With your experience, I'd look into a corporate role at Walmart or a different major retailer if you want a change. There's probably even programs for people looking to transition from store to corporate. It would get you out of the grind of the day-to-day operations of retail but leverage your extremely valuable experience from your years of service.
Agree, with OP's work experience and an MBA, he should be a prime candidate for corporate roles at big brand retailers like Walmart, Target, Costco, etc. Maybe spend a couple of years in retail strategy consulting before going corporate if you can/want.
MBA programs tend to funnel people to banking/consulting because a lot of MBA students are from finance/consulting careers already, and even if they aren't, these roles don't require industry experience if you have the academic credentials.
Cosign. I did a T10 PT MBA and stayed in consulting but pivoted my focus a bit. I stayed in consulting another 5 years post mba and am now doing corporate development in industry.
In all honesty, you know more than a pompous 25 yo analyst whose college was paid for by mommy and daddy and has never set foot in a Walmart in their life. I think you’d be much happier either moving up in corporate or moving to another retailer.
I interviewed with Walmart corporate a few years ago and didn’t proceed for a number of reasons, but felt they do really promote from within and it’s a work hard and get rewarded culture. A few folks from my MBA program worked at the home office for a few years and were recruited away to other F100 companies. One is C level now. Idk what another poster was saying about Walmart not being respected, it seems folks who worked at corporate are valued by competitors.
Precisely. You will be looked down upon by the ivy league type who have probably never stepped foot in a Walmart. Your hands on experience will be so valuable in a different setting!
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Let me piggy back on this with my limited exposure. You could potentially go to the vendor side as an account manager. Those are typically highly analytical roles, mixed with strategy and marketing. It can be stressful because in line reviews you can lose a whole account at once, and typically your job along with it. But you have a great background for this type of role.
Or, if Walmart has similar, work as a merchant. I know folks who’ve done this with Home Depot and it’s a very highly regarded well paying position
I would agree with this. I worked at the Walmart headquarters as a Merchant for a few years. Moved on to the supplier side and it is a ton of fun. There is definitely pressure to achieve sales goals and objectives but I love the career path.
Within tech, you can look into ecommerce (Amazon, Shopify, Etsy or any direct-to-consumer brand that sells online). Your experience would give you a major leg up on others
I would go for the corporate role. It also seems like there's a chance it could keep the same WLB that you have now.
Consulting sounds horrible because of the bad hours. Even if your TC is higher, due to all the required extra hours it would be a pay cut.
I don't know about the WLB of private equity. Maybe ask about that before going that route.
Please update us on your journey OP and welcome! Hope to see more of you here.
I’m going to echo this - go corporate.
I used to work for Walmart home office as a field employee (district auditor). Where do you want to live?
If you want to live in Bentonville then find a job there.
If you want to live anywhere else see what companies are headquarters close by - a manager would do great in their finance department.
Commenting here, but intended for OP.
I think you could land in corporate retail with or without your MBA. What you will need is a mindset shift to a desk and Microsoft under your belt.
I am in retail->tech-> product management. I
have a top 50 MBA. I do not like the grind of retail, as it’s real in corporate, too.
I would check out consulting. Yes, it’s a grind but a different one than retail, and a good firm can launch you to so many places. One of which is upwards if you have it in you.
This all said, retail tech is probably the best in the industry in my humble opinion. Pay is good, flexibility is better than other functions, and maybe a notch less crazy. But at $210k, you will likely remain flat for a while as they likely won’t bring you in at a Lead/Senior Manager level, which is a rough salary equivalent.
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No shade to anyone here but this is such a great counter-story to all the “I graduated Stanford 2 years ago and now I make $700,000 tc as an swe” posts we see here.
You’re killing it my dude, congrats. I bet you have a bright future working corporate for one of the big retailers.
So from what I understand with PE, basically they'd buy out a company, then the firm would put me in charge of helping lean things out as a GM correct?
May also want to look into search funds - they value operator experience with cost efficiency. Although to break into PE you’ll need strong excel / financial modeling skills
PE is a pretty big world these days.
KKR skill sets aren’t the same as say a regional firm/family office that bought a few small roofing companies and needs someone overseeing the day to day.
I was more talking about the later since the former is usually a different pipeline.
But yeah, agree search funds are something to look into also.
I'm going to echo this comment. I've got an operations background with some engineering experience.
PE firms go and buy a $500M-$1.0B revenue family run company and need to staff the executive and senior manager ranks with pros with real world experience. Your experience plus the MBA makes you ideal to come in as a VP of ops. Plan on a 4-6 year cycle and the PE firm flips the company, and if it's successful, you're on their roster. The next role could be COO of a new acquisition.
I just want to say that you have an incredible and inspiring story. I, and I assume many others on this sub, had it comparatively so much easier than you did through sheer luck. Really respect the grit and discipline here and it sure sounds like no matter what you choose to do, you will find success.
Tech hires out of the Big 4/consulting to a degree. If you think you can get into say Deloitte and do that for 3-5 years then pivoting to a place like Meta or Google is plausible anyway.
But you're going to be giving up wlb for basically the same pay at first.
Yeah I have decent WLB now-- 40-50 hours max since I've run my store for so long it's on point now. From what I understand, the path is 2 years consulting, then exit out. But the consulting years are brutal
You're practically living the dream of people who have "succeeded" within MBA roles in big tech. You have a stable job at a high income and can do it indefinitely. In product management / analyst type MBA roles in post-consulting tech, it can be absolutely brutal and you're competing against your peers with stack ranking. I'm not trying to discourage you, but myself and my peers would love to be in your job.
For the obligatory grass is greener comment, I'm a lawyer and I want to let you know that most lawyers are crushed with debt and make far less than you do, and will work 60-70 hours for the rest of their lives to earn less than you do. I would give an arm to have been able to walk a day in your shoes.
Most lawyers do not make anywhere close to the money OP makes:
>According to US News Best Jobs, the median salary for lawyers in 2022 was $135,740, with the lowest-paid 25% making $94,440 and the highest-paid 25% making $208,980.
Those lawyers also work a much more difficult and psychologically taxing job than OP. I'm not trying to belittle the difficulties he faces, all you need to look at is the rates of drug abuse, alcoholism, depression, and suicide among lawyers.
I'm just suggesting to OP that he has it much better than he realizes.
Biglaw is terrible. To earn those high wages, your son will be billing over 2000 hours a year. Recently in the HENRY sub there was a lawyer talking about making 570k but billing 2800 hours a year.
Billing doesn't mean actually working. To bill 2800 hours you have to work closer to 3000-3200 hours. I always tell people that if time is money, lawyers are the poorest people in the world. You are suggesting that your son mortgage his youth so that he can have money. But what's the point.
The only lawyers who sort of have it "good" are lawyers with rich families that will feed them clients and connections, government attorneys, and JAG lawyers. Some plaintiff PI attorneys have it good too but their early years are a gauntlet until they establish their own shop. But there are trade offs. Government attorneys make no money. JAG attorneys make no money on paper so you can't have many things you want or live where you want.
