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Former Schwarz employee here: The company made SO much money in the past 4 decades with big box / discount retailing, you won't believe it. Salaries are off th

Former Schwarz employee here: The company made SO much money in the past 4 decades with big box / discount retailing, you won't believe it. Salaries are off the charts (it would make senior software engineers in SV look pale). Hubris is as well. The only thing that drives reasoning are statements like 'we're not just some random company, we're Schwarz Group'. It's the poster child Corp described by Andy Gorves statement: Success breeds complacency, complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive. At the same time, skill level did not take off so much. Just to give you some insight: The Lidl online store team is not even aware of KPIs like CAC or LTV or even how many new customers were acquired in a given year. And it's a 10-year-old unit (still burning millions per year) . The whole corporation is basically a 2-person-empire (the only two people that own shares and have taken the thing from 1 store to ~13k stores globally). They make every major call, and even random minor calls. It should be mentioned that they are 72 and 80 years old, respectively. The Cloud idea very likely was acquired together with a former SAP cloud sales VP. Here is the difference: Core Schwarz DNA is selling packed soup to end customers at crazy scale, without even intervening in the whole process. Core DNA SAP is large scale enterprise sales. Go read the Stratechery posting about why Google failed with GCP to understand why Schwarz should not do this. When I once mentioned this in a LinkedIn thread, I was urged by colleagues to delete the comment because 'management did not like it'. They are getting into the car sales and recycle business as well. Just to give you an impression. Interesting times though :)

