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At the time of the takeover, Jet was doing pretty innovative tech while walmart had a very terrible ecommerce offering. Jet used to have this thing where they w

At the time of the takeover, Jet was doing pretty innovative tech while walmart had a very terrible ecommerce offering. Jet used to have this thing where they would offer you live-calculated discounts on items that were in the same FC as items already in your cart since those items would cost them less to ship. It was kinda gimmicky, but it sure was a cool tech demo. I strongly believe that Jet was a longer-term acquihire, and this kinda confirms that. Aside: Jet's HQ is in my hometown. I considered interviewing there after a coworker went there, but being bought by walmart really soured me on it. Stodgy company that strongly discourages things like alcohol in the office. Fine, I don't need to drink at work, but weird. I hope they're able to transfer Jet's good tech branding and hiring pipeline to "walmart labs" or whatever they're rebranding jet's org as.

mattmanser 6y ago
Silly thing to pick on. I like a drink with co-workers, but totally understandable not to at work, especially as a lot of their workers definitely couldn't because it'd be dangerous. Or do you think it should be one rule for the richly paid programmers, and another for the low paid warehouse workers?
- dropofwill 6y ago
  I’ve read that it’s common in Germany to drink a liter of beer or so at work, even in manufacturing. Besides the drinking thing one of my friends said they were trying to ban swearing as well?
  - ryanianian 6y ago
    Ya. Walmart is a very “middle American values” company. Fine, but just unpleasant if you’re not used to it.
- ryanianian 6y ago
  It’s like companies requiring a tie. Fine. A tie is easy to put on. But if you’re requiring that all of a sudden what other rules do I have to worry about being added? I guarantee you random tech company X would see attrition if they enacted a business-casual dress-code. Same with booze.
  - mattmanser 6y ago
    Booze is different. Booze is a drug that makes people do silly things. You can almost guarantee that before they brought in this rule, some guy groped a girl while drunk after drinking at the office. That's the size they're at. There's a world of legal difference when that happens under your roof, or after work.
    - ryanianian 6y ago
      This is skewing off-topic, but prohibiting alcohol is not going to stop people from drinking it, nor is it going to stop people from doing silly/gropy things at the office. A ban only conveys contempt and mistrust of employees. Focus on toxic culture that makes people feel like they need to drink or are entitled to grope.
kevstev 6y ago
That timing coincided with two pretty big unrelated things. Walmart had been rebuilding their backend systems on this monolithic system called Pangaea that was several years late and drained most of the resources of the engineering org during that period. They finally started emerging from the hole around the end of 2016 and could actually focus on the customer and building the business. Walmart Grocery had just started taking off. By 2017 it had become a 10 figure business- and by some analysis it was concluded that online grocery sales only eat away at in-store grocery sales by a tiny amount, so this was wholly attributed to e-commerce. And then there was the direct bolt-on of Jet's revenue streams into the e-commerce results of Walmart as a whole, as well as a lot of other acquisitions. I am not saying Lore didn't have a hand in their growth, but the stage was set well for him.

mattmanser 6y ago

Silly thing to pick on. I like a drink with co-workers, but totally understandable not to at work, especially as a lot of their workers definitely couldn't because it'd be dangerous. Or do you think it should be one rule for the richly paid programmers, and another for the low paid warehouse workers?

dropofwill 6y ago
I’ve read that it’s common in Germany to drink a liter of beer or so at work, even in manufacturing. Besides the drinking thing one of my friends said they were trying to ban swearing as well?
- ryanianian 6y ago
  Ya. Walmart is a very “middle American values” company. Fine, but just unpleasant if you’re not used to it.
ryanianian 6y ago
It’s like companies requiring a tie. Fine. A tie is easy to put on. But if you’re requiring that all of a sudden what other rules do I have to worry about being added? I guarantee you random tech company X would see attrition if they enacted a business-casual dress-code. Same with booze.
- mattmanser 6y ago
  Booze is different. Booze is a drug that makes people do silly things. You can almost guarantee that before they brought in this rule, some guy groped a girl while drunk after drinking at the office. That's the size they're at. There's a world of legal difference when that happens under your roof, or after work.
  - ryanianian 6y ago
    This is skewing off-topic, but prohibiting alcohol is not going to stop people from drinking it, nor is it going to stop people from doing silly/gropy things at the office. A ban only conveys contempt and mistrust of employees. Focus on toxic culture that makes people feel like they need to drink or are entitled to grope.

kevstev 6y ago

That timing coincided with two pretty big unrelated things. Walmart had been rebuilding their backend systems on this monolithic system called Pangaea that was several years late and drained most of the resources of the engineering org during that period. They finally started emerging from the hole around the end of 2016 and could actually focus on the customer and building the business. Walmart Grocery had just started taking off. By 2017 it had become a 10 figure business- and by some analysis it was concluded that online grocery sales only eat away at in-store grocery sales by a tiny amount, so this was wholly attributed to e-commerce. And then there was the direct bolt-on of Jet's revenue streams into the e-commerce results of Walmart as a whole, as well as a lot of other acquisitions. I am not saying Lore didn't have a hand in their growth, but the stage was set well for him.