Walmart will shut down three U.S. technology hubs and relocate hundreds of workers. In addition, the retail giant’s tech professionals must now return to the office at least two days per week.
The impacted Walmart tech hubs are in Austin, TX, Portland, OR, and Carlsbad, CA. According to Reuters, those hubs’ operations will “move to hubs including one in San Bruno, California or the company's headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas.”
It’s quite a shift from mid-2022, when Walmart planned on building out new tech hubs while hiring an additional 5,000 tech professionals for its Global Tech team. At the time, the company cited its interest in hiring “cybersecurity professionals, architects, developers, software engineers, data scientists, data engineers, technical program managers and product managers.”
But even with the shutdown of three tech hubs, Walmart still has quite a few more, including ones in Dallas and Silicon Valley. The company has also demonstrated a continual willingness to pay top dollar for tech talent; according to levels.fyi, which crowdsources compensation data, senior software engineers can earn more than $200,000 per year once you factor in salary, bonus, and stock.
Of course, Walmart doesn’t have a choice but to pay high compensation. Locked in tight competition with Amazon and other e-commerce companies, it needs to secure specialists in everything from the cloud to cybersecurity and machine learning; failure to lock down that talent may lead to it falling behind in critical areas. If Walmart decides to compete even more aggressively on the e-commerce front, its need for tech specialists will only increase.
Meanwhile, Walmart isn’t alone when it comes to reinforcing a hybrid-work policy. Over the past several quarters, companies large and small have been asking their employees to return to the office at least a few days per week. It’s a good thing that multiple surveys over the past few years have shown that many tech professionals actually like the idea of hybrid work, as it gives them the opportunity for in-person networking and mentoring alongside the flexibility of working from home.
