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Comment by omnicognate

6 hours ago

Those numbers aren't available, but they're irrelevant to the point anyway.

The post I replied to (currently the top post on the article) is trying to paint a picture of some harried manager of a struggling grocery store having to fire up networking tools, which is ridiculous. A company doing tens of billions in revenue employs or contracts some of the "laptop class" (to use that post's terminology) to do that, regardless of what their profit margin is. They don't get a "shift-work labor class" employee to take a break from stacking shelves and check the firewall config.

This is a very weird thread.

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omnicognate

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themaninthedark  5 hours ago

>This is a very weird thread.

I agree; you post some revenue numbers to try and prove a point that theses businesses have a lot of money. When someone reminds that revenue is not the same as profit, you state the numbers aren't relevant.

Companies try to cheap out all the time, in incredibly stupid ways. Especially when they are thin margins, fat ones usually try and protect the cash cow.

  • pjerem  1 hour ago

    I don’t have profits numbers but, as a customer, what I can tell you is that the large majority of those supermarkets are doing fine. They are renovated like brand new every couple years, they pop everywhere, they have money to innovate (E.Leclerc for example now have automated drive-throughs where your groceries arrive to you on a conveyor belt, serving dozens of clients in parallel directly to their car).

    We also have a struggling supermarket chain (Auchan) and I assure you you can tell just by entering the supermarket that there isn’t a money issue.

    Thin margin ? Sure, probably. But if there is enough money to build and develop brand new factorio-like contraptions, I’m sure they can handle fridge controllers well.

    And yup, I worked for one of those three actors in their tech department and they are as much as tech-savvy than the other startup. And they have the same tech culture as your favorite startup : no real money issue and not a lot of care given as long as it is shipped.

  • omnicognate  5 hours ago

    Revenue and profit are indeed different, and revenue is the relevant number here. If you need an explanation of why, perhaps someone else can furnish it. It's 2am here and I'm going to bed.

    > Companies try to cheap out all the time, in incredibly stupid ways.

    Yeah, and sometimes that results in someone turning their freezers into ovens. I don't think we disagree on this bit.