ljf 6y ago
I was running a stall at a graduate careers fair and was amazed at the interest both Aldi and Lidl were getting. Both had amazing starting salaries - I think Aldi was £48k rising to £70k over 3 years if you went on the area manager scheme. Plus a car. The teams there were so enthusiastic and energised and appeared to really really enjoy their jobs. I am impressed by any company that consistently looks after their staff financially and otherwise.
- valzam 6y ago
  I don't have firsthand experience but from what I know those salaries come with very high expectations. Things like "you have to drive to some random neighborhood on a Sunday to check that flyers were being delivered correctly'.
  - benjohnson1707 6y ago
    Once you're in a managing position, expectations can be high. Depends on the department however. Everything that is core business related (purchasing, logistics, store management) can be insane. Especially IT is a joke, mostly. But that's just my perspective.
paganel 6y ago
> Salaries are off the charts Just to add another data point, Lidl is also the retailer that pays the best market salaries in the Eastern-European country where I live in (they actually included that in several of their hiring ads), and I'm talking about shop people like cashiers and the people that put things on the shelves. > They are getting into the car sales and recycle business as well. In here they've also opened a tourism agency that does quite well (or used to do before the virus hit). I agree though about the big difference between the German and US management. I have a close friend that works at the regional Lidl HQ and she got reprimanded just after being hired for having used the singular "you" (less formal) instead of the plural "you" (I'm not sure how it translates into German) when addressing herself to her bosses on the company's hallways (said friend used to work for a big US company before moving to Lidl). She was lucky though because not a week after her arrival there was a company-wide email coming from the powers that be instructing the employees to use the less formal singular "you" instead of the more formal plural "you", to which all the employees in the company acquiesced.
- occamrazor 6y ago
  I guess you mean the 2nd person form (du or ihr fir singular or plural) instead of the 3rd person plural (Sie), which is the courtesy form fir singular and plural. Yes, in German it’s a big deal, roughly the same as saying “Hey dude” instead of “Good morning Mr Smith”.
  - chx 6y ago
    Parent says Eastern European country, well, I had the bad luck to be born in Hungary (am Canadian now), and I fully understand what happened. It's a generation divide. I am 45 and I am one of the oldest for whom it doesn't matter and looks downright outdated but even to many in my age cohort and especially older it's exceptionally offensive, irrespectful to use the familiar form of "you". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_noun_phrase#Forms_for_%22you%22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_noun_phrase#Forms_fo... With a huge emphasis on irrespectful -- it's downright disdainful to call someone so without asking for permission to address them so. There is a tradition -- or rather was -- where they used to toast on the occassion of switching from formal address to informal. It's that big of a deal: there was a ritual, simple as it was, on switching the form of address. In the 1920-30s the gendarmerie used to address everyone informally and it was really offensive and a form of asserting dominance -- it was always the superior, the elder who offered the inferior, the younger to switch from formal to informal thus the gendarmerie not even offering just using it declared they are vastly superior to everyone. And the phrase still exists for such offensive behaviour. It really is -- or rather was -- a big deal. I am saying, it was, because starting the late 90s with the spread of Internet and pseudo-anonimity all this just became outdated -- you had no idea whom you are talking to so observing the old rules were impossible. And those who have grown up with this simply didn't bother learning the rules. For me, when I was 18, it was a Big Deal that at our high school graduation party our class leader teacher allowed everyone to switch from formal to informal. It was basically the only time in my life when something like that happened, then I started using the 'Net shortly after (all this was in '93) and this stuff was just washed away.
asjw 6y ago
> Salaries are off the charts Are they? I received few offers from them and their salaries where in par with what I earn in Italy (around 100k) which is very good for Europe but not as much as SV
- ChuckNorris89 6y ago
  Just out of curiosity what do you do that earns you 100k in Italy if I may ask? Most Italians I met working in Austria and Germany left Italy because of low salaries and they're not making anything close to 100k here either. I've even met Italians who moved to Eastern Europe for higher tech salaries than back home so something doesn't add up.
  - delcaran 6y ago
    Can confirm. As senior software developer I made 25K EUR in 2019.
    - niwork 6y ago
      That's a very poor salary for your job, if you don't mind me saying. Are you in Italy? What's the cost of living like? Salaries in Europe are generally quite low for devs compared to the US. I think it's best in the UK. Starting salary will average ~£25k, rising to ~£35k as you get more senior, then maybe £~45-55k one you're 5-10 years in. This is excluding London and contract-based work, of course.
      - ido 6y ago
        In Germany at the senior (10+ years) scale €70k/year is not unusual & if you work for the better paid companies (like google) you can expect significantly more.
        niwork 6y ago
        What about starting salaries, salaries at 2 years, 5 years etc.?
chx 6y ago
> Stratechery posting about why Google failed with GCP I believe you meant https://stratechery.com/2019/the-value-chain-constraint/ https://stratechery.com/2019/the-value-chain-constraint/
moonlgn 6y ago
I worked in the Real Estate Dept at Lidl for a (very) short time, awful company. Never have I seen people being treated so badly, especially in stores. Their IT was an absolute joke back then, we had to use a 20-year-old ERP and most of the work was done on paper. Thinking that these guys could take on AWS sounds ludicrous to me. However, they are cost-killers and hyper-aggressive when it comes to selling, so this might even work...
odiroot 6y ago
> They are getting into the car sales and recycle business as well. Just to give you an impression. They were also supposed to get into housing.
StreamBright 6y ago