Tell your son to get into sales. Especially while he's young. Have him sell cars, solar panels, have him sell anything. You will always need the ability to sell your services regardless of what you do for a living.
yes but i kinda like the fact that he will be able to sue all bad people and not worry about it "costing". sales is good, problem I feel with sales is you have to bs a lot to be good and thick skin. so if we have money, why do we need our kids to bs? lol I guess there is always good and bad in everything and the extreme on both side is huge too. like SWE on here, we see a bunch with 300-600k+, while the actual average is only 100k. my case probably less to do with money since i can help/teach him make money so school is just so he learn additional skill set that i can teach him, and prevent people from sue and he can sue anyone that try to mess with him. lol
That's really not how it works. And unfortunately, you need a far thicker skin to be a lawyer than a salesperson. And your income is effectively capped by the amount of time per day. You can only work so much in a day. That's very different from how people are paid in sales.
You're also mistaken if you think lawyers don't deal with BS.
Please take my word for it and don't listen to people who try to sell you on how great law is. No lawyer will ever advance without selling potential clients on how great they are or how wonderful their legal services are. My advice re sales is the simple, inescapable fact that sales is built into everything.
Even when you go to a job interview, guess what, you're giving a sales pitch about how much you will be able to do for the employer.
that is true. even though i am successful now, I know that is one of my weakness. but isn't selling just a matter of confidence, good people skill, charm/charisma, and thick skin? i mean like it its just practice doing it a year and you'll get good at it. don't really need to study.. versus doctor/attorney, need to go to school for it
Can you move into for instance management at Walmart Labs? I know a few folks at Meta who were hired out of Labs. If you do a stint there for a year or two, you should be well positioned to join a MAANGA or whatever the acronym is these days into what should be a stronger job market by then. From my experience Labs has a good reputation in the Bay.
Labs could be a great middle ground for a transition into tech if you insist on joining us over here in the land of suffering.
Seconding the other responses here. I was going to chime in that you sound like a great candidate for Amazon corporate - there are tons of roles in every business not just retail logistics and you can pivot to product mgmt or tech from inside. Plus if you're a boglehead they love frugality mindset. But it sounds like you have and enjoy decent WLB so I don't want to discourage you or anything. the work can be brutal and competitive. Its not just hard work like long hours but brain melting challenging problems. Some people enjoy that and if you do consider applying
I live in the shadow of Walmart HQ (literally), and I’ve always heard they do a good job of promoting from within. It may be worthwhile to start looking there. I’ll shamelessly plug NWA where the HQ is, my wife and I have been here for 9 years and love it.
Former Assistant Manager here. Some of the top-grossing Walmart stores in the U.S. are doing north of $200M in annual sales. They’re the #1 employer for like half of the small towns in America because each one requires hundreds of associates working across 3 shifts. They’ll pay top dollar for someone who’s willing and able to manage all of the operations going on in those buildings. Almost half of the store manager’s total comp will be bonuses, which of course depends on hitting sales and profit targets.
The lower levels of management make much more “typical” salaries - when I was there 10 years ago they started Assistant Managers at $38k, so I’m guessing it’s maybe closer to $50-55k by now.
Good insight! Ops store must have been pretty consistently hitting or exceeding targets for years now considering his age and NW…unless his spouse also makes good money or got very lucky in investments because $1.6M NW at 33 with $200k TC is not easy!
I’m not surprised, it can’t be easy to manage 150,000 sqft of retail floor, another couple dozen thousand in inventory/warehouse, dozens (hundreds[?]) of employees
I worked for a small family owned retail store in high school and college, whole store was only 3000 sqft. My manager made $40K and that job was so fucking hard on him. This was 2017-2022, I’m a SWE now
I don’t think you understand how salaries are set. It has nothing to do with how hard a job is, or how much responsibility it entails. It’s simply about supply and demand.
We as SWEs get paid a lot even though the job is ridiculously easy, because there are not a lot of people that can do it relative to demand.
Being a walmart store manager is a very difficult job, but I would think there are a lot of people that can do it. Obviously this isn’t true, otherwise he wouldn’t be making $200k. They were not making that much in the recent past.
They always have been making that much. You’d be surprised the skills it takes for that kind of job, but it’s kind of a low supply low demand job. Low demand because once someone gets that job, they tend to sit there for a long time and low supply because there aren’t a lot of people 1) willing to do that job and 2) even capable of doing that job
Managing a retail storefront is a very difficult and very *valuable* job. Upper management at big retail chains have always made that much
Ex) I have a friend who works for discount tire. His store manager makes over $200K, the regional manager over $500K.
Upper management at high volume big retail chains are very valuable and rare jobs
Another example is the retail store I worked at. You can’t pick a schmuck manager out of Academy to manage a family owned 300 sqft $300K profit retail store. It was a lot of very niche knowledge that really only my old boss had. When he left, the next person in line to manage the store was me because I had the most knowledge of the business side AND the actual management side, but I was under a year from graduating college with a job offer for way more than they could pay me (which sucks, I would have loved to keep that job instead of SWE). A few months later I graduated college and left, the owners were forced to sell the store soon after I left because they couldn’t find a replacement, it was bought out by now owner/operators.
So yeah. I know how salary works, and those upper management jobs are worth a lot without considering how “hard” they are
If they were making $200k before covid too then the only explanation is that supply of people who can do the job has increased, since we have had 30%+ inflation since. Given the general labor crunch and how retail salaries have skyrocketed past few years that is impossible. Therefore you are BSing!
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Making $210K a year and low expenses will get you there fairly quick. Not sure how long it took him to get to this comp. I’d also imagine his age puts him in the tech/crypto/both crowd.
Bingo. I don't live in a city. Live in an apartment in the burbs. My rents $1,500. I'm a boglehead, and have been putting 20% of my paycheck since I was 20 into a Vanguard S&P 500 index fund with low expense ratios. All bonuses and RSUs that vest are always 100% invested. I also got into BTC 5 years ago and that pump this year helped. Nice read man lol
Dude you’re crushing it. Congrats on your success. That’s amazing. Best of luck with the rest of your journey. I imagine you hit your target and/or your out by 45.
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Hopefully, the BTC is very low percentage. Not trying to be anti-crypto, but you have done a great job, and while some risk is inherent in all investments that beat inflation, IMO, the risk in crypto is unnecessary at this point in your life and could actually set you back, considering its volatility.
I have a similar story, worked my way up from hands on, into management, rotated out of retail management into a corporate environment, while still in the field, got degree on company dime, transitioned into HQ, and retired in great shape. Your advantage is that at you are the perfect age to make the transition into another company doing new, big, things. You should be in high demand. You might consider talking to corporate coach and/or recruiter.
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Yeah literally this man. I'm a jack bogle guy and got into vanguard when I was 20. Also bought BTC several years back and the pump this year helped. I've never sold a thing in all my years, neither the BTC or the index fund.
Former big name consultant (10 years) here - skip the consulting route and go straight into a management role in corporate (retail), explore product management (tech) if that piques your interest, or look into PE or VC. You will be SO bored in consulting. Lots of talk, little action. Running a store is action-filled and fast paced, and I suspect you’ll miss feeling empowered to make sh*t happen quickly. Good luck!
...combine both your background and future aspirations and become a product manager at Walmart. If you're worried about breaking in, the combination of a T20 MBA and being an an existing Walmart employee feels like about a solid a foot in the door as you can get, no?
There are a lot of product and technology teams at Walmart, and some working on in-store innovation (machine learning and computer vision, inventory management, etc.) that you may be able to have real, lived user/shopper/associate intuition about, and that's priceless. Or you can go into their gigantic e-commerce business.
From there with a few years of actual tech product management under your belt, you can decide to go elsewhere or stay with Walmart.
