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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

#531

Post by JackFr »

quantdev wrote: post #164
JackFr wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one has given more disposable income to poor people than Wal-Mart and Amazon. It just hasn't come in the form of wages.

To your first statement, is this even true of Amazon? In the US, Amazon Prime has something like 80% penetration into households making >= $100k/year. This move into Whole Foods reaffirms this focus on high-income households, where convenience is often as large a factor as costs. My hunch is that Amazon has been a massive positive in aggregate , but poor households have been negatively impacted by Amazon, taking into…

> To your first statement, is this even true of Amazon?

Definitely, to the extent that Amazon puts pressure on everyone selling commodity goods.

To your second point, it's not obvious to me that Amazon has cost jobs at the lowest rungs.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#532

Post by samstave »

harrisreynolds wrote: post #334

HUGE news in the grocery delivery space. Groceries are one of the few large markets that require some proximity to customers due to costs and spoilage. Each grocery store is a type of mini-distribution center for grocery products. Shipt and Instacart have succeeded to date because they use existing distribution channels and set up marketplaces for the "last-mile" of delivery. This is in contrast to Webvan in the earl…

I'm just sad that true disruption isn't happening in the grocery/food sectors; buying WF, or throwing tech at food isn't a solution that will reduce food costs or feed more people...

I'd rather see someone create a business that makes it so that anyone on minimum wage can support and healthily feed a family.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#533

Post by jhall1468 »

alphonsegaston wrote: post #495
jhall1468 wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a fair supposition Why? Reviewing any of Amazon's acquisitions shows that they have revenue targets that, when met, means they just don't get involved. Why suppose they are suddenly going to do the opposite now?

When you have a documented record of mistreating you're employees, both white and blue collar, the onus is on you to rectify the situation and demonstrate that you'll behave better in the future. Amazon has done neither of these things. It's entirely "fair" to posit that a company with a documented record of abusive workplace practices might extend that same umbrella of mistreatment over an acquisition. Even more so…

> When you have a documented record of mistreating you're employees, both white

Yes, the infamous NYT story. It's funny, because I've yet to see all the ugly that story implied was wide-spread across the company. AWS can be notoriously difficult (particularly the not-so-fun S3 on-calls).

But there's an enormous difference between a wide-spread problem, and a problem that seems to be focused, very narrowly, on a few teams.

> Amazon has done neither of these things.

You say that with authority. Do you have ANY familiarity with Amazon's internal policies/changes that have gone into affect regarding these news stories?

Here's my problem: A company of some 300,000 people had documented cases of mistreatment. You've, in turn, determined that not only is this problem so wide-spread that we can define Amazon as a "bad employer" but, apparently, they need to take the time to personally inform you of any changes that have been made as a result of said problems.

> might extend that same umbrella of mistreatment over an acquisition.

And yet, of Amazon's acquisitions every single one of them have been left to their own devices.

You seem to have an agenda, which is fine, but let's not pretend your summary is in any way based in fact, but rather, exclusively on a few articles in newspapers.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#534

Post by PascLeRasc »

bspn wrote: post #37
_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…

I think Zappos is a probably a pretty good proxy. They too had a very different culture to Amazon at the time of acquisition, but I believe it has largely remained intact many years post-acquisition. Amazon as a company has many flaws in its culture (if we are to believe the reports), but they seem to do acquisitions pretty well and know when to leave things alone and let them do their thing.

As an aside, the creation of both Zappos and WF was told on NPR's How I Built This. Very interesting podcast if you like company culture and how it's designed/maintained.

http://www.npr.org/podcasts/510313/how-i-built-this

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#535

Post by quadrangle »

gregw134 wrote: post #206
AndrewDucker wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The major difference is that if Amazon stop running well then someone else will come along and replace them. Whereas government is a monopoly, so if it runs badly then it doesn't automatically get replaced. Now, democracy is supposed to fix this, by allowing you to vote for a different supplier of government every few years. But because of the voting system in some countries (like the US and the UK) it's actually rea…

Which is why we need instant-runoff voting in the US, so we can vote for third party candidates but still choose between the top two candidates if our preferred candidate loses.

instant-runoff is sold on false premises. Advocates suggest that you can honestly vote and not see spoiler effects. But instant-runoff eliminates a candidate in each round, and when your 2nd choice gets eliminated before your 1st choice, your 2nd choice never gets counted. This results in a wide range of messed up results that spoil elections and can fall back to strategic voting.

The best answer is Star voting (Score Then Auto-Runoff), which just does one instant runoff between top scoring candidates, thus counting everyone's scores equally. See http://www.equal.vote for details

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#536

Post by jhall1468 »

andreyf wrote: post #527
jhall1468 wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work 40 hours a week. Sometimes I work 45, and I usually offset it by cutting it shorter the next week. I have no need (or desire) to "strike" just because some businesses/orgs/teams are garbage.

No competent programmer I know has to work 40 hours a week to have their needs met. The best ones charge rates would allow them to have their needs met working <10 hours a week.

First of all, what does that have to do with ANYTHING being discussed in this thread? Second, any "programmer" working 10 hours a week and charging enough to live comfortably on that isn't a programmer, they are a consultant.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#537

Post by bluGill »

s73ver wrote: post #444
bluGill wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are the investor causing the pathological behavior. A very large part of wall street is investors like you that just have a little bit in their retirement accounts. Do you vote the proxy for all the funds in your 401k? Do you understand how your vote affects the above - it all does.

Wrong. I am not telling any company to treat their employees like crap to squeeze an extra penny of profit out of them.

But you are because you own the fund that in turns owns the company.

It might not be your intent, and you might not have enough of a vote to stop it, but you are still doing it. (sort of like Americans opposed to the current foreign policy are still at fault for it)

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#538

Post by SureshG »

andreyf wrote: post #527
jhall1468 wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work 40 hours a week. Sometimes I work 45, and I usually offset it by cutting it shorter the next week. I have no need (or desire) to "strike" just because some businesses/orgs/teams are garbage.

No competent programmer I know has to work 40 hours a week to have their needs met. The best ones charge rates would allow them to have their needs met working <10 hours a week.

That's true..but IMO, if you want to reach that level of expertise, you have to spend a whole lot of time every day/week learning new stuff/technologies. At least that's the case for me as a software developer.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#539

Post by pbreit »

_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…

I doubt WF culture is even a fraction as extreme as also-owned-by-AMZN Zappos.
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