I have a good friend that just moved from Intel to CFA working on business analytics. It seems like a really great place to work. And yes, whenever I mention to someone that I might be working on machine learning problems at CFA I always get a puzzled look in return. :)
- electricslpnsld 8y ago
  > machine learning problems at CFA This is prime deep fried learning pun territory...
  - stochastic_monk 8y ago
    Alex Smola already nailed this in 2015 with deep-fried convnets, which replaces fully connected layers with fft-accelerated algorithms.
- seanmcdirmid 8y ago
  CFA has long meant control flow analysis in PL.
- client4 8y ago
  Their food court is amazing. You can have steamed salmon and a Spicy Chicken sandwich at the same time. Also free to your family.
uncreativebrian 8y ago
Most retailers don't have the challenges of scale that we have and I think thats why its weird to see tech innovation in a restaurant. That said, we need it to scale and are grateful to the k8s community for making what we are working to do possible!

RandallBrown 8y ago

I worked for Nordstrom for several years and whenever I describe their technology department to another developer they're always pretty shocked. It was pretty shocking to me when I started there too.

Aloha 8y ago
I'm curious about Nordstrom, I know nothing of their infrastructure.
- theossuary 8y ago
  I was surprised too, when I saw their name in the Devops Handbook; apparently they were one of the pioneers of Devops. Talking with a previous employee, it sounds like they really reinvented themselves from an IT department to a little tech oasis within the company.
  - GFischer 8y ago
    You can find some pretty awesome work on "traditional" companies. There are some pretty cutting-edge projects where I work too :) (but way more legacy migrations and boring financial CRUD apps).
    - saalweachter 8y ago
      I think one thing that doesn't always occur to programmers who haven't experienced is that really boring problems can be really interesting to work on. (And really interesting problems can be really boring to work on, and really interesting companies can have a lot of cruft and technical debt under the hood.)
- RandallBrown 8y ago
  Their tech stack is similar to what you'd expect from any large tech company. I can't speak much to the server side of things (I worked on the iOS app) but I know they had everything ranging from older monolithic .NET apps to Node and Go micro services. Their GitHub page (https://github.com/Nordstrom https://github.com/Nordstrom) doesn't have much in the way of internal projects, but it has lots of forks that will give you an idea of some of the tools they used.
  - rmason 8y ago
    Actually they're a bit of a pioneer in Serverless computing: https://serverless.com/blog/rob-gruhl-serverless-event-sourced-nordstrom-emit-2017/ https://serverless.com/blog/rob-gruhl-serverless-event-sourc...
  - tomnipotent 8y ago
    Nordstrom also does polymorphic React with server-side rendering via .NET [0]. I've always been impressed with this part of their stack. [0] https://libraries.io/github/Nordstrom/React.NET https://libraries.io/github/Nordstrom/React.NET
    - voltagex_ 8y ago
      Latest commit e56c9be on 24 Apr 2015 - wonder if it's still in use internally?
- caniszczyk 8y ago
  We did a case study on Nordstrom recently in the CNCF, check it out: https://www.cncf.io/case-study-nordstrom/ https://www.cncf.io/case-study-nordstrom/ Here's a recent talk from KubeCon/CloudNativeCon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=5&v=xZO9nx6GBu0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=5&v=xZO9nx6GBu0
- tomatotomato37 8y ago
  To add to the curiosity, how is Nordstrom doing anyway, compared to other mall-type retail? I'm wondering if this forward-thinking in tech is allowing them to successfully fight "new" ecommerce such as Amazon
  - Kagerjay 8y ago
    Nordstrom is doing pretty well for their online stores. I have to order things there for family every so often
  - RandallBrown 8y ago
    As far as retail companies go, they’re doing well. Stock isn’t doing great, but as far as I know they’re still quite profitable. Being forward thinking in tech has helped them a lot with regards to being able to move pretty fast on new things. At the same time, a website as old as theirs has a LOT of legacy.
- arthurcolle 8y ago
  What's interesting to think about is how, in the lead up to the dotcom bubble/bust, I would think execs at tons of traditional retail/brick and mortar/consumer brands would have probably been like shit shit and then put more IT-focused organizational architecture components in place, which probably lead to many interesting technical solutions to many of the problems they faced (if they did it the right way). It would be cool to see different branching that lead to different technical solutions for common problems. Unfortunately, as this was before the OSS boom that came later, we probably will never see these solutions out in the open.
atwebb 8y ago
Ha, y'all were an AWS/clickstream example at the Nashville Analytics Summit yesterday, granted it wasn't a new deck so maybe you've heard that before.
- cosmie 8y ago
  Which session was that? The Kinesis/Lambda one?
  - atwebb 8y ago
    The 4 hour workshop/hello world for AWS, it was in the intro deck on why you should be doing analysis and what not. Probably preaching to the choir for most of the room.
selimthegrim 8y ago
Word of mouth tells me they are underpaying people for Seattle-area CoL
mountainofdeath 8y ago
It's almost like being down the street from 2+ major technology companies might have rubbed off on them...
616c 8y ago
Recently at work someone used JS tooling from their Github org and I was like what!? Found a lot of good stuff there. Seeing down thread they were big DevOps adopters changes my mind of how I saw them as stodgy. Too bad I dislike pretty much all they sell!

wuliwong 8y ago

I'm in Atlanta and have had a few discussions with people at Chik-fil-A (CFA) about joining on of their teams. I have a good friend that just moved from Intel to CFA working on business analytics. It seems like a really great place to work. And yes, whenever I mention to someone that I might be working on machine learning problems at CFA I always get a puzzled look in return. :)

electricslpnsld 8y ago
> machine learning problems at CFA This is prime deep fried learning pun territory...
- stochastic_monk 8y ago
  Alex Smola already nailed this in 2015 with deep-fried convnets, which replaces fully connected layers with fft-accelerated algorithms.
seanmcdirmid 8y ago
CFA has long meant control flow analysis in PL.
client4 8y ago
Their food court is amazing. You can have steamed salmon and a Spicy Chicken sandwich at the same time. Also free to your family.

uncreativebrian 8y ago

Most retailers don't have the challenges of scale that we have and I think thats why its weird to see tech innovation in a restaurant. That said, we need it to scale and are grateful to the k8s community for making what we are working to do possible!