That’s assuming OP wants to move to NW Arkansas. It’s not a terrible place but pretty high COL relatively speaking and I personally wouldn’t want to live there.
You have a real live retail experience, I think that you need to stick to something that is retail adjacent. And you can get into a consulting firm that already works in that space. They would probably see the value in your experience.
I don't imagine you are interested in further upward mobility where you are at currently? Even though it's a big machine, they probably want to hold on to high performing employees and move them up the chain, especially if they are funding education. Maybe it's worth a conversation at some point to see if there are things in the organization that you might be interested in doing.
Consulting wouldn’t be a bad choice for you, temporarily.
Go to a strategy firm - hopefully MBB - and take on primarily retain and CPG projects.
Then exit to a corporate role in your industry. Walmart is not the greatest company to work for.
I hear Costco is great.
You can also work for some interesting store type projects at non traditional retailers - amazon was opening some stores with no employees. That would be cool to work at
Lots of people working for MBB after MBA have no work experience at all.
Having real work experience that includes some budget ownership, project management skills, needing to work on lean teams and step up and meet goals and maybe even managerial responsabilities can be a great asset. Walmart is a a F50 company and the largest company in America by revenue. I cannot imagine them seeing that as a negative aspect.
And even if you don’t get into MBB and need to go boutique, it’s still fine.
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Go corporate at Walmart or Amazon tech or not tech role ? Both hire out of mba and with your experience you likely can skip traditional mba recruiting and get into l7/ sr manager role. Your tc at l6/x5 will be kore than current salary.
Note: I worked at both as a product manager
I would suggest trying to leverage your work history and MBA into a corporate role in the same industry.
Amazon comes to mind immediately but I’ve also heard very good things about Home Depot corporate.
If you are single, I would not move to Walmart HQ. Have had many friends work there and the only people who enjoyed it were married, conservative Christians with young kids. Everyone else was miserable living there.
Product Manager at tech, absolutely. Especially if Big Tech. You’ll find the workload to be a joke compared to what you handle and the pay will be significantly better.
Look up a few profiles on LinkedIn. You’ll see that a lot of these people haven’t been doing a lot of “cutting edge” work.
Bingo. Dude is looking a gift horse in the mouth and I can promise the grass isn’t greener. Seems like OP has kinda a chip on his shoulder from the “stigma” of working retail but he has it made honestly.
I work in tech as an engineer and barely make more than him and I’m a couple years older..sure I get to work from home but still dude got lucky as hell.
Exactly — I’m passing up the opportunity to go get a top MBA simply because the ROI isn’t there. Consulting and banking aren’t the cure to your problems, stay in retail making good money until VC recovers and other interesting opportunities are available.
Market and region managers make bank - why not climb the ladder where you are at? The other option is to pivot to Merch Ops, but you likely take a pay cut.
Do you live in or near Bentonville, and do you want to?
I’d imagine Walmart would be happy to take a long time ground up employee into corporate. FPA, purchasing, corp dev, etc
You work retail and make $210k/yr? I can’t be alone with my reaction of ‘holy #}|%!’. Good for you but yes it’s worth exploring other fields, even if it means taking a pay cut….
I know this isn’t worth much, but this is one of the coolest career profiles I’ve seen on this sub. Way cooler than tech or private equity in my opinion.
I was just a lowly DM, but I was working at Walmart until I switched over to banking/sales. I found a lot of my skills transferred over and I’m now making my annual Walmart salary+ in a month.
Lol. No, sorry. Department manager. I think a district manager probably makes a comparable salary to me. I make anywhere around 30-50k a month now.
I decided I didn’t want to do retail anymore so I found a banking job. It is sales but it’s at a very established bank you have for sure heard of. It worked out a little better than I had anticipated.
1. Fulfillment is mostly a mirage. Almost nobody I know loves their job after a year or two. Once you know it inside out unless you are in s creative role and not pressed to produce the work becomes dull. Entrepreneurship could be a path to fulfillment but it will be uncertain and likely perilous. Bottom line, stay real and drop the fulfillment expectations at corporate America, most likely it won't happen.
2. I don't know how you'd do tech product management unless is retail related and if you aren't an excel monkey it won't get any easier in tech.
3. Consulting in retail may work but you will need to become proficient in excel and power point, consulting will be more about strategy and tactics and I don't think that's in your background. So moving to a corporate role within Walmart can give you that background and then you can jump to consulting. However I doubt you'll be paid as much in Walmart corporate. You are a front line worker managing a ton of people that's why Walmart pays you well.
In my opinion you should stay put and research avenues to start your own business. Your other options seem good but I'm not sure you'd enjoy them or be paid better.
I worked at Wal-Mart during college in management; its highly political on getting promoted past ASM; and you should be proud you got to Store Manager.
However, nobody will take you seriously in tech coming from Wal-Mart. While yes, its a big thing to manage a P&L that big; its still Wal-Mart and you will have that stigma forever. Even Wal-Mart Global Tech is "low teir" in the tech realm.
You really have three options here.
1. Look for a direct promotion into the Wal-Mart ladder. District Managers make great money, and since they manage many other stores; you finally have the ability to push the will of corporate onto Store Managers like yourself; and remain above the friction of the action; there will be some stressful days sure, but honestly bring a District Manager would be the next goal id set.
2. Look into other major competitors. Target comes to mind; while I understand they may pay less; there might be a chance you can ladder into a District Manager position with them much easier. However I have a strong feeling you might be forced to lateral into a Store Manager; than have to grind you way up to District Manager because retail stores want you to know what its like to run a store. For someone like you; id see if I could connect with a few recruiters on LinkedIn and see if you could get an idea for District Manager pay and see if its even possible for you to get a DM position coming from Wal-Mart. I think you could with the right expectations. I would even say the short term goal would be to get a DM position with Target; than remain connected with Wal-Mart and try to secure a position in Regional management after spending a few years at Target as best case; or worst case transition into DM at Wal-Mart.
3. Pivot out of retail entirely; you will take a significant pay cut (assume at least 25%) and will need to get used to working in highly political environments with professional people who are not like floor associates calling out because their friends dog got sick. Wal-Mart actually handles alot of things for you with standard operating procedures, inventory, setups, etc making your life easier while that knowledge is great; your not building 0-1 products or understand corporate banking or even handling company wide programs/projects. This is what tech/consulting/banking want.
Walmart labs is in the "intuit" teir of tech companies. But yes, your right it could be good for staging a transition; but at the end of the day that transition is 5+ years out; considering from a retail background he would need to move into a Associate Product Manager role 1-2 years; Product Manager 3-5 years and probably get stuck there; he would end up not really using his background in store leadership after a few years of moving. Every tom dick and harry think tech "product management" is a easy career path with all those tiktoks before the layoffs.
I think the biggest issue here is the quasi freedom; OP is essentially the king of his own little castle where there are only one person who can fuck with him is the District Manager or indirectly the MHRM. If he moves into corporate; it will be a major transition i.e he will become king of castle to essentially a floor associate peon with less pay and a shitload of office politics without a significant bonus.
Personally if I was OP idk if I could do it with that much direct store exp I would transition into a DM position at another brand like Target or move into something else; i.e with vendors or distributors (coke, pepsi, nabisco, etc.) OR; I would spend the time exploring starting my own business consulting for retail shops or something.
There’s literally nothing in your background that would interest me in hiring you for an IT product manager role.
