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Earlier quoted context omitted.
KKR bought Avago, which bought Broadcom and took the name. They are a PE firm
Someone really needs to build an "Evil Companies" list with flowcharts showing the date/time of demonic possession.
Why a retailer needs 40k servers? What are they serving? To whom? What is wrong with system designers these days? Are they designing or just selling?
The days of manually setting up servers in hyperscaling-environments are long long gone.
Example: Your GitLab CICD needs Runners. They are dynamically requested "somewhere in our cloud somwhere in the world" and then spun up and configures fully automatically. No human touches this stuff anymore.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Someone really needs to build an "Evil Companies" list with flowcharts showing the date/time of demonic possession.
I started building one some years ago, until a friend pointed out that I’d be unemployable and probably targeted.
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How do you imagine cash registers work these days? With 5,000 stores worldwide, 40k servers is 8 computers per store, which doesn't seem excessive to me.
I imagine that cash registers have the cpu power of at least a cellphone and that they can store transactions over internet in the central company database.
and dont forget that different countries have different rules about customer private data and payment information. if you send eu customer info into the uk for processing you might be breaking privacy laws. some places do automatic tax reporting where you need to send info to a country specific tax office api, get back a code and print it on the receipt.
cash registers dont work alone. its connected with inventory management, employee perf monitoring, payment processing and other things that make more sense as a store local service sending regular reports to corporate instead of waiting for round trips on every operation.
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What's so unbelievable about meal deals? It seems like a really straightforward bundle purchase.
A sandwich, bag of crisps and a drink for £5 is an actual deal. Sandwich alone in U.S. would be $10 and the “$15 Meal Deal” just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
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I think KKR sold Avago/Broadcom years ago but the same CEO and private equity mindset is still there.
Wikipedia's ownership section on broadcom is stale 2024 data but back then at least 10 investment firms and banks owned about 40% of it.
You're right that most shares are held by institutions (~80%), but that typically reflects the fact that most share ownership by individuals/companies goes through intermediaries (401k, fund investments, ETF etc.). Most of this institutional ownership is just asset managers, insurance, banks etc. taking their cut before passing returns/loses through to the end risk holder. The average institutional ownership of companies in the S&P500 for example is also ~80%.
None of this takes away from the point that Broadcom is absolutely run like a PE firm as the original commenter noted.
Not surprising given the CEO was appointed by KKR/Silverlake 20 years ago.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's so unbelievable about meal deals? It seems like a really straightforward bundle purchase.
A sandwich, bag of crisps and a drink for £5 is an actual deal. Sandwich alone in U.S. would be $10 and the “$15 Meal Deal” just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
The "main" has expanded to Huel, salads, wraps, sushi, even hot food
The "snack" can be more than crisps: small bags of fresh chicken, 2 boiled eggs, small sushi pack, gyozas etc
The "drink" includes quality smoothies, acceptable vending machine coffee etc
Meal deal value maximizing is the whole game lol. There are also lots of healthier options if you choose carefully
In certain Sainsbury's you can get hot food as the main such as a small green curry or chicken goujons, and wedges or hash browns as the side
But the price creeps up £0.50 practically yearly. I think it's £5.50 already in Sainsbury's
It's better to view it as a cheaper alternative to eating at a restaurant rather than somehow saving money compared to bringing in leftovers. People who think £5.50 a day for lunch is saving money versus cooking themselves are delusional
As someone who has never dealt with anything close to this scale, why would it take 18 months to migrate? Is this poor config management, a lack of automation, or something else?
VMWare is like Active Directory: been around for ages, wildly flexible, and has a habit of seeping structural debt into every line of business the organization undertakes.
”Tesco, a retail conglomerate headquartered in the United Kingdom” For any non Uk people, it’s the largest supermarket in Uk. Combination of large stores and smaller high street convenience stores. (2nd largest was owned by Walmart who sold it recently to private equity and so now it’s saddled with debt and being ruined…).
And it has no US comparison. The tesco meal deal concept, the literal wall of choices, just doesnt exist in north america. I did a big work trip to the UK a couple years back with over 100 people. I tried to explain meal deals and nobody believed me. Then our people basically stripped the meal deal shelves of the tesco express beside our hotel.
Also, as a foreigner who lives over there, I think they are... sad? I'm surprised they got a positive reception from your coworkers. For me they are a backup and a failure to do something more interesting.
I worked in software acquisitions for a large organization and it was really eye opening to see how insane some of these companies are when it comes to pricing customers out. I always wondered - what is the motive? They make pricing structure changes that aren't even considerable for any organization that has any fashion of a budget. VMWare was one example where our already insane costs that had nearly tripled over t…
It might take a large org several years to migrate off core systems like VMWare. If you think the customer is likely to churn within a few years anyway it makes economic sense to hike their fee.