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A day in the life of a Walmart manager

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Re: A day in the life of a Walmart manager

#111

Post by BeetleB »

_dark_matter_ wrote: post #88
BeetleB wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're in SW, you probably will need to think about your job off work: They usually don't work in shifts, and will have deliverables in a timeline of months. They need to plan the work, and always adjust to hit the deadlines. If you're a doctor, then you probably don't have to think about your job off work.

That is not true about doctors at _all_, especially inpatient. They have so many hours in a day to spend on patients. They are checking on them after hours, fielding calls, looking at lab results, responding to messages, preparing for the next day, filling out notes, reading new notes. So not only do they think about the job off work, there is lots of job to do off work as well.

> That is not true about doctors at _all_, especially inpatient.

Varies depending on the type of work you do. People I know who are hospitalists, urgent care and ER doctors actually do just check out at the end. If something happens to a patient, it's the headache of the doctor who's rotation it is - not theirs.

And I also know PCPs who check out at the end and are done with it. If something happens off hours, they get taken care of by an on-call doctor, not the PCP. If it's serious, they're referred to urgent care and ER.

But as I said - all a function of who they work for. Same with SW.

Re: A day in the life of a Walmart manager

#112

Post by BeetleB »

TimPC wrote: post #78
BeetleB wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're in SW, you probably will need to think about your job off work: They usually don't work in shifts, and will have deliverables in a timeline of months. They need to plan the work, and always adjust to hit the deadlines. If you're a doctor, then you probably don't have to think about your job off work.

True but the number of hours I work in SW + the number of hours I think about my job outside of work is still probably less than a typical doctor's working hours so I feel like we come out ahead anyways.

Here's actual data for doctors:

https://www.amnhealthcare.com/blog/physician/locums/average-...

It's more than I work, but I know many SW professionals who work longer hours than the typical physician.

Re: A day in the life of a Walmart manager

#113

Post by michaelt »

breck wrote: post #36
doytch wrote: post #9

She runs a shop that employs 300 people; needs to worry about short-term and long-term logistics and planning; works cross-functionally with the trades; probably frequently needs to manage upwards; interacts directly with customers; etc etc... Damn, she deserves that $240k more than a lot of us software developers. This is a hard job.

> more than a lot of us software developers. A big question I've tried to answer in my life is whether the high pay in the software world has an intelligent economic explanation, or maybe a more sinister explanation involving false models encoded in the law.

A delivery driver who makes 30 deliveries per hour, with senders who pay the business $2 per parcel, is bringing in $60/hour of revenue. That revenue gets split with other workers who collected and sorted the parcels, the fuel bill and van insurance, and the investors who own the parcel-sorting machines and vans.

A software developer that saves $0.001 per delivery across 5,000 delivery drivers who make 30 deliveries per hour saves the company $1500 per hour. That gets split with the folks who maintain the CI servers, the Kubernetes cluster, the pen testers and so on. But it's still 25x as much.

Re: A day in the life of a Walmart manager

#114

Post by newsclues »

damidekronik wrote: post #53
newsclues wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a great manager that did similar things. His education was the navy and he ran a store like a ship, and everyone loved it.

Would honestly love to know more. What activities which are not common for a store did he bring from the navy?

His style of leadership was what a good captain should be. Kind, caring, patient with everyone but also personally set and expected a higher standard. Mistakes were opportunities to learn, and you never felt belittled. He was the kind of person that was the first to show up and the last to leave and knew every part of the business as if he had done it, and was busy but always had time for people and knew there names.

He was a leader not a manager or supervisor, a trait I’ve found common among military people.

He took cleanliness and safety seriously from the navy and applied that to the store, the store staff vacuumed and cleaned the store as it was his and we took pride in it from top to bottom and he lead workplace safety efforts very early on.

He ran the store like a family, and he shined his boots every morning.

Re: A day in the life of a Walmart manager

#115

Post by dang »

devdiary wrote: post #20

How come a paywalled content gets to the top of the HN front-page?

If there's a workaround, it's ok. Users usually post workarounds in the thread.

This is in the FAQ at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html and there's more explanation here:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989

Re: A day in the life of a Walmart manager

#116

Post by [deleted] »

insensible wrote: post #55
damidekronik wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would honestly love to know more. What activities which are not common for a store did he bring from the navy?

You’d probably enjoy the book Turn the Ship Around about a Navy submarine captain who transformed a low-performing crew into a strong, cohesive, autonomous crew.

[deleted]

Re: A day in the life of a Walmart manager

#117

Post by jpm_sd »

newsclues wrote: post #114
damidekronik wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would honestly love to know more. What activities which are not common for a store did he bring from the navy?

His style of leadership was what a good captain should be. Kind, caring, patient with everyone but also personally set and expected a higher standard. Mistakes were opportunities to learn, and you never felt belittled. He was the kind of person that was the first to show up and the last to leave and knew every part of the business as if he had done it, and was busy but always had time for people and knew there names.…

Sounds like the depiction of Gus Fring as manager of Los Pollos Hermanos.

Re: A day in the life of a Walmart manager

#118

Post by alpinisme »

aworks wrote: post #110
mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly what they should be doing though. Toyota calls it a "gemba walk" -- managers and even executives need to walk the factory floor and see problems with their own eyes, not through hearing reports. With software, the codebase is the gemba, not the office. Managers don't need to be writing code, but they should be reading it. Otherwise it's like a production manager who has never seen the inside of their o…

Not quite the same thing but I subscribed to one of my team's code review email lists. I also cc'ed myself on bug reports. Mildly interesting but didn't really impact anything although I was always looking for signals in the noise. On the other hand, my boss had a de facto policy of visiting each remote office at least once a year and conducting one-on-one meetings face-to-face as much as possible. I found this usefu…

I mean, Wuhan isn’t some exotic danger zone. It just happened unluckily to become an epicenters for an outbreak recently, but otherwise it’s just a big city.

Re: A day in the life of a Walmart manager

#119

Post by vunderba »

mvkel wrote: post #67

Credit to Walmart for creating an environment where a person can still love their job after years of service. That stuff can't be faked, even with a high salary. Before you say, "it's easy to say when you're getting paid $240K a year." Nah. A person needs challenge; a purpose. Lots of FANG ICs making $500K+ who hate their job. Why? No challenge or palpable purpose. To create a scaled corp structure where a person can…

Doesn't Walmart have a disproportionately high number of employees taking advantage of food stamps due to suppressed wages?

https://www.jwj.org/walmarts-food-stamp-scam-explained-in-on...

Re: A day in the life of a Walmart manager

#120

Post by mvkel »

Ekaros wrote: post #102
mvkel wrote: post #67

Credit to Walmart for creating an environment where a person can still love their job after years of service. That stuff can't be faked, even with a high salary. Before you say, "it's easy to say when you're getting paid $240K a year." Nah. A person needs challenge; a purpose. Lots of FANG ICs making $500K+ who hate their job. Why? No challenge or palpable purpose. To create a scaled corp structure where a person can…

Also these people can make personal impact that is visible for them. They might be wrong, but still they can affect things and see them changing... It might not be possible in many other jobs specially in big corporations.

Yes! Very well said. Autonomy/agency, however small in the grand scheme, is so important.
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