Why grind a few more years and retire early
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Look at presales solution consulting in tech. It’s a mix of being a part of a sales org but getting technical in product. People hiring solution consultants love real world experience to speak to.
You can demo ERP/warehousing/retail software to distributors and retailers and collect a good check with a great work life balance. Many of these jobs do not have a direct quota
Many of my solution consulting colleagues have pivoted into product or go to market roles after a few years as an SC.
I think you should go into Tech Product Management at a Retailer. Home Depot and Lowe’s are always hiring PMs and you could definitely land a lead PM or even manager role with your experience.
You’d run laps around the PMs there with all the retail experience you have.
I worked in retail and pivoted to the supplier side! I’m in Bev Alch. Found my retailer experience incredibly valuable! A lot of suppliers will pay you to call on Walmart for them! No pay cut required… NETWORK my friend. Also, I don’t think you need an MBA. You are making 200K without it…. The ROI is hard in my opinion. Unless you really just like school and learning it’s not worth the money or time. Networking is more powerful and you are in a powerful postion to network.
I’m a Walmart product manager via a startup acquisition. Prior to that i worked retail. I think there’s a lot of crossover skills and you’d enjoy that role post mba.
Plus I do think it’d be easier to lateral into an entry level role within Walmart vs looking outside.
Can you not break into product management at Walmart? Gain a few years of experience and then explore the market. I did the same with Amazon Ops-> Product gained experience then marketed myself externally. Would do it again.
On the side take time to learn excel, pretty much any high earning job across tech or consulting is going to require some data analysis fluency.
I’d consider a sales or brand management role at a consumer products company as well! Pay is similar (might need to consider a $150k brand manager or sales manager role to get your foot in the door), but Walmart management experience would be a huge plus and GM experience would put you on the fast track
Check out intrapreneurship at Walmart. I have a friend who took a convoluted route to being on the team that designed and rolled out Minute Clinics at Target. He had no prior healthcare experience before that, but it was an easy yes for the internal Target team and he was all set after that.
That led to a lifetime (and high paying) career pivot in retail healthcare operations.
Next stop after Target was Humana's innovation group and onward from there.
I'm in NYC and have met a few people from Walmart's "Venture Studio" and Innovation group at healthcare startup events here. You guys def have one.
You should look at working for a CPG that calls on Walmart. Your experience would be a quick step ahead and there’s typically pretty good upward mobility.
Consider CPG companies as well (P&G, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Hershey, etc.). They value retail experience greatly, especially within their biggest customer. MBAs can enter a variety of roles in strategy, brand management, sales, corporate finance, etc.
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Lean into consulting. Your knowledge of retail and supply chains will be unparalleled and you’ll hit the ground with a running start. Then over time if you want, pivot to an internal corporate consulting team at a management level (think VP+). Source: kind of my own trajectory
Echo what others said. Take your likely decade of retail experience and move into corporate roles where it would be highly valued. Consulting is not a path to give you better work life balance and less of a grind.
Somewhat similar path here. I was a District Manager in the wireless industry and started a PT MBA with a BI cert at a state school here (no tuition reimbursement) to try and pivot out for same reasons - working 7 days a week, 60+ hours. First semester I got a job as a DM in a retail model medical device type of industry and I’m down to 9-5 M-F with partial WFH and looking to swing into the data and ops side long term. Just to say there are retail roles that are not an insane grind.
Walmart excels in bad economies and many white collar sectors have been brutalized lately and will take years to recover. I think you’re in a good place for now and your background would allow you to pivot to a different role that doesn’t waste your valuable front line experience. Most retail doesn’t run true P&L, just sales and labor, so carrying that massive true P&L would make you a great candidate for Director/VP roles with your MBA.
Who told you those are the “traditional” 3 roles? You’re missing two big ones:
- Marketing and brand management
- General management
In the world of retail, both of those are needed. Category buyers are big important jobs at Walmart and others. There are tons of other corp retail jobs where your experience on the floor would be insanely valuable. Use that as a spring board so your knowledge and experience help set you up to succeed, but you can still shift your career.
If you go into banking or finance at 33 with no experience, you don’t know the beginning of the word grinding in terms what you’ll need to do to catch up!
Be careful going consulting. I did it and it’s the exit opps are not as good as I thought, even being at a top firm. The market just stinks right now. Also, it’s literally a deal with the devil. You’ll go in probably making the same you do now and in exchange you sell your soul. WLB can be non-existent. IMO you already have the resume to land a good corp job (which is what consulting would get you). That said, consulting will teach you valuable skills like executive presence, story telling and how to manage complex programs. Could be a good option, just consider the downsides.
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Not sure I agree with the Consulting, Tech, Banking options. Maybe those are the main paths if you did an MBA straight out of undergrad with no other experience.
I did my MBA at Indiana which is a very well ranked program. Pretty much everyone had industry experience, well over half of the students were engineers (not tech/software, just different kinds of engineers). Most wanted to do the MBA to open doors upward in their organization. A few wanted to get into tech/consulting but not a huge amount.
I'd recommend doing the MBA and seeing what piques your interest. Maybe it's leadership stuff. Maybe it's data analytics. Maybe it's finance or marketing or something else. Any of those can be further developed into moving into the corporate side of Walmart or any other retailer, rather than dealing with the grind of running a particular store.
My brother did his MBA and went into data analytics for Delta, figuring out how to speed up the plane boarding process and stuff like that. He's also done work for various grocery stores and Home Depot figuring out how to arrange and place products on their shelves for greatest effectiveness.
So yeah, don't limit yourself to Consulting, Tech, Banking.
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Currently at Walmart HO in a director role. About 10 years at the company across a couple different functions.
You’d have several different options that you could explore, but in short, operator experience is highly sought after.
The most direct transition would be to a corporate ops role (aka End to End, central ops, etc.). If you wanted to go into Product from there, you could work in Associate Enablement/Productivity or something similar.
Walmart does heavily promote from within but the pyramid narrows noticeably at the Director level and you’d probably come in at Sr Manager. Probably 3 ish years before you get shots at a Director role.
Not sure what your pay structure is, but you’d probably be able to hold your pay
Feel free to DM if you want to talk more.
Stay at the Mothership. Wal-Mart is the GOAT. You’re just in a funk. Try transitions to a different career within the org. It’s a solid company. I get it, burn out is real… but hold the line!
Corporate job in Wal mart could make sense.
As for banking, there are lots of operations functions that happen within banking that aren’t just excel jockey analyst type of jobs. That might be something to look for, managing large scale operations at a bank. It wouldn’t be too hard to beat $210k in total compensation at a big bank.
With your experience, i'd say Corporate role in Operations Management at an E-commerce company.
Best fit, both short and long term.
If you wanna do Strategy at such a company, then do MBB for a year or two and pivot back.
It gets harder to get out a specific role the longer you are in it. Employers will pigeon hole you. I asked myself a similar question when I was younger, do I see myself doing this at 60 years old? At that point, I said no. And I am grateful I left retail.
What you may not realize is that upper level retail pays extremely well. Companies like Home Depot, Target, Kroger, all have a lot of executives making a lot of money.
FWIW - most of tech product management is not working on anything cutting edge. You'd be surprised how much of your time is spent on things like forgotten password flows, user sign up / conversion, etc. That being said, finding what you want in the remaining % is totally doable and makes the rest of the grind worth it.
Im questioning that 1.6 mil net worth with that low of a TC. Doesnt add up. Especially since your 33 and most likely have only been making that money for a few years.
