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Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

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241–250 of 516 posts

Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

#241

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> 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. This has always been my problem with AWS. Cost savings might make sense for someone who actually needs 200 servers but if I just want one I'm paying 10 times as much for half as much in terms of performance. It rubs me the wrong way when a $70/mo AWS instance…

> It rubs me the wrong way when a $70/mo AWS instance is more than twice as slow than a $10/mo 'traditional' VPS instance. Elastic compute of the type provided by EC2 and similar services (Google Compute Engine, etc.) is a fundamentally different service than simple VPS. AWS has something that is, or is very close to, a simple VPS in LightSail, and the pricing is pretty competitive with other VPS providers. LightSail…

> Elastic compute of the type provided by EC2 and similar services (Google Compute Engine, etc.) is a fundamentally different service than simple VPS.

What is the fundamental difference that you speak of?

At least to me, the only major difference is that while AWS markets their VMs as EC2 because they were designed for elasticity (i.e variable compute workloads), which explains the elastic in the name EC2; VPS providers OTOH market their VMs as a cheaper alternative to dedicated servers (i.e. fixed compute workloads).

The difference in pricing largely follows from the difference in design since the cloud shines when your resource needs are elastic. VPSes shine when your resource needs are largely inelastic.

Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

#242
post #31

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Surely it can't be that many. And if it is, that has to include janitors at their data centers.

I'd wager a guess that less than half of that is engineering (At Oracle the sales:engineer ratio is around 3:1.)

Are you sure that isn't the legal:engineer ratio.

Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

#243
post #209

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

Why? Go get a remote job and triple the salary, to start with. Of course don't mention your current one. Seriously, go scan HN Who Is Hiring thread for remote jobs - for US or Swiss companies, don't bill below six-figure. For German companies, aim high five-figure. Do it now.

I think your motivational comment has unintentionally come off as patronizing and lacking empathy.

Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

#244
post #233

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Because the person doesn't know what they are talking about. Germans will never prefer Amazon over known local stores - it's already enough to be an American company these days. People know what that means and they don't want it. Wal-Mart completely crashed and burned in Germany and it already started at the weird greeting person at the entry. When Germans see this, the business is basically already bust. Keep the fa…

> Germany won't have any of the degrading bullshit like Wal-Mart or others in the US. In some areas yes, I hear that VW workers are paid well. In other areas, you have 400 Euro jobs and forced labor below minimum wage if the "job center" (formerly social security) decides that you need to be a slave. I don't understand why people here defend Europe as if it were the 1980s. Those times are long gone, perhaps folks her…

Yes, you are absolutely correct here but this is a very complex topic following the Hartz IV reforms in the early 2000s.

All of this is currently on the political line and there is enormous political will in the population to "fix" Hartz IV. It helped Germany out of its labor misery when Schröder became chancellor in 1998 (5m jobless down to ~1m) but it brought new problems such as 1€/h jobs (tax-free, on top of unemployment payments), weird sanctions and brain-dead mechanisms to put people back into work.

If it weren't for Corona it would likely be one of the major topics in the societal discussion right now as Hartz IV is widely recognized to be insufficient.

Federal minimum wage is also fairly new and already way too little. But Corona is shaking everything up, so who knows what will happen now.

Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

#245

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…

> they are getting into the car sales and recycle business

To be fair, the recycle business is basically "free money" in Germany.

Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

#246

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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…

Scan barcode, scan sticker.

Apply discount to previous product

Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

#247
post #196
post #175

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That's a very poor salary for your job, if you don't mind me saying. Are you in Italy? What's the cost of living like? Salaries in Europe are generally quite low for devs compared to the US. I think it's best in the UK. Starting salary will average ~£25k, rising to ~£35k as you get more senior, then maybe £~45-55k one you're 5-10 years in. This is excluding London and contract-based work, of course.

In Germany at the senior (10+ years) scale €70k/year is not unusual & if you work for the better paid companies (like google) you can expect significantly more.

70k for senior level in Germany seems low to me. Siemens for example pays around 45-60k starting salary for developers.

Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

#248

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> 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…

Tu vs voi?

Kind of, more like dumneata or dumneavoastră.

Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

#249
post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Why? Go get a remote job and triple the salary, to start with. Of course don't mention your current one. Seriously, go scan HN Who Is Hiring thread for remote jobs - for US or Swiss companies, don't bill below six-figure. For German companies, aim high five-figure. Do it now.

Are there really that many US jobs hiring remote including outside the US so that every underpaid developer in Europe can get hired?

Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

#250
post #212

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”.

> Yes, in German it’s a big deal, roughly the same as saying “Hey dude” instead of “Good morning Mr Smith”. It's been changing for decades across a lot of languages. I grew up in Norway where these forms were dying out as I was a child (70's/80's) and mostly used to older people, to the point where they're now mostly used sarcastically to imply someone is a pompous ass or to very old people or in very formal situatio…

> and mostly used to older people, to the point where they're now mostly used sarcastically to imply someone is a pompous ass or to very old people or in very formal situations.

I'd say that sounds pretty similar to how it's used among German speakers, at least those who are 30 or younger.

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