Having 350 more engineers on the market is only a good thing. Salaries in Boston have gotten to the point where an engineer with no experience just out of a middling CS education can demand $120-150k and often get it. Where does that leave most (non-startup) companies here? With inexperienced and understaffed teams.
Isn’t that implying that most non-startup companies just aren’t willing to pay market rate for the devs that they want?
uh, what exactly is a "middling" CS education?
> Yet Wayfair has still failed to turn a profit. Its executives have long argued that despite a long track record of losses, the company has been in growth mode, investing heavily in its supply chain infrastructure and European expansion efforts. More often than not, its board members and leadership team will point to Amazon as their model, which for years funneled its revenues back into growth and failed to turn a profit.
That model worked for Amazon because there was no Amazon to compete with. Why anyone would want to invest in a profitless Amazon competitor is beyond me. The effort seems like a cargo cult.
I know these types of apps are hard, but Wayfair, Target, and Costco all have ways to go on their mobile apps. Amazon and Walmart are lightyears ahead. Target is catching up but man are some parts of it cumbersome.
That all said, Wayfair does have a good value add proposition; curated sets of design, and tools for home decoration businesses to us to manage their clients requests. That sort of "tool for the middle man to utilize" and project management feature set sets it apart from simple shopping experiences.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bostonglobe.com/2020/02/13/...
The conference itself was pretty great, but I remember walking around the floor, looking at hundreds and hundreds of engineers packed into the office, and couldn't help but wondering if they really needed all of those people.
We don't just visit Amazon because it's a one-stop shop. Humans aren't that lazy. We visit it for the whole package:
- fast shipping
- reliable pricing
- Prime lock-in (I paid $100 for this, I better use it)
- habit
- and variety.
Habit and variety are redundant. We have the habit of visiting Amazon because of the first three factors that I mentioned. The variety is present because the first three factors attract/retain customers, who in turn have the habit of shopping on Amazon, who in turn attract third party vendors. Amazon can get away with a lot (rising prices, first-party substitution, sub-optimal interface) because of logistical barriers to entry and the current necessity for a vertically integrated intermediary. When those factors disappear, Prime will be commoditized. Warehouses and delivery networks will be commoditized. Amazon's moat in third-party online shopping will diminish.
Amazon must continue to grow away from its core platform business. Whole Foods was a smart acquisition, Amazon Go is the future of low/mid-end retail, and AWS is a profitable act of genius (high margin, uncorrelated with the rest of the business). That will not change the fact that specialty websites will become more serious competitors in the future. In 10-15 years, there will be plenty of room for focused retail sites like Wayfair.com. The question is: can they survive until then? Probably, but it will be a rough ride.
https://www.wbur.org/bostonomix/2019/06/26/wayfair-walkout-i...