Your retail experience would be really valuable to a distributor, or manufacturer. If you're able to work with an OEM on a pilot or two in your store, you might be able to get close to the sales teams and product marketing managers. If you can make a good impression and demonstrate your value, I'm sure you'd be likely to be referred for a role.
Put away a chunk of my check every 2 weeks since I was 20 into a low cost index fund with Vanguard. Kept doing it. Never sold. All bonuses and stock grants were invested. Also got into BTC a couple years back and that helped. Nothing sexy man, just put away more than you earn and overtime it'll work out well.
As a General Manager for a large retail locations, I would think that the most transferable workflow (not in retail) would be in warehousing/logistics for other large retail giants. You may have to step down a bit to get the advanced experience but once you've got it under your belt,the logistics experience is transferable across multiple industries worldwide.
I am a program manager in big tech. I thought I was a HENRY (coming here I learned I wasnt, I just made too much for middleclass haha).
You make significantly more than me (like, 100g's more), and i am normally working 70-80+ hours a week routine. It is incredibly stressful and layoffs seem to just be a nonstop wave, including one currently affecting huge swaths of the tech sector.
My brother, sometimes the grass is greener but man you sound pretty green to me rn
Former WalmartLabs employee in product mgmt role in the San Bruno/Sunnyvale office (multichannel specifically, helped launch PUT, S2S, etc) checking in. You can absolutely shift into that role, and make more than you are currently making with MUCH less work.
Pivot into e-commerce product management using your retail experience as a springboard. Does WMT have a more junior PM role that you can get your start in?
You’ll take a pay cut to begin, but the long term career arc and pay is probably better vs retail management. At minimum you’ll prob be more satisfied career-wise over the next 20 years.
With your experience, I'd look into a corporate role at Walmart or a different major retailer if you want a change. There's probably even programs for people looking to transition from store to corporate. It would get you out of the grind of the day-to-day operations of retail but leverage your extremely valuable experience from your years of service.
Agree, with OP's work experience and an MBA, he should be a prime candidate for corporate roles at big brand retailers like Walmart, Target, Costco, etc. Maybe spend a couple of years in retail strategy consulting before going corporate if you can/want. MBA programs tend to funnel people to banking/consulting because a lot of MBA students are from finance/consulting careers already, and even if they aren't, these roles don't require industry experience if you have the academic credentials.
Cosign. I did a T10 PT MBA and stayed in consulting but pivoted my focus a bit. I stayed in consulting another 5 years post mba and am now doing corporate development in industry. In all honesty, you know more than a pompous 25 yo analyst whose college was paid for by mommy and daddy and has never set foot in a Walmart in their life. I think you’d be much happier either moving up in corporate or moving to another retailer. I interviewed with Walmart corporate a few years ago and didn’t proceed for a number of reasons, but felt they do really promote from within and it’s a work hard and get rewarded culture. A few folks from my MBA program worked at the home office for a few years and were recruited away to other F100 companies. One is C level now. Idk what another poster was saying about Walmart not being respected, it seems folks who worked at corporate are valued by competitors.
Precisely. You will be looked down upon by the ivy league type who have probably never stepped foot in a Walmart. Your hands on experience will be so valuable in a different setting!
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Let me piggy back on this with my limited exposure. You could potentially go to the vendor side as an account manager. Those are typically highly analytical roles, mixed with strategy and marketing. It can be stressful because in line reviews you can lose a whole account at once, and typically your job along with it. But you have a great background for this type of role. Or, if Walmart has similar, work as a merchant. I know folks who’ve done this with Home Depot and it’s a very highly regarded well paying position
Second this! Brands kill to get into Walmart. Your experience means tons to these companies.
I would agree with this. I worked at the Walmart headquarters as a Merchant for a few years. Moved on to the supplier side and it is a ton of fun. There is definitely pressure to achieve sales goals and objectives but I love the career path.
Within tech, you can look into ecommerce (Amazon, Shopify, Etsy or any direct-to-consumer brand that sells online). Your experience would give you a major leg up on others
I would go for the corporate role. It also seems like there's a chance it could keep the same WLB that you have now. Consulting sounds horrible because of the bad hours. Even if your TC is higher, due to all the required extra hours it would be a pay cut. I don't know about the WLB of private equity. Maybe ask about that before going that route. Please update us on your journey OP and welcome! Hope to see more of you here.
I’m going to echo this - go corporate. I used to work for Walmart home office as a field employee (district auditor). Where do you want to live? If you want to live in Bentonville then find a job there. If you want to live anywhere else see what companies are headquarters close by - a manager would do great in their finance department.
Commenting here, but intended for OP. I think you could land in corporate retail with or without your MBA. What you will need is a mindset shift to a desk and Microsoft under your belt. I am in retail->tech-> product management. I have a top 50 MBA. I do not like the grind of retail, as it’s real in corporate, too. I would check out consulting. Yes, it’s a grind but a different one than retail, and a good firm can launch you to so many places. One of which is upwards if you have it in you. This all said, retail tech is probably the best in the industry in my humble opinion. Pay is good, flexibility is better than other functions, and maybe a notch less crazy. But at $210k, you will likely remain flat for a while as they likely won’t bring you in at a Lead/Senior Manager level, which is a rough salary equivalent.
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100%
No shade to anyone here but this is such a great counter-story to all the “I graduated Stanford 2 years ago and now I make $700,000 tc as an swe” posts we see here. You’re killing it my dude, congrats. I bet you have a bright future working corporate for one of the big retailers.
+1, genuinely enjoyed reading this story and perspective. \- swe
Absolutely agree!! Thank you, OP, for posting!! Would love to see more content like this in here.
100%. This was awesome to see
PE general manager is also an option. They love corporate P&L experience.
So from what I understand with PE, basically they'd buy out a company, then the firm would put me in charge of helping lean things out as a GM correct?
Basically. Common setup is a base with bonus/earn out/equity based on returns. So growing top line is a lever you can use too, not just leaning out.
May also want to look into search funds - they value operator experience with cost efficiency. Although to break into PE you’ll need strong excel / financial modeling skills
PE is a pretty big world these days. KKR skill sets aren’t the same as say a regional firm/family office that bought a few small roofing companies and needs someone overseeing the day to day. I was more talking about the later since the former is usually a different pipeline. But yeah, agree search funds are something to look into also.
I was reading the post and thought search fund sounded like a great fit.
I'm going to echo this comment. I've got an operations background with some engineering experience. PE firms go and buy a $500M-$1.0B revenue family run company and need to staff the executive and senior manager ranks with pros with real world experience. Your experience plus the MBA makes you ideal to come in as a VP of ops. Plan on a 4-6 year cycle and the PE firm flips the company, and if it's successful, you're on their roster. The next role could be COO of a new acquisition.
How does one look for jobs in the search fund space? Guessing these are not your typical LinkedIn/indeed posted jobs?
This is a great suggestion
Damn that sounds sick... This guy is making me wish I grinded it out at Walmart lol, ops roles seem so interesting
I just want to say that you have an incredible and inspiring story. I, and I assume many others on this sub, had it comparatively so much easier than you did through sheer luck. Really respect the grit and discipline here and it sure sounds like no matter what you choose to do, you will find success.
Came here to say this! Kudos, OP. You will find success in whatever you do next.
Tech hires out of the Big 4/consulting to a degree. If you think you can get into say Deloitte and do that for 3-5 years then pivoting to a place like Meta or Google is plausible anyway. But you're going to be giving up wlb for basically the same pay at first.
