Is Walmart’s investment in San Diego a sign of bigger things to come?
The San Diego Union-Tribune
SAN DIEGO — A technology company moving from a dated 9,000 square-foot office to a modern 30,000 square-foot space usually doesn’t portend a major shift in San Diego’s corporate dynamics. But when that company is the nation’s largest retailer and its motivation is rooted in out-recruiting its biggest rival, both of which previously ignored the region, then a sea change seems in the works.
Such are the talent wars brewing behind the scenes in San Diego with Walmart pumping money into growing its local Walmart Labs office as it combats the threat of employee attrition to seemingly sexier technology outfitsin town, namely Amazon.
Walmart Labs is the company’s technology arm; the under-the-radar San Diego outpost is responsible for a number of processes critical to the retailer’s online operations. That includes testing any changes to the website, creating a link between the company’s in-store and digital assets, and managing a wealth of data.
“I tell people, if our Carlsbad office goes down, so does Walmart.com and some of the critical store systems,” said Claude Jones, site lead and senior director of engineering. “We are the teams behind the scene that keep the site running.”
ComeOctober, Walmart Labs’ current San Diego team of 70 will take over a custom-built venue at Carlsbad’s premier business address: the Make campus at 5600 Avenida Encinas. Though relocating just three miles southwest, Walmart Lab’s move smacks of inter-dimensional office travel designed to give the firm an edge over its peers in the recruitingdepartment.
Familiar tech office amenities such as a supersized kitchen, large game room, lounge areas and dedicated room for new moms will, of course, be included. Beyond those features, the broader Make campus greets workers with an expansive indoor-outdoor gym. It also boasts a central coffee shop, outdoor amphitheater, surfboard storage area, on-site bikes and electric car charging stations. There’s evenlive music and food trucks.
Last year, Amazon leased office space in University City with room for more than 500 employees. Since then, the e-commerce giant has been on a hiring spree, scouting for area pros in game development, software engineering and data science. In the process, Walmart Labs, said Mr. Jones, losta few workers to its digital foe.
Mr. Jones took the losses as an opportunity to sell the higher ups on a much larger, state-ofart office. A pitch deck highlighting the San Diego presence of other power-players — Google, ViaSat, ServiceNow, GoDaddy, Evernote — successfully demonstrated to execs that “San Diego is the real deal” as far as talent goes, he said.
San Diego ranks 16th in the nation on CBRE’s 2018 tech talent score card, still well behind the No. 1 Bay Area region but also noticeably higher than its neighbor to the north, Los Angeles, which ranked 26th.
San Diego software workers stay with companies longer than their Bay Area counterparts, accordingto EDC data. And science, technology, engineering and math jobs are 34 percent more concentrated in San Diego than theU.S. average, the agency says.
Plus, once companies like Amazon and Walmart open up shop, they find that tech talent is readily available. That’s thanks to the region’s proximity to UCSD and its abundance of life science companies, which have seeded the market with the type of data scientists also coveted by consumer tech companies.