Walmart Inc. WMT 1.52% plans to shut down three of its U.S. tech centers and force hundreds of workers to relocate to keep their jobs, according to a memo verified by the Wall Street Journal. The retailer will also require all technicians to be in the office at least two days a week.
The retail giant will close offices housing technology staff in Austin, Texas; Carlsbad, California; and Portland, Ore., according to a memo to employees last week from Suresh Kumar, Walmart’s global chief technology officer.
Walmart pays employees at these locations to be relocated to other main offices, such as San Bruno, California, or the company’s headquarters in Bentonville, Ark. The company hopes to relocate most employees, and some will be able to become full-time telecommuters, a spokeswoman said. Those who leave will receive severance pay, she said.
After a period of aggressive hiring to meet increased demand for online services during the pandemic, tech companies are now laying off many of these workers. And tech bosses say “mea culpa” for the misjudgment. WSJ reporter Dana Mattioli joins moderator Zoe Thomas to talk about the shift and what it all means for the future of the tech sector.
“We have made the decision to focus our engineering team’s presence in select locations,” the spokeswoman said. Competitor Amazon.com Inc. and other big tech companies recently announced plans to cut thousands of jobs.
Additionally, most of Walmart’s global technology employees are required to be in their assigned office at least two days a week, Mr Kumar said in the memo. Many workers at Walmart’s corporate headquarters in Bentonville have had to work in person five days a week since last year.
The shift is a sign that even for tech companies that embraced remote work earlier in the pandemic, in-person work and central offices will play a role going forward. Activision Blizzard Inc., publisher of video games like “Call of Duty,” became the latest company on Monday to tighten its in-office guidelines, informing some employees that they will be required to report to the office three days a week starting in April.
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The games giant’s move follows that of Walt Disney Co., which said workers would have to come to its offices four days a week starting in March. Other employers, including financial giant Vanguard Group, have been urging employees to stick to existing hybrid work schedules, often working three days a week, in recent weeks.
Last year, Walmart’s Mr. Kumar announced plans to open new technology centers in Atlanta and Toronto and plans to add thousands more employees to his team, which he said totaled around 20,000 employees worldwide. Before the closures, the company had 11 tech hubs in the US and six overseas, according to its website.
Walmart has about 1.7 million US workers, most of them hourly in stores and warehouses, and about 0.6 million other employees overseas. The company recently announced plans to raise minimum wages in its US stores amid a tight job market for hourly workers.
At the start of the pandemic, Mr Kumar told his technology staff at the company that remote work was taking longer than other parts of the organization. The group aimed to “make virtual work the new normal for Global Technology,” Mr. Kumar said in a LinkedIn post in Spring 2020 Offices are taking our time and considering how we can invent the workplace of the future.”
— Chip Cutter contributed to this article.
Write to Sarah Nassauer at [email protected]
Corrections & Enhancements
Walmart Inc. has approximately 1.7 million US workers and 2.3 million total employees. A previous version of this article incorrectly said Walmart had 1.3 million US workers and about 1 million overseas workers. (Corrected on February 13)
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Appeared in the print edition February 14, 2023 as “Walmart to Shut Three Technology Hub Sites.”