> quite well resourced, has a lot of talented folks, the facilities (for engineers) are enticing, they offer the opportunity to work on stuff with huge scale, and the pay is relatively comparable.

Apple, Google, Facebook, Airbnb, Uber, Lyft, etc. etc. offer all of these things as well.

The only way for Walmart to win the talent game would be by offering absurdly above-market pay packages or absurdly above-average work-life balance policies. Which I'm quite certain, given their corporate culture based around beating down costs and maximizing efficiency, will not sit well with the lifer-execs back at home base.

> The only way for Walmart to win the talent game would be by offering absurdly above-market pay packages or absurdly above-average work-life balance policies.

Fun fact: If you account t for cost of living, Wal-Mart does pay more than many others.

There's also many other perks from working at home base. Massive fitness center (Who else can can claim they have 3 pools), cheap Sam's Club memberships. Add in that you get to try all the cool things like most others do (Savings Catcher, Scan n' Go, Grocery Pickup) and you get a substantial boost to the value.

A big part of why cost of living is high in some places is that more people want to live there.

Very true! But not everyone wants to live in SF/NYC, and imagine your dollar goes a lot farther in Bentonville.

Also, supposedly the new museum is amazing, for what it's worth.

This reputation is meritless these days. I work remotely from a desirable town, with, ahem, very competitive pay, 4 weeks vacation, generous RSUs, etc. It's the outdated reputation rather than the actual facts that inhibits hiring IME.

BTW, we're hiring a mobile release engineer for our small Portland office if you're interested.

If you believe that the only "talent that has any merit" comes out of Stanford, you're right.

Good luck getting a talented engineer without either an Ivy League pedigree or a history of employment at AppAmaGooBookSoft hired at any of the trendy startups you've listed.

SV is a bubble, and there are good people outside of it.

I no doubt agree with you about the SV bubble (and credentialism is bullshit). But outside SV there are still tons of great companies offering the same thing that aren't walmart

Any "merit-less" walmart folks out there care to chime in?

The ability to tell people where you work with out kind of turning your head to one side and mumbling.

This is only a problem in a relatively narrow corridor of the country. Almost everywhere else, Walmart is a staple.

Walmart is a different experience in the places where there isn't social stigma attached to it because normal people don't have any problem going there, but also because there isn't a political apparatus working to deny their attempts to improve their buildings, expand to newer areas, etc.

Moreover, there's a difference between a) shopping there b) working retail there, and c) working there in a professional role.

I'm guessing you get over that quickly if they pay well and provide a good work-life balance.