>> The Cloud idea very likely was acquired together with a former SAP cloud sales VP. Here is the difference: Core Schwarz DNA is selling packed soup to end customers at a crazy scale, without even intervening in the whole process. Core DNA SAP is a large scale enterprise sales. Go read the Stratechery posting about why Google failed with GCP to understand why Schwarz should not do this. This is exactly what I have guessed. Many people think that replicating AWS is just the question of money. It is not. Most of the great datacenter people are hired by AWS, MS and Google. These are the guys who can think of cost efficient reliable solutions, quite often inventing new things in the process that the outside world has no idea. I was watching countless videos while working for Amazon about the data center tech. Mind blown, every single time. I seriously doubt that the Schwarz group will be able to attract the talent to replicate this. Many of the AWS guys are life timers, do not care about money. What is a more likely scenario that they will burn through a few billion EUR before realizing that they know nothing about cloud computing and cut their losses. It is going to be interesting to watch though.
- jawns 6y ago
  > Many of the AWS guys are life timers, do not care about money I've heard, anecdotally, that Amazon/AWS engineers tend to be more money-driven than others in the same tier, or at least they're willing to put up with a lot more headaches because of the money. Is that a misconception? If not money, then what keeps them there?
  - eru 6y ago
    I used to work for Google and have friends at Amazon. Google definitely seems to have the better working conditions. The impact on the world you have is probably similar. So relatively speaking, I'd expect people at Amazon to be into it for the money more.
    - mrep 6y ago
      Google pays better than amazon though and if you really want money, you go to facebook as they are known for top pay and promoting you really fast if you are willing to put in the hours. Granted, this is assuming you can get into each one and there is some luck in that so a lot of people are just where they could get in.
TulliusCicero 6y ago
> Salaries are off the charts (it would make senior software engineers in SV look pale). I have a hard time believing this, given that senior engineers at places like Google or Facebook are making 300k+.
- dubcanada 6y ago
  According to https://www.comparably.com/companies/lidl/salaries/software-engineer https://www.comparably.com/companies/lidl/salaries/software-... and glassdoor senior software engineers are around 150k to 200k and directors are around 200k to 300k. So they are largely comparable to SV salaries at Google/Facebook. Which means since Google/Facebook pay more than average, they are above average for SV. And that's at places like Berlin which are cheaper to live than SV.
  - TulliusCicero 6y ago
    GP said that the salaries would make senior engineers in Silicon Valley pale. That implies that they're much higher. Instead, they're actually much lower, as I suspected. This is true even for the senior engineers, at around half the compensation or so; for the principal engineers and directors, working somewhere like Google or FB gets you 3-5x what's quoted for Lidl. > So they are largely comparable to SV salaries at Google/Facebook This is completely wrong. Compensation for senior engineers at Google/FB is around 350k USD: https://www.levels.fyi/# https://www.levels.fyi/# > And that's at places like Berlin which are cheaper to live than SV. Agreed. Nevertheless, the salaries aren't going to make any senior engineers in SV "pale", when they're half as much.
    - benjohnson1707 6y ago
      Agreed! Let me clarify: high wages, once you're an engineering manager it's probably comparable. However, you're not nearly as relevant, from a value-sdd perspective. FAANG etc. are software companies. Lidl is an offline retailer. So top notch engineering there is not nearly as critical as for a company like facebook. So let me rephrase: way more buck for way less bang! But a fair critique! Thanks for pointing out.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
_pmf_ 6y ago
> they are getting into the car sales and recycle business To be fair, the recycle business is basically "free money" in Germany.
k__ 6y ago
"skill level did not take off so much" Big problem in German enterprise. They don't have any IT skills, but much money and are constantly crying for "digital transformation" what usually only leads them to being conned by big consulting agencies.
- bencw 6y ago
  Why is this? Is there a brain drain going on?
  - enitihas 6y ago
    Should be. The salary disparity in US and EU is immense.
    - fileeditview 6y ago
      And on the other side so are the healthcare and public services. I don't think there is a big scale brain drain to the US. I am doing the job for about 6-7 years and I don't know a single dev that went to the US. But I know many devs that came from other european countries and even the US.
  - Bayart 6y ago
    Not really. The difference in salary isn't enough incentive for people to leave Western Europe at scale. You'll still live very well as a STEM graduate in France/Benelux/Germany. It's just a cultural thing. Germany has tons of family-owned businesses with a fairly conservative ethos that manage to do well in spite of complete technological illiteracy.
  - woodpanel 6y ago
    Having worked in multiple German Blue Chips, my 5 cents: - Brain-drain, likely (US vs German salaries is a joke) but also likely offset by brain-gain from other places (in my experience only Scandinavia, Netherlands and Switzerland beat German salaries, lately) - safety-seeking culture draws the wrong people to the big corps. The more of them there are, the worse productivity and innovation gets. - because of their appeal to masses of safety-seeking underperformers wages at German blue-chips are usually noticeably lower than at consultancies or Mittelstand, pushing away even those few talented they did recruit - keeping talented and motivated people long-term is even harder because if enough of the wrong there are, you’ll often have strictly defined career-options, so that e.g. after 10 years you cannot possibly get another raise unless you stop engineering and do Inner-corporate bureaucracy work. - I’ve seen niches in these companies where people shield their team / unit from that mess, pro-actively outsmarting the corporate machine (e.g. hacking the hiring process, securing backing from CEOs, pushing for technological visions...) Those units have a big draw on inner-company talent, but are limited in how much talent they can take into care. Working there is very pleasant. As maybe highlighted by the fact that these guys are more likely aware that their pay is an insult, but they stay regardless.
eru 6y ago
Interesting! I would have expected competition with eg Aldi would have kept them on their toes?
IshKebab 6y ago
> The whole corporation is basically a 2-person-empire (the only two people that own shares and have taken the thing from 1 store to ~13k stores globally). They make every major call, and even random minor calls. It should be mentioned that they are 72 and 80 years old, respectively. Sounds very similar to Dyson. The biggest problem is that nobody wants to make decisions because what's the point when James Dyson is just going to come along and casually overruled it? Especially frustrating if it's something he isn't interested in.

