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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

#461

Post by anigbrowl »

fivestar wrote: post #406
irfanka wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly the reason why there aren't any Software Developer Unions these days.

Intelligent people capable of negotiating their pay in a market such as that for software development would only be encumbered by unions. Are there warts? Sure there are. Nothing is perfect.

But software devs don't have a professional structure either, as doctors, lawyers, and engineers do, and arguably the industry is the worse for it.

Are there warts? Sure there are. Nothing is perfect.

Isn't that equally true for collective undertakings?

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#462

Post by wlesieutre »

jimbokun wrote: post #254
creepydata wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think it shows that you can be a successful capitalist without trying to suck every ounce of productivity and profit out of your lowest-paid employees. Another example of this is Wegmans - http://www.cbsnews.com/news/could-this-be-the-best-company-i... https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/05/13/why-w... http://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/why-do-so-many-people-... http://m.csmonitor.com/Business/The-…

"Alec Baldwin spoke on David Letterman about his mother's refusal to leave upstate New York because there are no Wegmans stores in Los Angeles." Ha, I think that's one of the most ringing endorsements of a business I've ever read.

Having moved from an area with Wegmans to one without, I can sympathize. They're in Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York, but Connecticut is a sad dead spot in the middle.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#463

Post by 20years »

Does anyone else think that this purchase is largely in part so they can get AmazonFresh in a lot more places quickly?

In my area where there is a big college campus, they have been hiring for AmazonFresh devs for over a year. We have no AmazonFresh here but we do have a Whole Foods.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#464

Post by seanmcdirmid »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #318
hosh wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

WF most likely will fail under Amazon (if WF must adapt to Amazon's business methods), opening the market for local competitors and similar national chains to absorb that market share. Great opportunity for Aldi on the low end and Trader Joe's on the high end. Groceries are not APIs.

> Aldi on the low end and Trader Joe's on the high end

Trader Joe's has limited selection and is mostly on the cheap side, often even cheaper than Ralph's in SoCal. Its the place I go for cheap produce that just happens to be organic/natural/etc... (though I don't really care about the latter).

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#465

Post by jorblumesea »

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…

It's interesting to hear these stories, because when I was looking for a job, naturally I talked to all my friends that had worked at Amazon at one point. Out of maybe 6 people, 4 had some pretty negative things to say. These are all career SDEs/SW/SDETs, but on very different teams and divisions.

I once had a coworker that walked into the building, and said that morale was so low people would start crying when they were paged. Gave back his signing bonus and resigned immediately.

Completely anecdotal stories obviously. Not saying you're wrong, but you may be the outlier?

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#466

Post by dceddia »

SmellTheGlove wrote: post #354
ghaff wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're pretty common in Massachusetts as well. Agreed. Need to be able to place order at lunchtime and pick up on the way home.

Just wait for Market Basket to do it. Everyone will follow. We got a Market Basket in Maine I think 2 years ago - in Biddeford. No joke, you'd think it were Six Flags with the traffic it gets on the weekends.

We got a few Wegmans in Massachusetts, same thing. It's crazy on weekends.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#467

Post by burkaman »

wavefunction wrote: post #435

I wouldn't say obviously. From my perspective Obamacare is fascist even as I support it compared to the alternatives save single-payer national healthcare. What other ideology than fascism best describes government coercion of its citizens to engage in business relationships with the insurance companies to ensure their profits remain at certain levels?

I agree with Mackey, I don't have a good word for it. Fascism is not a good word for it, it means "an authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization." This usually results in government control of industry, but that's not the defining feature of the ideology.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#468

Post by markshead »

pc86 wrote: post #267
dx034 wrote: 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.

It's a $13 billion sale. I struggle to see the scenario under which that is considered a failure. Most start-ups that get $120k from YC are considered a success here. Someone selling their struggling CRUD app to Amazon for $13 million would probably be considered a success here. But the $13 billion sale of a public company is a bunch of hemming and hawing about what the stock was worth a few years ago. I'm not saying…

> I struggle to see the scenario under which that is considered a failure.

Wasn't Whole Foods valued at over $20 billion a few years ago? If you bought Whole Foods stock at that point (either as an outside investor or an employee) it might feel like Amazon is buying it for $13 billion because Whole Foods has been having trouble staying competitive in the market.

Of course, if you actually started the company $13 billion may be a very big success if your goal was to sell.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#469

Post by anigbrowl »

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.

Your comment rests on the implicit premise that investors were getting no return worth talking about. There's a big space between not getting and adequate return and squeezing out every last bit of profit.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#470

Post by dceddia »

tedmiston wrote: post #292
ccorda wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 neces…

I'm seeing this where I live too, near Boston. Many of my Amazon deliveries have been coming in white Amazon vans for a little while now. I still get things from UPS occasionally but it's increasingly those white Amazon vans.
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