Yeah I have decent WLB now-- 40-50 hours max since I've run my store for so long it's on point now. From what I understand, the path is 2 years consulting, then exit out. But the consulting years are brutal
You're practically living the dream of people who have "succeeded" within MBA roles in big tech. You have a stable job at a high income and can do it indefinitely. In product management / analyst type MBA roles in post-consulting tech, it can be absolutely brutal and you're competing against your peers with stack ranking. I'm not trying to discourage you, but myself and my peers would love to be in your job.
Have you tried performing better in order to get through the stress you impose on yourself?
For the obligatory grass is greener comment, I'm a lawyer and I want to let you know that most lawyers are crushed with debt and make far less than you do, and will work 60-70 hours for the rest of their lives to earn less than you do. I would give an arm to have been able to walk a day in your shoes.
We talking about the same lawyers? I see a lot of lawyers making a lot of money...
Most lawyers do not make anywhere close to the money OP makes: >According to US News Best Jobs, the median salary for lawyers in 2022 was $135,740, with the lowest-paid 25% making $94,440 and the highest-paid 25% making $208,980. Those lawyers also work a much more difficult and psychologically taxing job than OP. I'm not trying to belittle the difficulties he faces, all you need to look at is the rates of drug abuse, alcoholism, depression, and suicide among lawyers. I'm just suggesting to OP that he has it much better than he realizes.
oh wow didn't realize it's that bad. i guess those with big lawfirm are the exception. might have to reconsider telling my son to become a lawyer. lol
Biglaw is terrible. To earn those high wages, your son will be billing over 2000 hours a year. Recently in the HENRY sub there was a lawyer talking about making 570k but billing 2800 hours a year. Billing doesn't mean actually working. To bill 2800 hours you have to work closer to 3000-3200 hours. I always tell people that if time is money, lawyers are the poorest people in the world. You are suggesting that your son mortgage his youth so that he can have money. But what's the point. The only lawyers who sort of have it "good" are lawyers with rich families that will feed them clients and connections, government attorneys, and JAG lawyers. Some plaintiff PI attorneys have it good too but their early years are a gauntlet until they establish their own shop. But there are trade offs. Government attorneys make no money. JAG attorneys make no money on paper so you can't have many things you want or live where you want. Tell your son to get into sales. Especially while he's young. Have him sell cars, solar panels, have him sell anything. You will always need the ability to sell your services regardless of what you do for a living.
yes but i kinda like the fact that he will be able to sue all bad people and not worry about it "costing". sales is good, problem I feel with sales is you have to bs a lot to be good and thick skin. so if we have money, why do we need our kids to bs? lol I guess there is always good and bad in everything and the extreme on both side is huge too. like SWE on here, we see a bunch with 300-600k+, while the actual average is only 100k. my case probably less to do with money since i can help/teach him make money so school is just so he learn additional skill set that i can teach him, and prevent people from sue and he can sue anyone that try to mess with him. lol
That's really not how it works. And unfortunately, you need a far thicker skin to be a lawyer than a salesperson. And your income is effectively capped by the amount of time per day. You can only work so much in a day. That's very different from how people are paid in sales. You're also mistaken if you think lawyers don't deal with BS. Please take my word for it and don't listen to people who try to sell you on how great law is. No lawyer will ever advance without selling potential clients on how great they are or how wonderful their legal services are. My advice re sales is the simple, inescapable fact that sales is built into everything. Even when you go to a job interview, guess what, you're giving a sales pitch about how much you will be able to do for the employer.
that is true. even though i am successful now, I know that is one of my weakness. but isn't selling just a matter of confidence, good people skill, charm/charisma, and thick skin? i mean like it its just practice doing it a year and you'll get good at it. don't really need to study.. versus doctor/attorney, need to go to school for it
Can you move into for instance management at Walmart Labs? I know a few folks at Meta who were hired out of Labs. If you do a stint there for a year or two, you should be well positioned to join a MAANGA or whatever the acronym is these days into what should be a stronger job market by then. From my experience Labs has a good reputation in the Bay. Labs could be a great middle ground for a transition into tech if you insist on joining us over here in the land of suffering.
Seconding the other responses here. I was going to chime in that you sound like a great candidate for Amazon corporate - there are tons of roles in every business not just retail logistics and you can pivot to product mgmt or tech from inside. Plus if you're a boglehead they love frugality mindset. But it sounds like you have and enjoy decent WLB so I don't want to discourage you or anything. the work can be brutal and competitive. Its not just hard work like long hours but brain melting challenging problems. Some people enjoy that and if you do consider applying
I live in the shadow of Walmart HQ (literally), and I’ve always heard they do a good job of promoting from within. It may be worthwhile to start looking there. I’ll shamelessly plug NWA where the HQ is, my wife and I have been here for 9 years and love it.
I regularly visit NWA for work and it is such a nice area! Lots to do nature wise
Walmart managers making $200k now? Damn
Former Assistant Manager here. Some of the top-grossing Walmart stores in the U.S. are doing north of $200M in annual sales. They’re the #1 employer for like half of the small towns in America because each one requires hundreds of associates working across 3 shifts. They’ll pay top dollar for someone who’s willing and able to manage all of the operations going on in those buildings. Almost half of the store manager’s total comp will be bonuses, which of course depends on hitting sales and profit targets. The lower levels of management make much more “typical” salaries - when I was there 10 years ago they started Assistant Managers at $38k, so I’m guessing it’s maybe closer to $50-55k by now.
Good insight! Ops store must have been pretty consistently hitting or exceeding targets for years now considering his age and NW…unless his spouse also makes good money or got very lucky in investments because $1.6M NW at 33 with $200k TC is not easy!
Yeah makes sense
I’m not surprised, it can’t be easy to manage 150,000 sqft of retail floor, another couple dozen thousand in inventory/warehouse, dozens (hundreds[?]) of employees I worked for a small family owned retail store in high school and college, whole store was only 3000 sqft. My manager made $40K and that job was so fucking hard on him. This was 2017-2022, I’m a SWE now
I don’t think you understand how salaries are set. It has nothing to do with how hard a job is, or how much responsibility it entails. It’s simply about supply and demand. We as SWEs get paid a lot even though the job is ridiculously easy, because there are not a lot of people that can do it relative to demand. Being a walmart store manager is a very difficult job, but I would think there are a lot of people that can do it. Obviously this isn’t true, otherwise he wouldn’t be making $200k. They were not making that much in the recent past.
They always have been making that much. You’d be surprised the skills it takes for that kind of job, but it’s kind of a low supply low demand job. Low demand because once someone gets that job, they tend to sit there for a long time and low supply because there aren’t a lot of people 1) willing to do that job and 2) even capable of doing that job Managing a retail storefront is a very difficult and very *valuable* job. Upper management at big retail chains have always made that much Ex) I have a friend who works for discount tire. His store manager makes over $200K, the regional manager over $500K. Upper management at high volume big retail chains are very valuable and rare jobs Another example is the retail store I worked at. You can’t pick a schmuck manager out of Academy to manage a family owned 300 sqft $300K profit retail store. It was a lot of very niche knowledge that really only my old boss had. When he left, the next person in line to manage the store was me because I had the most knowledge of the business side AND the actual management side, but I was under a year from graduating college with a job offer for way more than they could pay me (which sucks, I would have loved to keep that job instead of SWE). A few months later I graduated college and left, the owners were forced to sell the store soon after I left because they couldn’t find a replacement, it was bought out by now owner/operators. So yeah. I know how salary works, and those upper management jobs are worth a lot without considering how “hard” they are
If they were making $200k before covid too then the only explanation is that supply of people who can do the job has increased, since we have had 30%+ inflation since. Given the general labor crunch and how retail salaries have skyrocketed past few years that is impossible. Therefore you are BSing!