ljf 6y ago

I was running a stall at a graduate careers fair and was amazed at the interest both Aldi and Lidl were getting. Both had amazing starting salaries - I think Aldi was £48k rising to £70k over 3 years if you went on the area manager scheme. Plus a car. The teams there were so enthusiastic and energised and appeared to really really enjoy their jobs. I am impressed by any company that consistently looks after their staff financially and otherwise.

valzam 6y ago
I don't have firsthand experience but from what I know those salaries come with very high expectations. Things like "you have to drive to some random neighborhood on a Sunday to check that flyers were being delivered correctly'.
- benjohnson1707 6y ago
  Once you're in a managing position, expectations can be high. Depends on the department however. Everything that is core business related (purchasing, logistics, store management) can be insane. Especially IT is a joke, mostly. But that's just my perspective.

paganel 6y ago

> Salaries are off the charts Just to add another data point, Lidl is also the retailer that pays the best market salaries in the Eastern-European country where I live in (they actually included that in several of their hiring ads), and I'm talking about shop people like cashiers and the people that put things on the shelves. > They are getting into the car sales and recycle business as well. In here they've also opened a tourism agency that does quite well (or used to do before the virus hit). I agree though about the big difference between the German and US management. I have a close friend that works at the regional Lidl HQ and she got reprimanded just after being hired for having used the singular "you" (less formal) instead of the plural "you" (I'm not sure how it translates into German) when addressing herself to her bosses on the company's hallways (said friend used to work for a big US company before moving to Lidl). She was lucky though because not a week after her arrival there was a company-wide email coming from the powers that be instructing the employees to use the less formal singular "you" instead of the more formal plural "you", to which all the employees in the company acquiesced.

occamrazor 6y ago
I guess you mean the 2nd person form (du or ihr fir singular or plural) instead of the 3rd person plural (Sie), which is the courtesy form fir singular and plural. Yes, in German it’s a big deal, roughly the same as saying “Hey dude” instead of “Good morning Mr Smith”.
- chx 6y ago
  Parent says Eastern European country, well, I had the bad luck to be born in Hungary (am Canadian now), and I fully understand what happened. It's a generation divide. I am 45 and I am one of the oldest for whom it doesn't matter and looks downright outdated but even to many in my age cohort and especially older it's exceptionally offensive, irrespectful to use the familiar form of "you". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_noun_phrase#Forms_for_%22you%22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_noun_phrase#Forms_fo... With a huge emphasis on irrespectful -- it's downright disdainful to call someone so without asking for permission to address them so. There is a tradition -- or rather was -- where they used to toast on the occassion of switching from formal address to informal. It's that big of a deal: there was a ritual, simple as it was, on switching the form of address. In the 1920-30s the gendarmerie used to address everyone informally and it was really offensive and a form of asserting dominance -- it was always the superior, the elder who offered the inferior, the younger to switch from formal to informal thus the gendarmerie not even offering just using it declared they are vastly superior to everyone. And the phrase still exists for such offensive behaviour. It really is -- or rather was -- a big deal. I am saying, it was, because starting the late 90s with the spread of Internet and pseudo-anonimity all this just became outdated -- you had no idea whom you are talking to so observing the old rules were impossible. And those who have grown up with this simply didn't bother learning the rules. For me, when I was 18, it was a Big Deal that at our high school graduation party our class leader teacher allowed everyone to switch from formal to informal. It was basically the only time in my life when something like that happened, then I started using the 'Net shortly after (all this was in '93) and this stuff was just washed away.

