Walmart pays well (especially for their HQ area) and solves some of the most complex problems one can imagine, technologically speaking.
I've never personally taken a role there, but know several people who have. All of them would be top of FAANG recruits if FAANG knew how to recruit well instead and had consistent hiring processes (looking at you, ghosting Google).
Perfect, Walmart is not. Definitely corporate. But it's mistaken to think them globally undesirable.
I see many engineers with 10+ years of experience earning ~$200k in the Bay. No disrespect for your friends, but if you're a talented engineer at this level of experience, you can do a lot better than working for $200k in silicon valley.
There are many other companies that will substantially beat this kind of pay. If you failed to get an offer at all of them, the problem is probably not "inconsistent hiring practices."
Despite the impression that Amazon is a hellplace, it remains one of the most desired places in the world for software engineers to work, so being "worse than Amazon" isn't saying much.
Walmart's tech side of things is very highly regarded both for the work, as well for the pay. They pay $200-300k for people from 5-10/yrs experience, which despite being below FAANG level, still puts it squarely among the top paying companies for software development.
> it remains one of the most desired places in the world for software engineers to work
The word desired here feels weird to me. I just wouldn’t describe it as people desiring to work there. People desire to work at Apple. People desire to work at Meta even.
Amazon to me seems kinda like a pit stop FAANG wise? Maybe it’s the PIP culture there that taints my view
They are also a great place to cut your teeth on the FAANG type problems because, as it turns out, they face similar scale issues.
There's a lot of "second tier" tech companies that have some really cool problems at massive scales that also pay really well. Not as obviously sexy as FAANGs though.
Its general reputation is strictly worse than Amazon.