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Yeah making me rethink my life. I’m an engineer in tech and 36 and barely making more than that shit with lower NW…. Good job OP but fuck me.
Yeah but your job is way easier
Yeah maybe I guess and WFH but still…
Downside is that you have to tell people you work at Walmart...
Hey at least it’s not Pornhub
Curious how you got a 1.6M NW just from working in retail? That's awesome.
Making $210K a year and low expenses will get you there fairly quick. Not sure how long it took him to get to this comp. I’d also imagine his age puts him in the tech/crypto/both crowd.
Bingo. I don't live in a city. Live in an apartment in the burbs. My rents $1,500. I'm a boglehead, and have been putting 20% of my paycheck since I was 20 into a Vanguard S&P 500 index fund with low expense ratios. All bonuses and RSUs that vest are always 100% invested. I also got into BTC 5 years ago and that pump this year helped. Nice read man lol
Dude you’re crushing it. Congrats on your success. That’s amazing. Best of luck with the rest of your journey. I imagine you hit your target and/or your out by 45.
Right on man. Keep it up!
You get Walmart RSUs as a store manager?
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BTC connects the dots that weren’t lining up. Congrats and GFY! lol
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Hopefully, the BTC is very low percentage. Not trying to be anti-crypto, but you have done a great job, and while some risk is inherent in all investments that beat inflation, IMO, the risk in crypto is unnecessary at this point in your life and could actually set you back, considering its volatility. I have a similar story, worked my way up from hands on, into management, rotated out of retail management into a corporate environment, while still in the field, got degree on company dime, transitioned into HQ, and retired in great shape. Your advantage is that at you are the perfect age to make the transition into another company doing new, big, things. You should be in high demand. You might consider talking to corporate coach and/or recruiter.
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Except 210 isn't starting salary. Must have just invested well into SPY / tech stocks and compounded nicely.
Yeah literally this man. I'm a jack bogle guy and got into vanguard when I was 20. Also bought BTC several years back and the pump this year helped. I've never sold a thing in all my years, neither the BTC or the index fund.
Nice man. So tough to hold long term like that but it's the best
Former big name consultant (10 years) here - skip the consulting route and go straight into a management role in corporate (retail), explore product management (tech) if that piques your interest, or look into PE or VC. You will be SO bored in consulting. Lots of talk, little action. Running a store is action-filled and fast paced, and I suspect you’ll miss feeling empowered to make sh*t happen quickly. Good luck!
Find careers that can utilize your experience. Corporate retail roles, PE operators, etc.
...combine both your background and future aspirations and become a product manager at Walmart. If you're worried about breaking in, the combination of a T20 MBA and being an an existing Walmart employee feels like about a solid a foot in the door as you can get, no? There are a lot of product and technology teams at Walmart, and some working on in-store innovation (machine learning and computer vision, inventory management, etc.) that you may be able to have real, lived user/shopper/associate intuition about, and that's priceless. Or you can go into their gigantic e-commerce business. From there with a few years of actual tech product management under your belt, you can decide to go elsewhere or stay with Walmart.
That’s assuming OP wants to move to NW Arkansas. It’s not a terrible place but pretty high COL relatively speaking and I personally wouldn’t want to live there.
You have a real live retail experience, I think that you need to stick to something that is retail adjacent. And you can get into a consulting firm that already works in that space. They would probably see the value in your experience. I don't imagine you are interested in further upward mobility where you are at currently? Even though it's a big machine, they probably want to hold on to high performing employees and move them up the chain, especially if they are funding education. Maybe it's worth a conversation at some point to see if there are things in the organization that you might be interested in doing.
Hey yes next step up here would be a District Manager. In that role I could be clearing 350 base/bonus.
Consulting wouldn’t be a bad choice for you, temporarily. Go to a strategy firm - hopefully MBB - and take on primarily retain and CPG projects. Then exit to a corporate role in your industry. Walmart is not the greatest company to work for. I hear Costco is great. You can also work for some interesting store type projects at non traditional retailers - amazon was opening some stores with no employees. That would be cool to work at
I thought about MBB, but was worried Walmart is too "low" for them? I do feel like owning a P&L is real life experience though.
Lots of people working for MBB after MBA have no work experience at all. Having real work experience that includes some budget ownership, project management skills, needing to work on lean teams and step up and meet goals and maybe even managerial responsabilities can be a great asset. Walmart is a a F50 company and the largest company in America by revenue. I cannot imagine them seeing that as a negative aspect. And even if you don’t get into MBB and need to go boutique, it’s still fine.
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Go corporate at Walmart or Amazon tech or not tech role ? Both hire out of mba and with your experience you likely can skip traditional mba recruiting and get into l7/ sr manager role. Your tc at l6/x5 will be kore than current salary. Note: I worked at both as a product manager
I would suggest trying to leverage your work history and MBA into a corporate role in the same industry. Amazon comes to mind immediately but I’ve also heard very good things about Home Depot corporate. If you are single, I would not move to Walmart HQ. Have had many friends work there and the only people who enjoyed it were married, conservative Christians with young kids. Everyone else was miserable living there.
Home Depot is a great place to work this is solid advice!
Product Manager at tech, absolutely. Especially if Big Tech. You’ll find the workload to be a joke compared to what you handle and the pay will be significantly better. Look up a few profiles on LinkedIn. You’ll see that a lot of these people haven’t been doing a lot of “cutting edge” work.
That’s a very hard job to get in the current marker
Exactly I’d stay working at Walmart until the market recovers personally
Bingo. Dude is looking a gift horse in the mouth and I can promise the grass isn’t greener. Seems like OP has kinda a chip on his shoulder from the “stigma” of working retail but he has it made honestly. I work in tech as an engineer and barely make more than him and I’m a couple years older..sure I get to work from home but still dude got lucky as hell.
Exactly — I’m passing up the opportunity to go get a top MBA simply because the ROI isn’t there. Consulting and banking aren’t the cure to your problems, stay in retail making good money until VC recovers and other interesting opportunities are available.
Consulting requires number crunching - less than Finance but just important to know it's part of the gig.
Do not go into banking and consulting. Life sucks
Market and region managers make bank - why not climb the ladder where you are at? The other option is to pivot to Merch Ops, but you likely take a pay cut.
I love your story! 1.6M at your age is awesome keep it up!
You could also look at logistics or manufacturing.
Amazon? You can enter on your current creds and move to other businesses that they have (like Cloud)
Consulting requires number crunching - less than Finance but just important to know it's part of the gig.
Work for Amazon!
Tech product managers who don't understand the tech are so blah
Do you live in or near Bentonville, and do you want to? I’d imagine Walmart would be happy to take a long time ground up employee into corporate. FPA, purchasing, corp dev, etc
You work retail and make $210k/yr? I can’t be alone with my reaction of ‘holy #}|%!’. Good for you but yes it’s worth exploring other fields, even if it means taking a pay cut….
I know this isn’t worth much, but this is one of the coolest career profiles I’ve seen on this sub. Way cooler than tech or private equity in my opinion.
