Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 865 posts

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#221

Post by emodendroket »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #159
VT_Drew wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good old investors, so short sighted, they only care about the next 3 months. Whole Foods probably would have been better off as private company, especially with the culture they were trying to create.

> Good old investors, so short sighted, they only care about the next 3 months. Yeah, darn those investors. How dare people with pensions, 401k's, IRAs, and other investments expect some kind of return on their investment? It's disgraceful. /s EDIT: The sentiment against investors is rather ironic considering the amount of equity collectively held by HN readers.

I don't think you can really equate "activist investors" with workaday people with IRAs.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#222

Post by tuna-piano »

cercatrova wrote: post #202

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cA2-iMz479o I watched this video a while ago about what Amazon Go is a precursor for. In summary, if AWS is renting out server infrastructure for people, then you can imagine that Amazon can make the infrastructure to lease out Amazon Go to other stores. They first integrate it with Whole Foods, then as customers expect no more checkout areas, they will only go to Whole Foods because i…

Counterpoint... is Amazon Go really that difficult to build? If given three years, do you not think a different software company can build a similar system as well? Is this type of system really a winner-take-all market?

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#224

Post by awgneo »

dx034 wrote: post #178
lwlml wrote: post #153

Amazon is now (or more so now) like Evil Corp in the Mr. Robot kind of way. You can ship your Evil groceries via Evil Prime purchased via voice-command with your Evil assistant device paid for with your Evil credit-card. Evil. Frankly I don't buy as much from WF anymore considering that what they carry is much more like "organic junk-food" than actual food. If you really want to support the "cause", find yourself a l…

They don't offer bank accounts yet. Only then Mr Robot could come and change the world by hacking them /s

They do offer credit cards through third parties. They also have the Amazon payment service that allows third parties to process transactions through Amazon.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#225

Post by cercatrova »

honestoHeminway wrote: post #184
dpratt wrote: post #72

I wonder how long until the first beta of Elastic Grocery System?

How long till somebody develops the UBER of groceries? Your neighbour could do your shopping for you.

Like a decentralized Instacart, interesting.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#226

Post by j2bax »

illumin8 wrote: post #93
opportune wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what unskilled means in this context. It just means that they are easily replaceable and not specialized. You can have respect for people as individuals while recognizing that the job they do could be done by just about anybody (the definition of unskilled)

A pastry chef is unskilled?

A pastry chef is to WF what an AWS engineer is to Amazon.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#227

Post by thomasthomas »

aerovistae wrote: post #193
tmaly wrote: post #134

Grocery stores are a tough market with razor thin margins. Whole Foods has a ton of competitors like Trader Joes that happens to still have organic options. Since I did not see it asked, any idea if we will see some new Prime benefit at Wholefoods?

Out of curiosity, what's your insight into grocery store profit margins? Were you an exec at a grocery chain, or something giving a similar window into their numbers?

they're called 10-k's. https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&S...

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#228

Post by H1Supreme »

sbarre wrote: post #161
Joakal wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Treating them above market or not, Amazon acquired the company for billions and not because Whole Foods was doing badly.

How many of those billions will the average employee get to see?

-$1,000's, most likely. Unless they have good contracts (which they probably don't).

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#229

Post by petepete »

dx034 wrote: post #178
lwlml wrote: post #153

Amazon is now (or more so now) like Evil Corp in the Mr. Robot kind of way. You can ship your Evil groceries via Evil Prime purchased via voice-command with your Evil assistant device paid for with your Evil credit-card. Evil. Frankly I don't buy as much from WF anymore considering that what they carry is much more like "organic junk-food" than actual food. If you really want to support the "cause", find yourself a l…

They don't offer bank accounts yet. Only then Mr Robot could come and change the world by hacking them /s

Not quite on Samsung's level in Korea, yet.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#230

Post by krapp »

illumin8 wrote: post #55
_7siz wrote: 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…

>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.

Some positions are temporary seasonal labor, but Amazon employs people full time in their fulfillment centers as well, and they work hard trying to convert the former into the latter.

Where I am (near Austin, TX), Amazon is running a campaign to recruit UT students with the promise of "tuition assistance." The way they treat their FC employees has nothing at all to do with their relative skill level, educational background or expected tenure. They've also been pushing 60 hour mandatory overtime for over a month for some shifts and they pay well under the cost of living for the area in which they operate, and I expect that represents the general treatment of the majority of Amazon employees, because there are far more of them at the bottom of the pyramid than the top.

I don't doubt the engineers are doing well, though. They probably get chairs to sit in and everything.

Post reply on HN