asjw 6y ago

> Salaries are off the charts Are they? I received few offers from them and their salaries where in par with what I earn in Italy (around 100k) which is very good for Europe but not as much as SV

ChuckNorris89 6y ago
Just out of curiosity what do you do that earns you 100k in Italy if I may ask? Most Italians I met working in Austria and Germany left Italy because of low salaries and they're not making anything close to 100k here either. I've even met Italians who moved to Eastern Europe for higher tech salaries than back home so something doesn't add up.
- delcaran 6y ago
  Can confirm. As senior software developer I made 25K EUR in 2019.
  - niwork 6y ago
    That's a very poor salary for your job, if you don't mind me saying. Are you in Italy? What's the cost of living like? Salaries in Europe are generally quite low for devs compared to the US. I think it's best in the UK. Starting salary will average ~£25k, rising to ~£35k as you get more senior, then maybe £~45-55k one you're 5-10 years in. This is excluding London and contract-based work, of course.
    - ido 6y ago
      In Germany at the senior (10+ years) scale €70k/year is not unusual & if you work for the better paid companies (like google) you can expect significantly more.
      - niwork 6y ago
        What about starting salaries, salaries at 2 years, 5 years etc.?

chx 6y ago

> Stratechery posting about why Google failed with GCP I believe you meant https://stratechery.com/2019/the-value-chain-constraint/ https://stratechery.com/2019/the-value-chain-constraint/

moonlgn 6y ago

I worked in the Real Estate Dept at Lidl for a (very) short time, awful company. Never have I seen people being treated so badly, especially in stores. Their IT was an absolute joke back then, we had to use a 20-year-old ERP and most of the work was done on paper. Thinking that these guys could take on AWS sounds ludicrous to me. However, they are cost-killers and hyper-aggressive when it comes to selling, so this might even work...

odiroot 6y ago

> They are getting into the car sales and recycle business as well. Just to give you an impression. They were also supposed to get into housing.

StreamBright 6y ago

>> The Cloud idea very likely was acquired together with a former SAP cloud sales VP. Here is the difference: Core Schwarz DNA is selling packed soup to end customers at a crazy scale, without even intervening in the whole process. Core DNA SAP is a large scale enterprise sales. Go read the Stratechery posting about why Google failed with GCP to understand why Schwarz should not do this. This is exactly what I have guessed. Many people think that replicating AWS is just the question of money. It is not. Most of the great datacenter people are hired by AWS, MS and Google. These are the guys who can think of cost efficient reliable solutions, quite often inventing new things in the process that the outside world has no idea. I was watching countless videos while working for Amazon about the data center tech. Mind blown, every single time. I seriously doubt that the Schwarz group will be able to attract the talent to replicate this. Many of the AWS guys are life timers, do not care about money. What is a more likely scenario that they will burn through a few billion EUR before realizing that they know nothing about cloud computing and cut their losses. It is going to be interesting to watch though.

jawns 6y ago
> Many of the AWS guys are life timers, do not care about money I've heard, anecdotally, that Amazon/AWS engineers tend to be more money-driven than others in the same tier, or at least they're willing to put up with a lot more headaches because of the money. Is that a misconception? If not money, then what keeps them there?
- eru 6y ago
  I used to work for Google and have friends at Amazon. Google definitely seems to have the better working conditions. The impact on the world you have is probably similar. So relatively speaking, I'd expect people at Amazon to be into it for the money more.
  - mrep 6y ago
    Google pays better than amazon though and if you really want money, you go to facebook as they are known for top pay and promoting you really fast if you are willing to put in the hours. Granted, this is assuming you can get into each one and there is some luck in that so a lot of people are just where they could get in.

