Walmart opens an engineering subsite in Austin? Walmart? Huh?
Big Red Car here on a nippy 33F morning headed to 55F, but 75F on Thursday say the weather fairies.
So, Austin continues to prosper as a home of high tech, in general, and software development, in particular.
A recent addition to the tech scene is a Walmart software engineering hub which will focus on AI, ML, blockchain, and IOT to serve the company’s operations (Global Business Services Division) around the world specifically including finance, governance, human relations, employee training, and manufacturing.
New Walmart engineering hub in Austin By God Texas. That’s Sam Walton’s famous pickup truck getting ready to drive into Austin’s iconic Barton Springs. What would Sam say about Walmart today? [Pic credit: Austin American Statesman]
Big Red Car, Walmart?
Walmart has 1,500,000 employees and had $485,000,000,000 in gross revenue in 2017. They are big time.
The Austin software engineering center will operate out of 8,000 SF in downtown (used to be an Alamo Drafthouse movie theater once upon a time back in the OLD DAYS). It will grow to sixty employees from the thirteen it opened with.
Why Austin, Big Red Car?
The answer is obvious — Austin is a great place to hire software engineers because it is already an established tech center [Don’t believe me? Ask USAA and General Motors who have recently opened tech centers here.] and is way cheaper than Silicon Valley or New York. Can you say: COST OF LIVING?
Walmart, in announcing the new operation said, “Austin is a really unique city in that you have a very deep pool of that talent, but you don’t incur some of those higher costs of living that you do on the West Coast and East Coast.”
That sound you hear in the background? That is the Quality of Life siren singing her luring tune.
This is why Walmart picked Austin for its first such outlier from lovely Bentonville, Arkansas.
Bottom line it, Big Red Car
Walmart is becoming a tech company (using tech to run its business and to operate in an eCommerce world) and their first engineering subsite is in Austin. They are hiring sixty engineers. That’s all you need to know.
This is Walmart? Huh? Yes, dear reader, this is Walmart in Austin. Cool, eh? [Pic credit: Austin American Statesman]
