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Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

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Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

#181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Germany, their store managers do inventory manually, which means they have to order items they run low on, no tech insight. Their attempt at setting up SAP failed after burning 500 million on it. Delivery robots, Amazon-style prototypes for cashier-less systems, heck, even Instacart like delivery are nowhere to be found. If Amazon decided to enter the German supermarket landscape, Lidl (also, Aldi and others) woul…

In the UK, discounted or damaged items have a special sticker meaning "discounted to £0.70". That sticker has a barcode on, and is what is scanned at the checkout. That means they have no way to know which items were sold, since all those discount stickers are the same, no matter what item they were affixed to. Given that, I don't see any way they could do decent stock control in-store. If you don't know what went ou…

Shrinkage in the form of shop-lifting also has an effect.

Having said that, if the items being reduced were scanned as part of the process of being assigned a discount sticker, then the stock-taking process should be able to capture this.

(Reduced items are usually sold, or failing that, discarded or returned).

Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

#182
post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess you mean the 2nd person form (du or ihr fir singular or plural) instead of the 3rd person plural (Sie), which is the courtesy form fir singular and plural. Yes, in German it’s a big deal, roughly the same as saying “Hey dude” instead of “Good morning Mr Smith”.

Parent says Eastern European country, well, I had the bad luck to be born in Hungary (am Canadian now), and I fully understand what happened. It's a generation divide. I am 45 and I am one of the oldest for whom it doesn't matter and looks downright outdated but even to many in my age cohort and especially older it's exceptionally offensive, irrespectful to use the familiar form of "you". https://en.wikipedia.org/wik…

Very interesting similarity with Romania. Wondering if that’s because of the cultural link between the two countries or wether it’s something common across east Europe. In romania lords (either romanian or hungarian) demanded serfs to address to them in second person, and thus it became formal speech.

Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

#183

Former Schwarz employee here: The company made SO much money in the past 4 decades with big box / discount retailing, you won't believe it. Salaries are off the charts (it would make senior software engineers in SV look pale). Hubris is as well. The only thing that drives reasoning are statements like 'we're not just some random company, we're Schwarz Group'. It's the poster child Corp described by Andy Gorves statem…

> Salaries are off the charts Just to add another data point, Lidl is also the retailer that pays the best market salaries in the Eastern-European country where I live in (they actually included that in several of their hiring ads), and I'm talking about shop people like cashiers and the people that put things on the shelves. > They are getting into the car sales and recycle business as well. In here they've also ope…

This is very old-fashioned & I guess geographically dependent: we used to live in Vienna where you'd expect to use Sie (formal) with any adult you don't personally know where as we now live in Berlin where everyone uses du (informal).

Either way nobody who isn't an asshole will get a non-native speaker in trouble for mixing these up & even in Austria my experience was that they will just be a bit perplexed but continue speaking as if the "du faux pas" didn't happen.

Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

#184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've only been to Lidls in the US, but their stores seem pretty streamlined to me.

In Germany, their store managers do inventory manually, which means they have to order items they run low on, no tech insight. Their attempt at setting up SAP failed after burning 500 million on it. Delivery robots, Amazon-style prototypes for cashier-less systems, heck, even Instacart like delivery are nowhere to be found. If Amazon decided to enter the German supermarket landscape, Lidl (also, Aldi and others) woul…

I don't want that though, and the majority of Europeans don't either. Delivery robots work in the US as a crutch for the bad infrastructure, whereas here in Europe, I can walk or cycle to the store. I don't need to do big, weekly shopping like Americans tend to do (I've lived in the US also!) because the stores are nowhere near as giant. We already have cashier-less systems in the form of self-checkout tills and handheld self-scanning. We don't need Instacart because the chains themselves handle the delivery.

Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

#185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Germany, their store managers do inventory manually, which means they have to order items they run low on, no tech insight. Their attempt at setting up SAP failed after burning 500 million on it. Delivery robots, Amazon-style prototypes for cashier-less systems, heck, even Instacart like delivery are nowhere to be found. If Amazon decided to enter the German supermarket landscape, Lidl (also, Aldi and others) woul…

Look at the evidence. Lidl (and ALDI) are exapnding all over the world. Meanwhile Walmart decided to pull out of Germany because the competition was to tough. ALDI and Lidl are world class at selling a limited selection of medium quality goods to a massive audience at extremely cheap prices. It's unclear how any of the technologies you mentioned would improve that core competence. It's also unclear that any of them c…

> In Germany we don't have any voting machines, never was even seriously discussed.

It was quite seriously discussed and some were used during the 2005 election. You don't see any discussions about it today because the constitutional court put a stop to it.

https://www.loc.gov/law/foreign-news/article/germany-constit...

Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just out of curiosity what do you do that earns you 100k in Italy if I may ask? Most Italians I met working in Austria and Germany left Italy because of low salaries and they're not making anything close to 100k here either. I've even met Italians who moved to Eastern Europe for higher tech salaries than back home so something doesn't add up.

Can confirm. As senior software developer I made 25K EUR in 2019.

That's after taxes?

That's roughly the salary you'd get in Poland, but with a lower cost of living.

Not saying you should relocate or anything - I'm just amazed at the state of the Italian IT job market.

I spent a few years in Italy and have a friend who lived and worked in Poland. Hated the experience, but by his account it was the most stable and well paid job he had ever.

I never understood how could that be possible.

Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

#187
post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> RAM maxing out at 32 GB This part is just not accurate. I'm running their dedicated server with 256 GiB RAM right now.

Looking at https://www.hetzner.com/cloud , the top of the line dedicated option seems to be CCX51, which only has 32GB (edit: 128GB, I must have misread). Do you have some sort of special deal with them?

[deleted]

Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

#188

Many good reasons why this would work in Europe. - Logistics in Germany is awesome, and Amazon really doesn't have a leg up on the already existing logistics solutions there. - For a cloud provider, negotiating deals now when AMD is on the rise must be perfect. - Beating AWS on EC2 pricing is easy. AWS EC2 pricing is insanely expensive. German providers like Hetzner Cloud entered the market at 1/10th of the EC2 price…

Also, "my data is handled by a company under the EU law" is quite a good sale pitch these days.

> Also, "my data is handled by a company under the EU law" is quite a good sale pitch these days.

Everyone operating in the EU is under EU law, including Amazon, so it's certainly not a competitive pitch vs. Amazon, however much it might be on a checklist of things customers are looking for.

Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Salaries are off the charts Just to add another data point, Lidl is also the retailer that pays the best market salaries in the Eastern-European country where I live in (they actually included that in several of their hiring ads), and I'm talking about shop people like cashiers and the people that put things on the shelves. > They are getting into the car sales and recycle business as well. In here they've also ope…

I guess you mean the 2nd person form (du or ihr fir singular or plural) instead of the 3rd person plural (Sie), which is the courtesy form fir singular and plural. Yes, in German it’s a big deal, roughly the same as saying “Hey dude” instead of “Good morning Mr Smith”.

I don't know where you're at but I have never seen this treated as that big of a deal in my 8 years of living in Austria & 7 in Germany unless you're talking to the prime minister (and especially not if you're obviously not a native speaker).

Maybe more comparable to addressing someone by their first name instead of Mr./Ms./Mrs. .

Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Salaries are off the charts Just to add another data point, Lidl is also the retailer that pays the best market salaries in the Eastern-European country where I live in (they actually included that in several of their hiring ads), and I'm talking about shop people like cashiers and the people that put things on the shelves. > They are getting into the car sales and recycle business as well. In here they've also ope…

I guess you mean the 2nd person form (du or ihr fir singular or plural) instead of the 3rd person plural (Sie), which is the courtesy form fir singular and plural. Yes, in German it’s a big deal, roughly the same as saying “Hey dude” instead of “Good morning Mr Smith”.

One of the perks of being an Aussie is calling everyone from the frontline workers to the C-suite 'mate'
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