This is exactly my take as well. The people leaving and putting out the call for others to follow them are the same ones that lost their power when the platform changed hands and the ideologies of the people who run it changed.
I'd be more concerned about pricing and vendor lock-in.
Haven't tried SST though. I doubt if it works always flawlessly because even plain old terraform might get stuck in complicated dependency graphs failing to destroy or create/recreate resources.
I think it depends entirely on the product/audience. The selling points around infrastructure tooling are stability and reliability. Zany marketing like this invokes an "unpredictable" feeling in me which I'm not sure is a good fit.
That's in of itself, sad. The lack of efficiency is mind-bottling [1]. There were states with large populations that had 90-100% of results in a matter of hours.
Was just in Canada recently and despite the favorable exchange rate, I couldn't believe how expensive groceries were compared to the states. Everything from juice to eggs to bread to meat was 1.5 - 2x the cost back home.
Possibly relevant, but they seem to have a hard time hiring and retaining talent. There's been a consistent player in my LinkedIn inbox from 2018 to present (even post-ZIRP) and that's Kroger engineering recruiters.
Seems they want to pay folks < 100K onsite in LA? And only marginally more in Seattle?
Combine that with the fact the vast majority of jobs are hybrid in what appears to be middle of nowhere Ohio(Blue Ash, correct me if I'm wrong I'm looking at a map), I can take a few guesses as to why.
Thanks. I'm not super well versed in Cinci and didn't mean to insult them as a city, but it seems like Blue Ash is 15 miles from the city center and 30 miles to the airport. Seemed kinda far out accounting for traffic and such. Or is it one of those cities where more is going on in the suburbs than the city proper(lived in one of those myself)?
Blue Ash is a more educated/affluent suburb with significant P&G and Kroger facilities. Probably preferable to a 1hr each way (typical for many suburbs to downtown) commute and paying for parking. Downtown Cincinnati is kind of boring-- there have been a few new places open, but there are better choices for food and entertainment in various other neighborhoods.
I had an interview at Kroger HQ out of college and it was probably the most depressing office building I had ever been in. That combined with the type of work encountered at legacy industry bigco and it has to be hard to recruit anyone decent. (This coming from someone who is wildly inept, too :D)
Their analytics company 84.51/dunnhumby was always the flashier option that could recruit at a national level.
Yep, they sold DunnhumbyUSA to Kroger and rebranded to 84.51. They used to have a super visible building right by Fort Washington Way (downtown interstate) and moved closer to Kroger HQ maybe 8-10 years ago after the sale. They still did other shopper card analytics type work, but they are pretty much only Kroger brands (and associated suppliers-- think typical CPG companies) at this point.
It's really not far out of the way -- it's right on 275 (the circle freeway around Cincinnati), and is very much a tech hotspot. Blue Ash is filled with tall office buildings and giant parking lots that house various tech companies -- everyone from Sogeti to Johnson & Johnson to innumerable other players are located in Blue Ash. It's been this way all the way back to the 90's -- always felt like the hotspot for tech jobs. Downtown is a relic for established blue chip companies (like P&G) -- if you're an up-and-coming tech company in Cincinnati, chances are you're in Blue Ash.
Proximity to the airport isn't really a big deal -- the airport isn't even in Ohio and is far away from literally everything. City center isn't a big deal -- that's more important for night life, and it's a pain to get in and out of. Believe it or not, Blue Ash has always felt way more accessible to me than downtown.
The most "happening" shopping center in Cincinnati right now is Kenwood, which is right next to Blue Ash -- overall located near far better retail biomes than downtown. Not everything in Cincinnati is going on in the suburbs (downtown and Newport have seen a big resurgence in years of late), but the north suburbs (like Sharonville, Blue Ash, Fairfield, Kenwood) are still some of the more "up" places in the city.
It's amusing that SWE grads are turning down a real company that provides actual value to millions of customers to work at startups that "dream of changing the world" with yet another social media app. Or AI app. Or whatever the latest silly tech fad happens to be.
No, groceries aren't sexy. But everyone needs to eat, and Kroger will be around long after all of the stupid startups these SWE grads choose to work for have died.
Back in 1992(!) they rolled out a smart-cart system that I can't find any references to because its new (2021) release dominates the SEO.
It was an LCD tablet mounted to the cart that would let you look items up, see a map of the store, and (I think?) play trivia games. I think they showed ads too when idle IIRC.
If you knew to look for them, there were stalactite-looking antennas hanging from the ceiling in a grid pattern all over the store to do triangulation.
It was pretty nifty until they stopped maintaining it.
Many SWE grads (and even many established devs) seem to have a rather large blind spot. They tend to think that working for an overt software company (and especially a SV-style company) is the only real option.
The reality is that lots of different industries employ software engineers, and many/most of those industries are doing really cutting-edge and interesting things, often much more interesting than your standard SV-style software company.
Kroger is hiring right now, while most tech companies are laying people off.
And quite frankly, what Kroger is offering would have been considered a decent, even good, starting salary before the COVID tech hiring froth warped tech employees' salary expectations.
If the money's right, they'll get enough folks to work for them.
Whoooooooooooooooooole bunch of people work at a whooooooooooooole bunch of places you've never heard of, man. There are so very many companies out there that employ programmers... it's nice if you can get a big Silicon Valley Darling on your resume, but not many folks can, so prestige isn't all that important.
