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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

#831

Post by 20years »

SeeDave wrote: post #489
alanfalcon wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zappos CS, front office, creative staff (etc.) got to keep their culture. Zappos warehouse workers got shafted.

Would it be possible to expound on this comment with a decent source (first party is totally okay!)? I ask not as a personal attack on your credibility, this comment just seems a bit inconsistent with the Holacracy movement that he championed a couple of years back.

Not sure how well that Holacracy movement is doing for them

http://fortune.com/zappos-tony-hsieh-holacracy/

https://qz.com/849980/zappos-is-struggling-with-holacracy-be...

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/01/zappos-...

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#832

Post by somecontext »

nonameface wrote: post #172
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also just bought a liquor license in like every U.S. state and high-income city.

There is no Whole Foods in West Virginia. I know you were generalizing but thought I would mention a counter-case.

My research suggests that 42 states contain at least one Whole Foods. The eight states excluded are (west to east) Alaska, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, West Virginia, Delaware, and Vermont. These are exactly the seven states with population less than one million in the last US Census ... and West Virginia. (Note, however, that the District of Columbia -- also with a population under one million -- has four stores.)

Although it's a strange thing to measure, approximately 7.5 million people (~2.3% of the US) live in a state without a Whole Foods.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#833

Post by landryraccoon »

mee_too wrote: post #680
landryraccoon wrote: post #596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I can work 10 hours to have my needs met, I'd rather work 40 hours so I can travel 4 times more and have 4 times more cool stuff.

Travel can be extremely cheap nowadays, e.g. budget airlines on weekdays, last minute deals from the big tour operators. Working one 10 hour day a week will allow for way more travel than 4x the money on a 4 or 5 days work week. Last year I had a consulting gig in a Europe based company, with offices next to a big airport. As summer was slow anyway I'd work 30h weeks (invoicing four 7.5 hour work days) Tuesday - Thur…

Ah, sounds like no family, no kids and no house then?

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#834

Post by mickrussom »

I've noticed that comments here that are critical of Bezos gets met with downvoting. Sad. Why Microsoft got the 3rd degree and Amazon gets a pass is beyond me. I guess that large unethical companies like Amazon can use AIs to police sentiments about them and do the needful. We should start looking for anti AI mechanisms in discourse as well as work to ensure paid sockpuppeting and gas lighting is not going on. The truth is going to be harder to get at these days.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#835

Post by tfont »

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…

40-50 hours a week is NOT a healthy work/life balance. Nice try buddy.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#836

Post by mee_too »

landryraccoon wrote: post #833
mee_too wrote: post #680

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Travel can be extremely cheap nowadays, e.g. budget airlines on weekdays, last minute deals from the big tour operators. Working one 10 hour day a week will allow for way more travel than 4x the money on a 4 or 5 days work week. Last year I had a consulting gig in a Europe based company, with offices next to a big airport. As summer was slow anyway I'd work 30h weeks (invoicing four 7.5 hour work days) Tuesday - Thur…

Ah, sounds like no family, no kids and no house then?

I do have two houses. They are in cheap places and the total mortgage payments are what I make in 3 - 4 days.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#837

Post by sctb »

mee_too wrote: post #684
s73ver wrote: post #646

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I reject that notion entirely. The employees are the reason why the store was able to do so well. They should get the bulk of the reward for that. I flat out reject this idea that people should get the bulk of reward simply for already having money.

IMHO if a person is over 30 yo and an employee, he's either stupid or lazy or both. Investing and not loosing a lot of money is not simple, it takes intelligence and effort.

You're not welcome to post vacuous inflammation like this on Hacker News.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#838

Post by skinnymuch »

codecamper wrote: post #678
skinnymuch wrote: post #165

Wow all cash? Amazon's cash pile will be pretty small relatively speaking after this. Less than $10B.

I read they will have to borrow the purchase amount.

Ah okay. I tried searching around a bit for more details but skimming only got me the same info from main outlets. Do you know where you read that?

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#839

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

astrange wrote: post #800
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Challenge will be that folks who shop at Whole Foods (aka Whole Paycheck) are already relatively price insensitive compared to people who shop elsewhere. Instacart was such a good match for WF because it's the same demographic of people who are willing to pay a lot for convenience. Your average Publix shopper is likely to be much more price sensitive.

Whole Foods is reasonably priced for actual food. They just have a different approach to high-margin products where instead of Twinkies they sell you special homeopathic Twinkies.

I call BS. I really like Whole Foods, but they are WAY more expensive to fill a "normal" grocery list than a place like Publix. Granted, a lot of that is because they only sell more expensive versions of things (e.g. sometimes organic-only produce, and their meat especially tends to be much more expensive), but it's still very difficult to shop cheaply at WF.

Re: Amazon to Acquire Whole Foods for $13.7B

#840

Post by nunez »

tfont wrote: post #835
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…

40-50 hours a week is NOT a healthy work/life balance. Nice try buddy.

50 hours per week really isn't that bad if you're getting paid well for it
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