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Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

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Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

#251

Post by mongol »

gbrindisi wrote: post #64
runj__ wrote: post #5

In Sweden Lidl is know for being suspiciously cheap, they're even playing on it in their ads here. They had a marketing stunt where a chef started a luxury pop-up restaurant and the payoff was that it was all Lidl ingredients. "You can cook good food EVEN though you're using Lidl stuff" I'm not 100% sure that's what I want of a cloud provider.

Sidenote: as an italian in Sweden I wouldn't dismiss so fast the quality of some stuff you can find in Lidl compared to Coop, Ica or Hemkop. Lidl reputation as a brand has gone up for me since I moved here.

Agree. I am Swedish and have shopped at Lidl (not exclusively) for perhaps 10 years. In the beginning it was mostly poor people I could see and the parking lots half-empty. Now I see much more varied clientele and more cars outside. I have a distinct feeling that many that avoided Lidl before do not now.

Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

#252

Post by [deleted] »

ubercow13 wrote: post #249
zerr wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

[deleted]

Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

#253

Post by jryle70 »

zwaps wrote: post #225
jdietrich wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What legal implications? AWS customers can choose to keep user data wholly within the EU regions, or they can transfer data freely between EU and US regions thanks to Amazon's certification under the EU-US Privacy Shield framework. One of the great strengths of AWS is their phenomenal compliance department - whatever regulations you're subject to, AWS offer tools, guidance and support to help you maintain compliance.…

Nobody would or should trust Amazon, an American company, to actually stand by those promises. It will syphon off any trade secrets and other infos, especially if the NSA asks. It has literally happened. I think after Snowden we should have gotten wise on how much official treaties and promises are worth. Before, this was the thinking of conspiracy nuts. Now it is prudent consideration. Germans would now, the US lite…

This is a weak argument, because that prudence should be extended to Lindl as well. Do you think Lindl would resist if Germany intelligence service (BND) asks, no matter how crazy that may sound now? What is implication for a client, says, in France or Poland?

Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

#254

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

adrianN wrote: post #247
ido wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In which city/division can one find this salary? Siemens is huge and has multiple business units in multiple cities each with their own salary grid.

Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

#255

Post by LargoLasskhyfv »

paganel wrote: post #134
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 ope…

Another data point from Lidls homeland regarding the wage of the "shop people" from about 10 years ago. While we had endless political discussions about minimum wage there were numbers of 7,50EUR to 8,50EUR per hour in the air at that time. Don't remember exactly anymore. What i DO remember though is that they had signs in the shops which you couldn't miss when standing at the cashier. They read 10EUR per hour, and later 11 to 12. They don't do that in shop signaling anymore, but nowadays it is around 15EUR i believe, while other retailers/discounters pay significantly less, except ALDI. And we still have that discussion over a mandatory minimum wage in all sectors, and it is ridiculously low.

Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

#256

Post by slightwinder »

I guess this is the result of their epic failed migration to SAP. They blowed 500 Million and 7+ years in an attempt to unify their IT on SAP, until they realized it's just not working. I guess they then started building their own solution, and bring now others into the round, which is kinda similar to how AWS started. Amazon too started offering their extra resources to others, until it grow into a business of their own.

I have my doubt, but I really hope this becomes something good. Good european competition in that sector is quite neccessary. We have seen how european laws influenced the world, and especially USA in the last years, hopefully business can reach similar effects.

Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

#257

Post by fock »

niwork wrote: post #219
ido wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What about starting salaries, salaries at 2 years, 5 years etc.?

in Munich: starting salaries with a masters are 55-60k€ (before tax!) at average car related companies (even for non-CS-grads doing SWE with a physics/math background), 60-70k€ at the actual car companies. Social sciences/other jobs with masters: 42-50k€, below that with a bachelors/apprenticeship. Independent of the education in IT you should be able to reach 50k after 5 years (excluding grunt work) and 80k with a masters. Some engineers I know have been taken by electronics industry as PMs for 120k€ straight out of grad school. Rents are high (20€/m²), so other parts of Germany might be better overall (subtract 20-30% of salaries).

All this doesn't hold true for a lot of immigrant labor and people working at startups, where you are offered 30-40k€ with a masters (these kindd employ most of the immigrant labor I think - of course there's the odd 100k YC). Imho this (at current rent levels) is exploitation and something which makes working in Munich not particularly attractive for anyone not from Germany or getting a job at a car company.

Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

#258

Post by londons_explore »

NicoJuicy wrote: post #246
londons_explore wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Indeed, but that isn't how they do it. They just scan the sticker.

Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

#259

Post by londons_explore »

jon-wood wrote: post #192
londons_explore wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't have any insider information, but it doesn't seem crazy to think that those discount stickers aren't in fact the same. At the very least they have the actual discounted price encoded them, it wouldn't be a big leap for the label printer to register a new SKU for "Semi-skimmed Milk, discounted to £0.30" so they can still track that item's stock.

I have just checked the barcodes, and all stickers are identical. Same barcode. Same text. Same everything. They are preprinted, not printed by a machine in the shop too.

Re: Lidl to Launch Rival to AWS

#260

Post by mikorym »

mschuster91 wrote: post #81
mikorym wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I come from an agricultural background and all of the farmers I know always get less than 50% of the price of what you pay in the supermarket. Change that 50% to >80% and you get Lidl and Aldi for the exact same produce . I am not sure why it works like that. These days you get direct to supermarket more often (taking out Fresh Produce Markets) but again—it's not direct to consumer. Personally, I think it's more beca…

> Personally, I think it's more because of the retailers being cutthroats than any other reason. It's rare that supermarket chains have direct contracts with farmers. Usually there are one to three middle men in the chain that all want their cut - on the farmer side a cooperative or other association (e.g. with milk it's common that a milk processor buys the milk from the farmers and then sells the processed milk on)…

In South Africa, it works like this:

- Farmer

- Fresh Produce Market (for most around 8% agent fee + 8% market fee = 16%; for potatoes it is 5% + 8% for historical reasons)

- Supermarket (40%–60% fee)

So in our case the middle men are not that significant compared to the supermarkets. I know the situation is different for cooperatives, but they are either export orientated or in separate markets like wine or grain, both not considered fresh produce.

Cutting out the FPM actually tends to increase the end cost to the consumer as they tend to be higher value products to start out with. Typically it's berries, naartjies or apples and not staples like potatoes. But like I mentioned above, this is something that changes a bit every year.

Another interesting thing is that in rural areas you can cut out the supermarket instead, as many people like buying directly from the market or buying from people who resell it with small bakkies (pick-ups) to street sellers:

Farmer -> Market -> Pick-up truck reseller -> Street reseller

In the case of resellers on the street, I think they charge anywhere from 10%–70% commission, but it's difficult to say as these are all informal cash transactions.

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