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Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

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Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

#131

Post by benjohnson1707 »

valzam wrote: post #114
ljf wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was running a stall at a graduate careers fair and was amazed at the interest both Aldi and Lidl were getting. Both had amazing starting salaries - I think Aldi was £48k rising to £70k over 3 years if you went on the area manager scheme. Plus a car. The teams there were so enthusiastic and energised and appeared to really really enjoy their jobs. I am impressed by any company that consistently looks after their sta…

I don't have firsthand experience but from what I know those salaries come with very high expectations. Things like "you have to drive to some random neighborhood on a Sunday to check that flyers were being delivered correctly'.

Once you're in a managing position, expectations can be high. Depends on the department however. Everything that is core business related (purchasing, logistics, store management) can be insane. Especially IT is a joke, mostly. But that's just my perspective.

Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

#132

Post by StreamBright »

dna_polymerase wrote: post #93
barbecue_sauce wrote: post #73

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…

Ironically SAP is also a German company. I have no idea why anybody thinks that using SAP will help any company. One size fits all approach with hilarious failure stories. Still, some managers think it is great.

Amazon could not enter the German market that easily, people really like to shop in Aldi / Lidl and the online retail business is not as strong as in the US.

Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

#133

Post by yorwba »

wolfgke wrote: post #108
dna_polymerase wrote: post #93

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…

> If Amazon decided to enter the German supermarket landscape, Lidl (also, Aldi and others) would be in serious trouble. I doubt that since I think that Amazon's vision is very different from what many German customers want. Here is a (German) text of a German blogger who went to Amazon Books in the Empire State Building. His experience was not positive: > https://www.danisch.de/blog/2019/06/18/ein-seltsamer-einkauf.…

To sum up: intransparent pricing that depends on your Prime customer status and may change after looking at an item, so you may end up paying more than expected.

Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

#134

Post by paganel »

benjohnson1707 wrote: post #96

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 opened a tourism agency that does quite well (or used to do before the virus hit).

I agree though about the big difference between the German and US management. I have a close friend that works at the regional Lidl HQ and she got reprimanded just after being hired for having used the singular "you" (less formal) instead of the plural "you" (I'm not sure how it translates into German) when addressing herself to her bosses on the company's hallways (said friend used to work for a big US company before moving to Lidl). She was lucky though because not a week after her arrival there was a company-wide email coming from the powers that be instructing the employees to use the less formal singular "you" instead of the more formal plural "you", to which all the employees in the company acquiesced.

Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

#135

Post by asjw »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #86
bflesch wrote: post #60

I've been to LIDL / Schwarz Group headquarters in Heilbronn last year, and while they're a super young company with a vibrant atmosphere (which quite unique amongst large German companies), IMO they are ultimately too much attached to their legacy cash cows. They are not streamlining retail processes because they earn too much money with it. They have great IT talent, which is building fancy pilots all day, but refus…

>building fancy pilots all day, but refuse roll them out because it will cannibalize their core business That's the big difference I've noticed between German and US companies. In German companies if you are an exec that brought success to the company in the past then your word is the law and focus is on keeping the status quo and make sure that any new ventures don't make existing higher ups obsolete. Whereas in US…

The other big difference is that German companies prefer stability over pure profit, because it creates a better working environment and a happier society overall, where your job doesn't depend from sheer luck, especially the lower income ones.

They pulled out more Tesla's than Tesla will ever do, and they still rank on top of the carmaking industry.

Tesla, on the other hand, the first thing has done when they bought Grohmann Engineering was to stop the production for competitors, that led the founder to leave.

That's never a good sign for an established business.

That's the price you pay for having a "humanly deficient man" as a CEO.

Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

#136

Post by carlmr »

SparklingCotton wrote: post #99

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, at least German companies really don't like uploading data to US servers.

Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

#137

Post by joyj2nd »

This may work and may be much cheaper than the overpriced Amazon AWS, since Germany does not pay her people well. Most salaries are are a fraction of US salaries. This is the main reason for the exorbitant and quite bad trade surplus of Germany, who exports both, goods AND capital.

Lidl has not quite a big reputation for IT: https://www.consultancy.uk/news/18243/lidl-cancels-sap-intro...

Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

#138

Post by asjw »

benjohnson1707 wrote: post #96

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

Are they?

I received few offers from them and their salaries where in par with what I earn in Italy (around 100k) which is very good for Europe but not as much as SV

Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

#139

Post by BLanen »

montenegrohugo wrote: post #125
eb0la wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, retailers don't like AWS. For them using AWS is gifting money to your biggest natural predator.

Wouldn't they have the same situation with LIDL? LIDL is also a (very) successful retailer, other retailers would have little incentive of helping them make more money. Also, I'm quite surprised about this announcement. I knew LIDL was in a really good position, but to attempt to compete in the cloud market is impressive. Good luck to them.

Amazon sells everything.

Schwarz group doesn't. Most products won't compete with them.

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