Ok
Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B
541–550 of 865 posts
Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B
#542Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the 1880s Bismarck increased the modern welfare state (it was called State Socialism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Socialism_(Germany) ). The idea was that, if the poor people can get some form of social welfare from the existing state, they're less likely to support a proper socialist/communist revolution. Sounds like that. People won't unionise when they don't think they need to.
Exactly the reason why there aren't any Software Developer Unions these days.
This is US-specific, in some European countries at least you're automatically part of some union by law if you're a software developer. They don't tend to do collective bargaining, but they're there.
Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B
#543Earlier 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.
If WF were to fail under Amazon's tutelage, maybe we shouldn't be looking at nationwide competitors but at local stores for replacement?
Here in the Bay Area I'm really happy with Draeger's. Haven't really been back to WF much since I started going there. Unlike Trader Joe's it does have a reasonably complete selection of meats (and for specialty cuts there are local butchers).
Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B
#544Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I don't really see TJ as a WF competitor beyond the earthy crunchy vibe. TJ is mostly pretty weak in the produce, meat, cheese, and fish sections which are exactly the areas where WF is often worth the premium. I suppose they compete in the frozenprepared food that pretends to be Artisanal. TJ is a good deal for some things but it only somewhat overlaps.
Can confirm, lived in place where TJ's and WF were almost in sight of one another and shopped at both, often in the same outing.
Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B
#545Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is there any reason they would get a different amount per share than other shareholders? I'd assume it would only depend on how much stock they have obtained either by purchasing it from the market, using the stock purchase plan (where they can buy it for 85% of market price if they agreed to keep it for 2 years), or the stock-grants that were given to employees.
Well, for one, the employees are a huge part of why those shareholders get any returns in the first place.
And the shareholders are [usually/pretty much] the entire reason there is a company there for them to work at and potentially hold some shares in. There are two sides to that.
Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B
#546Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 (Scor…
No, STAR is not the best answer; it has the same problem as all scoring (instead of ranking) based methods—there's no clear mapping between actual subjective preferences (which can be consistently reduced to ordinal, but not interval, measures) and ballot markings, with the result that the same preferences by different voters produce different ballot markings. This is especially problematic in multicultural jurisdictions, because score ratings aren't distributed among the space of markings consistent with a set of preferences consistently, but instead show clear cultural differences. (This is a well-documented, though rarely-addressed, problem with star ratings in general; one example of a difference on this axis is that with the same degree of satisfaction measured vy other means, Americans of European ancestry give significantly higher ratings than Asian-Americans on fixed-rate scales.
This problem (the inconsistency in general, not the cultural variation though that underlined the problem) makes STAR and other score-based methods utterly unsuitable for most public elections.
If you want to fix the problems caused by loser elimination in IRV, just drop loser elimination and accept as winner the candidate who gets past the bare-majority threshold first as you check first all first preference votes, then total of first and second preference votes, and so on.
Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B
#547Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why not? The important part is commute. 50hr work week in a job you like with a reasonable commute is no problem for your health. 30hr/week in a job you don't like with 2.5hr in traffic each day is much less healthy.
Unless all 50 hours are compensated, 10 of them at 1.5-2x base pay, the person working them is getting ripped off. Every one of my friends in engineering (actual engineering, e.g. civil, aerospace, etc.) positions get at least 1.5x for any hour over 40 they work in a week. In fact "unpaid overtime" is something I hadn't heard of for an engineering position prior to working in software. It's almost like workers in thi…
I'm guessing you don't live in the US, or your friends are underpaid, or they work for a firm that chooses, but does not have to, provide overtime. Actual engineering should generally be considered exempt from overtime.
1. If nothing else, engineers are considered a learned professional.
2. They probably make over $100,000 per year.
3. They may hit the executive exemption.
Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B
#548Earlier quoted context omitted.
Having worked for a retail software company that was purchased by Oracle, I can assure you Grocery retail is the most difficult retail supply chain to execute well. The margins are razor-thin. The products have myriads of stubborn problems: short life checking, long life checking, mix of delivery types (direct, warehouse, corporate and 3rd party), very complex planograms, composite units of measure, challenging shrin…
> margins are razor-thin at any other grocery store, yes
I think they have higher costs too. In the UK their sites are in High Street locations unlike most other grocery stores. They also have a lot more front of house staff and have very high quality standards for their products and displays. That all costs and eats away at the raw cost-of-goods margin.
Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B
#549Earlier quoted context omitted.
name a single commune as successful or operating at the scale of Whole Foods or Amazon. in history.
Well, Publix is employee owned, does that count? Comparing the wikipedia sidebar shows Publix with more stores, revenue, and over twice the number of employees. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole_Foods_Market I'm not going near Amazon, though.
Employee-owned means the owners retired by selling the company through an employee stock purchase plan. Publix, Woodman's etc. are good places to work but they aren't communes or cooperatives.
Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B
#550Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're kidding, right? Programmers are decently paid but should strike for a 40-hour work week.
no thanks. look at what collective/forced/politicized bickering over hours has done to the job market everywhere its been tried. look at the corruption. i enjoy my freedom to negotiate my terms as I, as an individual, and my employer see fit.
You are mixing up blue collar and white collar unions.
Go look at the film industry, and the Writers / Directors / Screen Actors Guilds. The WGA doesn't stop screenwriters from negotiating their own terms. Do you think someone like JJ Abrams is getting paid the WGA set fees? That Tom Cruise works SAG and Equity rates? Of course not.
The point of the guilds in these industries is to set minimum standards for pay and benefits. It is designed to stop studios from exploiting people desperate to work in the industry. I majored in film and many of my classmates have gone on to work in Hollywood - I don't know anyone of them who would say their unions aren't a good thing.