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Inside Wal-Mart IT
prostoalex writes "Information Week magazine takes a look at Wal-Mart's IT infrastructure. Wal-Mart's yearly global sales are quoted at more than 250 billion dollars, their IT spending is less than 1% of that. At the same time, the company manages to pursue new venues in optimizing retail with the wonders of technology. And what about outsourcing IT for the sake of optimization? 'We'd be nuts to outsource,' a top IT executive at Wal-Mart replies."
amen.. if i hadn't posted earlier i would have given you some of my mod points... couldn't be a truer statement. As for the company I work for... we are starting to outsource (b/c we havent been too profitable lately.. so we have to run leaner/meaner.. quite literally). And this is after the first "successful" outsourcing project hasn't accomplished squat.. service levels are down in that area, and people are generally unhappy about the support/service they are getting from our currently outsourced division. But of course it was a success and so they are moving forward. I wish my company would learn...
It was maybe 2 years ago when I heard that Wal-Mart had massive system monitoring problems. They installed HP Vantage Point, then found out that it was a total piece of crap. It couldn't watch anything, much less their boxes it was installed on. I suppose they finally got all that stuff to work.
Before that, I remember hearing that Wal-Mart used to make every store identical - down to the IP addresses of the boxes. It was a great idea, until it broke all the software that used IP addresses to track state. Imagine: push software to a box, then go to the next store. But wait, the software's already been sent, so no push. Doh!
Overall, their business application people seemed really good, but their infrastructure people were less-than-stellar. It's an interesting environment nevertheless.
Oh, and they were really cheap, too. You'd think they'd understand the value of infrastructure, you know?
I applied for an IT job there about five years ago and one of their managers called me back. Their salary range was definitely below industry standards but he said something funny which really turned me off on the job: this position required a lot of travel and when they travelled, they slept two people in the same hotel room because "it's the Wal-Mart way".
Me: No thanks.
Looks like people are confusing the two. Of course Wal-Mart is not going to outsoure its IT. They teach you in B-school not to outsource your core competency -- which in this case is their information gathering and optimization that allows them to be so efficient.
Offshoring on the other hand can be done without outsourcing. Wal-Mart just has to establish a developement center in another country that they fully control. Companies like IBM, Oracle, and Microsoft are offshoring work to China and India, but they are not outsourcing since these develepment centers and employees belong to the company, not a third party.
Disclaimer: I work for walmart.com so you can think whatever you want about my potentially biased opinions, below.
I've been working for walmart.com since June. walmart.com is wholly owned by Wal-Mart Incorporated; our computer systems are different from IDS's, the group mentioned in the article, but the company culture and mission are the same. I see a lot of misinformation about what Wal-Mart and walmart.com do or do not in terms of IT and jobs. Most of what I see is bullshit spoken by people who've never worked here or who have bought the "Wal-Mart is Evil" propaganda.
I've worked as a systems architect for some of the largest banks in the world, Nortel, Bell Atlantic, Sun Microsystems, IBM, start-ups, etc. Nowhere other than walmart.com have I seen an environment where the technology folks are encouraged to do their best like at walmart.com. While the politics in most places veer toward "it's not my job", here we are all encouraged to help and participate in addressing a problem and solving it. As a result, things get done very smoothly, people aren't afraid to speak their minds, and lots of sharp people keep joining the ranks (for example, one of the lead guys behind OS X now works for us).
As far as the tools required to do your job, the company will get you, no questions asked, anything that you need to get your job done, with a minimum of red tape. Our standard development environments are Linux and Windows. For various reasons I filed a special request for a Mac with the latest OS X to complement my other two, brand new--and high-end--Dell boxes. I got it within hours as soon as I justified what I needed it for. The company will also pay for mobile/cable Internet access/Blackberry/etc. bills if you're using those to accomplish your job. Even if that means that you only log on to work once a month over that cable/DSL/whatever connection to check an email. Special software that you may need is only a signature away.
After having worked at so many places, I can say that the people at walmart.com have a sense of mission and truly enjoy their work mainly because the company's and employees' goals are aligned. There are cases of people burning out, like at any other company, but even those who've left speak kindly of the company. I, for one, have a lot of fun with my work and almost immediate gratification when it comes to the sense of accomplishment.
We interact with the folks from ISD, the ones that the article was about. As far as I can tell their sense of mission is as vibrant as ours.
As far as salaries are concerned, nobody I know has any complaints. I make a 6-figure salary before a substantial bonus coming my way next year; you never hear anybody bitching about salaries at the water fountain or coffee station. The benefits are great. The salaries, benefits and perks are above those of most companies in Silicon Valley (we're located at its outer edge, in Brisbane, CA). We have the option to telecommute and/or have a flexible schedule.
In sum, it's a fun, exciting, and challenging place to work.
I posted this because I get tired of people engaging into Wal-Mart bashing without knowing what the hell they're talking about. I know as a fact what the work, salaries, benefits, working environment, etc. are like. We are at the cutting edge of technology and we are successful at it. While the article from InfoWeek may not fit some slashdotters' perception of the company, it is probably accurate in describing the goings on at Wal-Mart technology.
(Another disclaimer: I don't think I'm supposed to discuss what our exact infrastructure is; I will tell say, though, that whatever Netcraft is reporting about software from an Evil Company is wrong.)
Oh, before I forget... we're still expanding and continuously hiring smart Linux/Java/etc. people, in case you want to come and see for yourself. In fact, I know we're hiring at a higher rate and with much lower attrition than most places in Silicon Valley as well.
Cheers,
Anonymous Coward today, with aI used to work at Stream and I supported a variety of applications to do things like ocr, document layout etc (and I got paid like 9$ an hour to do so...).
Anyhow one day I got a call from a customer at WallMart who was having trouble ocring a document that was made in word (she told me this right at the begining). The problem was the program wasn't picking up text inside grid like cells. I found later on the OCR app was marking all the grids as artifacts (ie pictures that can't be captured). I then made the mistake of asking if they could just get the word document and make that into a pdf if it would be a better work flow.
Turns out the only reason they bought this ocr application was to move word documents from a machine across the room. Reason? They couldn't email the document from one computer to another, the computer's floppy drive was locked down, the computers usb port was locked down. So someone had the brilliant idea to spend thousands of dollars on an ocr application, print the document out, capture the document on another machine, which made it into a pdf, where they would take acrobat and save it as a word doc and correct any mistakes. Yes Wallmart's wonderful IT department is saving them money and time.
I'm not kidding in the slightest - I swear on a stack of bibles this is really what she told me.
Since I don't work for Wal-Mart, and my butt was the one 25ft up in the air running cable, I would call this outsourcing.