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Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

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Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#61

https://twitter.com/dkberman/status/875701677504024576 "Amazon did not just buy Whole Foods grocery stores. It bought 431 upper-income, prime-location distribution nodes for everything it does."

I don't think that is right, Whole Foods stores are already full of...food. They don't have room for hundreds of additional products, never mind tens of thousands.

Yeah, and I can't imagine the kind of places Whole Foods is located making any kind of sense as a warehouse.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#63
post #10

Oof. I wonder what this means for Whole Foods culture and employees. If you don't know, John Mackey, the CEO / founder, is a major believer in conscious capitalism and of empowering his employees. Whole Food employees get paid pretty darn well with some crazy good benefits for their industry and line-of-work (UNION FREE most of the time too!). WF banks on them being true believers and motivators of the cause - includ…

Disclaimer: I work for AWS, but my opinions are my own. I don't think you have much to worry about if you're a WF employee. Amazon actually treats their employees very well. In my experience here, I've never seen any of the things the NY times article talked about, either on my team or any other team I've interacted with. People have a healthy work/life balance (40-50 hours a week), get paid very well (definitely abo…

I mean to be fair, most of the jobs at WF stores ARE unskilled labor though.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#64
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I fully agree that it's great to see employees treated well, Whole Foods is not an example that you can be a successful capitalist this way. They worked well for a while but the reason they got bought now is because they struggled over the past years. Probably unrelated to their treatment of employees (US groceries is very competitive at the moment) but AMZN didn't buy a hugely successful company.

The day I sell a company for $13Bn I will declare myself successful. Not everything is going to be a a half a trillion dollar company.

I think what they might be talking about is that Whole Foods has had a rocky few quarters and might be forced to sell, where they wouldn't have sold in a different circumstance.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#65

https://twitter.com/dkberman/status/875701677504024576 "Amazon did not just buy Whole Foods grocery stores. It bought 431 upper-income, prime-location distribution nodes for everything it does."

$13.7B / 431 = $31.79m per store. I have zero experience with real estate prices for retail outlets, but it feels as if that's a bit on the high end?

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#66
post #10

Oof. I wonder what this means for Whole Foods culture and employees. If you don't know, John Mackey, the CEO / founder, is a major believer in conscious capitalism and of empowering his employees. Whole Food employees get paid pretty darn well with some crazy good benefits for their industry and line-of-work (UNION FREE most of the time too!). WF banks on them being true believers and motivators of the cause - includ…

Disclaimer: I work for AWS, but my opinions are my own. I don't think you have much to worry about if you're a WF employee. Amazon actually treats their employees very well. In my experience here, I've never seen any of the things the NY times article talked about, either on my team or any other team I've interacted with. People have a healthy work/life balance (40-50 hours a week), get paid very well (definitely abo…

> I know that there are some stories about bad experiences in the fulfillment centers, but keep in mind that those positions are temporary seasonal work by unskilled labor. That's a completely different environment than full time employees work in.

But probably more similar to most jobs in a grocery store than a software engineering position.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#67
Amazon wants to kill retail and their biggest threat is Walmart. Walmart currently uses groceries as a way to get people in stores and when they're in the store they buy other things as well.

Now imagine if you are Amazon and you'd like all those people going to Walmart to just use your services. If I could get my groceries delivered to my door and only need to go to stores once in a blue moon I'd be really happy.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#68
post #10

Oof. I wonder what this means for Whole Foods culture and employees. If you don't know, John Mackey, the CEO / founder, is a major believer in conscious capitalism and of empowering his employees. Whole Food employees get paid pretty darn well with some crazy good benefits for their industry and line-of-work (UNION FREE most of the time too!). WF banks on them being true believers and motivators of the cause - includ…

> Here comes store automation and hefty lay-offs? ... or just expand and move people to new stores. Seriously, what's the yearly turnover for front-line positions?

At least in my experience, a lot of employees at the store live and die for the company. Tons of growth / mobility. Lots of 5+ year long employees...

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#69

Aw, poor Blue Apron.

Blue Apron is not a good company relative to the other meal kit delivery services anyway. Their recipes are overly simplistic and their whole experience using UX dark patterns limiting which meals one can get in combination turned me off, and misleading people regarding cancellation. The higher quality meal kits like Home Chef won't have this problem because they give you, for about the same price, more complex recip…

I felt the opposite way; the recipes I got when I tried Blue Apron were more trouble than I really wanted to bother with on a weeknight.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#70
post #10

Oof. I wonder what this means for Whole Foods culture and employees. If you don't know, John Mackey, the CEO / founder, is a major believer in conscious capitalism and of empowering his employees. Whole Food employees get paid pretty darn well with some crazy good benefits for their industry and line-of-work (UNION FREE most of the time too!). WF banks on them being true believers and motivators of the cause - includ…

Disclaimer: I work for AWS, but my opinions are my own. I don't think you have much to worry about if you're a WF employee. Amazon actually treats their employees very well. In my experience here, I've never seen any of the things the NY times article talked about, either on my team or any other team I've interacted with. People have a healthy work/life balance (40-50 hours a week), get paid very well (definitely abo…

Yes, but fulfillment center employees are likely much more comparable to whole foods employees than software developers, in terms of education, job responsibilities, ease of replacement, etc. So that's probably who we should be looking at anyway
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