TulliusCicero 6y ago

> Salaries are off the charts (it would make senior software engineers in SV look pale). I have a hard time believing this, given that senior engineers at places like Google or Facebook are making 300k+.

dubcanada 6y ago
According to https://www.comparably.com/companies/lidl/salaries/software-engineer https://www.comparably.com/companies/lidl/salaries/software-... and glassdoor senior software engineers are around 150k to 200k and directors are around 200k to 300k. So they are largely comparable to SV salaries at Google/Facebook. Which means since Google/Facebook pay more than average, they are above average for SV. And that's at places like Berlin which are cheaper to live than SV.
- TulliusCicero 6y ago
  GP said that the salaries would make senior engineers in Silicon Valley pale. That implies that they're much higher. Instead, they're actually much lower, as I suspected. This is true even for the senior engineers, at around half the compensation or so; for the principal engineers and directors, working somewhere like Google or FB gets you 3-5x what's quoted for Lidl. > So they are largely comparable to SV salaries at Google/Facebook This is completely wrong. Compensation for senior engineers at Google/FB is around 350k USD: https://www.levels.fyi/# https://www.levels.fyi/# > And that's at places like Berlin which are cheaper to live than SV. Agreed. Nevertheless, the salaries aren't going to make any senior engineers in SV "pale", when they're half as much.
  - benjohnson1707 6y ago
    Agreed! Let me clarify: high wages, once you're an engineering manager it's probably comparable. However, you're not nearly as relevant, from a value-sdd perspective. FAANG etc. are software companies. Lidl is an offline retailer. So top notch engineering there is not nearly as critical as for a company like facebook. So let me rephrase: way more buck for way less bang! But a fair critique! Thanks for pointing out.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

_pmf_ 6y ago

> they are getting into the car sales and recycle business To be fair, the recycle business is basically "free money" in Germany.

k__ 6y ago

"skill level did not take off so much" Big problem in German enterprise. They don't have any IT skills, but much money and are constantly crying for "digital transformation" what usually only leads them to being conned by big consulting agencies.

bencw 6y ago
Why is this? Is there a brain drain going on?
- enitihas 6y ago
  Should be. The salary disparity in US and EU is immense.
  - fileeditview 6y ago
    And on the other side so are the healthcare and public services. I don't think there is a big scale brain drain to the US. I am doing the job for about 6-7 years and I don't know a single dev that went to the US. But I know many devs that came from other european countries and even the US.
- Bayart 6y ago
  Not really. The difference in salary isn't enough incentive for people to leave Western Europe at scale. You'll still live very well as a STEM graduate in France/Benelux/Germany. It's just a cultural thing. Germany has tons of family-owned businesses with a fairly conservative ethos that manage to do well in spite of complete technological illiteracy.
- woodpanel 6y ago
  Having worked in multiple German Blue Chips, my 5 cents: - Brain-drain, likely (US vs German salaries is a joke) but also likely offset by brain-gain from other places (in my experience only Scandinavia, Netherlands and Switzerland beat German salaries, lately) - safety-seeking culture draws the wrong people to the big corps. The more of them there are, the worse productivity and innovation gets. - because of their appeal to masses of safety-seeking underperformers wages at German blue-chips are usually noticeably lower than at consultancies or Mittelstand, pushing away even those few talented they did recruit - keeping talented and motivated people long-term is even harder because if enough of the wrong there are, you’ll often have strictly defined career-options, so that e.g. after 10 years you cannot possibly get another raise unless you stop engineering and do Inner-corporate bureaucracy work. - I’ve seen niches in these companies where people shield their team / unit from that mess, pro-actively outsmarting the corporate machine (e.g. hacking the hiring process, securing backing from CEOs, pushing for technological visions...) Those units have a big draw on inner-company talent, but are limited in how much talent they can take into care. Working there is very pleasant. As maybe highlighted by the fact that these guys are more likely aware that their pay is an insult, but they stay regardless.

eru 6y ago

Interesting! I would have expected competition with eg Aldi would have kept them on their toes?

IshKebab 6y ago

> The whole corporation is basically a 2-person-empire (the only two people that own shares and have taken the thing from 1 store to ~13k stores globally). They make every major call, and even random minor calls. It should be mentioned that they are 72 and 80 years old, respectively. Sounds very similar to Dyson. The biggest problem is that nobody wants to make decisions because what's the point when James Dyson is just going to come along and casually overruled it? Especially frustrating if it's something he isn't interested in.