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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

#291

Post by dpark »

uji wrote: post #248
illumin8 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 don't think this is completely true. I was with AWS for 3 years as SW engineer and was working around 12 hours until I decided to switch. AWS has pretty messed up softwar services with lot of technical debt. Rather than fixing these, AWS relies on oncall (pager duty) to mitigate production issues. My team use to get 200 pages a week.

I've heard similar stories from several AWS engineers who were looking to leave or recently left. I can believe that pieces of AWS have good culture, because AWS is a large set of services and it's inevitable that it's not 100% consistent across the entire organization. But I also fully believe that parts of AWS are "duct taped together and on fire" because I've heard it from multiple sources.

I've never had anyone in person tell me that Amazon was a good place to work unless they were trying to recruit me.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#292

Post by tedmiston »

ccorda wrote: post #106
maxerickson wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Place an order by noon for groceries plus anything you want from Amazon. Amazon fills up truck(s) at whatehouse and drops off at local Whole Foods. Stop by on your way home from work and they bring your items to your car. You get free same day delivery. Amazon just greatly saved on last mile delivery costs. That's the value of those nodes without having to store all the inventory.

> You get free same day delivery. Amazon just greatly saved on last mile delivery costs.

I'm under the impression this is something they're really trying to optimize right now. Not sure if it's everywhere but where I live in Cincinnati, Amazon is now operating their own courier service for normal Prime deliveries piggybacking on top of Prime Now drivers.

When you place an order (on regular Amazon.com) you don't necessarily know whether it will come from UPS, FedEx, an Amazon courier, etc. The Amazon couriers don't seem to know that it's not a Prime Now order and that the delivery time isn't known in advance to the customer like it is with Prime Now, as they show up midday and call you (from an unknown number) anticipating you'd be at home and asking you to let them in the gate.

One unexpected problem that emerges here is that the standard delivery service courier for a route is regular and that one person can be given a gate key; much harder to solve that with dozens or hundreds of couriers.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#293

Post by deelowe »

StevePerkins wrote: post #22

Wow... all the articles I've been reading about Whole Foods lately deal with how they're hurting, and losing market share to more affordable competitors like Trader Joe's. If this is about Amazon thinking they can turn things around for Whole Foods, then it will certainly mean drastic changes to price, selection, and employee structure. If this is about Amazon using a brick-and-mortar chain as a tool to help Amazon's…

I think this is more about amazon easily acquiring a ton of retail space for it's JIT order deliver business. I'm starting to think they're actually serious about this drone delivery stuff.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#294

Post by marrone12 »

tuna-piano wrote: post #152
tuna-piano wrote: post #92

I'm confused. Amazon is known to work backward from an imagined future press release, and then do the actions necessary to make that press release. How does Amazon see the future in this case? -Amazon already has PrimeNow and Amazon Fresh, which offer a great grocery delivery service. For those who have tried these services, it's easy to see how addicting they are vs going to a physical store. -I can't see Amazon usi…

One thought. People still like food and food things and being social, and the "farmers market" feeling. Even in a future which makes online grocery great for mundane shopping, people still need stuff to do. Whole Foods already has bars, cafes, and restaurants. Maybe Whole Foods locations turn into places where people can hang out, try new things, and buy online grocery delivery (or pickup delivery as well)? Who shoul…

Yeah, I wonder how this is going to affect Blue Apron's upcoming IPO. My guess is for the worse.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#295

Post by Chaebixi »

xutopia wrote: post #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.

> 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.

Walmart groceries is a sad and pretty recent phenomenon. It got people in the stores just with cheap prices long before they had groceries.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#296

Post by magic_beans »

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?

It's not that pastry chef's are unskilled, but they are very easily replaceable. It's really difficult for culinary school grads to find work because of the influx.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#297

Post by dsfyu404ed »

hew wrote: post #129

This is a Walmart counterattack. Walmart is on the verge of capturing large swathes of busy "middle-class buyer" pickup orders. Amazon saw it and responded quickly.

Busy middle class buyers don't go to whole foods except for definitions of middle that are inclusive enough to appease the diversity committee at UCB.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#298

Post by dsfyu404ed »

Chaebixi wrote: post #295
xutopia wrote: post #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.

> 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. Walmart groceries is a sad and pretty recent phenomenon. It got people in the stores just with cheap prices long before they had groceries.

Walmart only has good grocery selection at super-centers for the most part

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#300

Post by hosh »

euroclydon wrote: post #190
rayiner wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of time when companies like that get acquired, someone is hoping to profit on the difference between the purchase price, and the value of the company when the management culture switches to wringing every last bit of productivity out of employees. Amazon might have a more strategic goal, but the above strategy is a common one.

Well Amazon is not sitting on hordes of cash, just looking to diversify. This is a strategic move for them. I'd say the odds are greater than 50% that WF culture, and in turn the store experience, gets worse. I mean, Amazon had the choice to not turn their website into a flea market, and we know how that went.

Not sure, but hearing about how Amazon is running into trouble with their grocery stores, they might want to learn something from Whole Foods (similar to Zappos).

There was also an article that talked about the brilliance of Amazon biz organization. Business units are set up like API interfaces, ones that serve both internal needs as well as external customers. The author's claim is that it helps trim the fat, with what was normally internal services being exposed to market forces. It makes me also wonder about WF's fate from that perspective.

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