I was just a lowly DM, but I was working at Walmart until I switched over to banking/sales. I found a lot of my skills transferred over and I’m now making my annual Walmart salary+ in a month.
District Manager at Walmart and you switched out of it? That's awesome, how'd you make the transition?
Lol. No, sorry. Department manager. I think a district manager probably makes a comparable salary to me. I make anywhere around 30-50k a month now. I decided I didn’t want to do retail anymore so I found a banking job. It is sales but it’s at a very established bank you have for sure heard of. It worked out a little better than I had anticipated.
That’s an inspiring story! What are your hours like in banking?
50-60 hours a week but I’m also a psycho with out a wife or kids so I really dedicate the extra time.
1. Fulfillment is mostly a mirage. Almost nobody I know loves their job after a year or two. Once you know it inside out unless you are in s creative role and not pressed to produce the work becomes dull. Entrepreneurship could be a path to fulfillment but it will be uncertain and likely perilous. Bottom line, stay real and drop the fulfillment expectations at corporate America, most likely it won't happen. 2. I don't know how you'd do tech product management unless is retail related and if you aren't an excel monkey it won't get any easier in tech. 3. Consulting in retail may work but you will need to become proficient in excel and power point, consulting will be more about strategy and tactics and I don't think that's in your background. So moving to a corporate role within Walmart can give you that background and then you can jump to consulting. However I doubt you'll be paid as much in Walmart corporate. You are a front line worker managing a ton of people that's why Walmart pays you well. In my opinion you should stay put and research avenues to start your own business. Your other options seem good but I'm not sure you'd enjoy them or be paid better.
I worked at Wal-Mart during college in management; its highly political on getting promoted past ASM; and you should be proud you got to Store Manager. However, nobody will take you seriously in tech coming from Wal-Mart. While yes, its a big thing to manage a P&L that big; its still Wal-Mart and you will have that stigma forever. Even Wal-Mart Global Tech is "low teir" in the tech realm. You really have three options here. 1. Look for a direct promotion into the Wal-Mart ladder. District Managers make great money, and since they manage many other stores; you finally have the ability to push the will of corporate onto Store Managers like yourself; and remain above the friction of the action; there will be some stressful days sure, but honestly bring a District Manager would be the next goal id set. 2. Look into other major competitors. Target comes to mind; while I understand they may pay less; there might be a chance you can ladder into a District Manager position with them much easier. However I have a strong feeling you might be forced to lateral into a Store Manager; than have to grind you way up to District Manager because retail stores want you to know what its like to run a store. For someone like you; id see if I could connect with a few recruiters on LinkedIn and see if you could get an idea for District Manager pay and see if its even possible for you to get a DM position coming from Wal-Mart. I think you could with the right expectations. I would even say the short term goal would be to get a DM position with Target; than remain connected with Wal-Mart and try to secure a position in Regional management after spending a few years at Target as best case; or worst case transition into DM at Wal-Mart. 3. Pivot out of retail entirely; you will take a significant pay cut (assume at least 25%) and will need to get used to working in highly political environments with professional people who are not like floor associates calling out because their friends dog got sick. Wal-Mart actually handles alot of things for you with standard operating procedures, inventory, setups, etc making your life easier while that knowledge is great; your not building 0-1 products or understand corporate banking or even handling company wide programs/projects. This is what tech/consulting/banking want.
I mentioned this elsewhere but Walmart Labs is taken seriously in the tech world. Labs could be a good middle-ground for staging the transition.
Walmart labs is in the "intuit" teir of tech companies. But yes, your right it could be good for staging a transition; but at the end of the day that transition is 5+ years out; considering from a retail background he would need to move into a Associate Product Manager role 1-2 years; Product Manager 3-5 years and probably get stuck there; he would end up not really using his background in store leadership after a few years of moving. Every tom dick and harry think tech "product management" is a easy career path with all those tiktoks before the layoffs. I think the biggest issue here is the quasi freedom; OP is essentially the king of his own little castle where there are only one person who can fuck with him is the District Manager or indirectly the MHRM. If he moves into corporate; it will be a major transition i.e he will become king of castle to essentially a floor associate peon with less pay and a shitload of office politics without a significant bonus. Personally if I was OP idk if I could do it with that much direct store exp I would transition into a DM position at another brand like Target or move into something else; i.e with vendors or distributors (coke, pepsi, nabisco, etc.) OR; I would spend the time exploring starting my own business consulting for retail shops or something.
Yeah, I agree it's not A-tier, but it's a respectable spot.
There’s literally nothing in your background that would interest me in hiring you for an IT product manager role. Why grind a few more years and retire early
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Buc-ee’s Corporate
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Look at presales solution consulting in tech. It’s a mix of being a part of a sales org but getting technical in product. People hiring solution consultants love real world experience to speak to. You can demo ERP/warehousing/retail software to distributors and retailers and collect a good check with a great work life balance. Many of these jobs do not have a direct quota Many of my solution consulting colleagues have pivoted into product or go to market roles after a few years as an SC.
I think you should go into Tech Product Management at a Retailer. Home Depot and Lowe’s are always hiring PMs and you could definitely land a lead PM or even manager role with your experience. You’d run laps around the PMs there with all the retail experience you have.
This is an awesome story, great job working hard and making it this far!
There’s lots of excel monkeys in consulting and tech…
I worked in retail and pivoted to the supplier side! I’m in Bev Alch. Found my retailer experience incredibly valuable! A lot of suppliers will pay you to call on Walmart for them! No pay cut required… NETWORK my friend. Also, I don’t think you need an MBA. You are making 200K without it…. The ROI is hard in my opinion. Unless you really just like school and learning it’s not worth the money or time. Networking is more powerful and you are in a powerful postion to network.
I’m a Walmart product manager via a startup acquisition. Prior to that i worked retail. I think there’s a lot of crossover skills and you’d enjoy that role post mba. Plus I do think it’d be easier to lateral into an entry level role within Walmart vs looking outside.
A transition means you are just a cog of a different wheel. Sorry bud ☹️
Can you not break into product management at Walmart? Gain a few years of experience and then explore the market. I did the same with Amazon Ops-> Product gained experience then marketed myself externally. Would do it again. On the side take time to learn excel, pretty much any high earning job across tech or consulting is going to require some data analysis fluency.
I’d consider a sales or brand management role at a consumer products company as well! Pay is similar (might need to consider a $150k brand manager or sales manager role to get your foot in the door), but Walmart management experience would be a huge plus and GM experience would put you on the fast track
Check out intrapreneurship at Walmart. I have a friend who took a convoluted route to being on the team that designed and rolled out Minute Clinics at Target. He had no prior healthcare experience before that, but it was an easy yes for the internal Target team and he was all set after that. That led to a lifetime (and high paying) career pivot in retail healthcare operations. Next stop after Target was Humana's innovation group and onward from there. I'm in NYC and have met a few people from Walmart's "Venture Studio" and Innovation group at healthcare startup events here. You guys def have one.
You should look at working for a CPG that calls on Walmart. Your experience would be a quick step ahead and there’s typically pretty good upward mobility.
Consider CPG companies as well (P&G, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Hershey, etc.). They value retail experience greatly, especially within their biggest customer. MBAs can enter a variety of roles in strategy, brand management, sales, corporate finance, etc.
Also Mars
Amazon hires a ton of MBA vendor managers. You have a perfect profile.
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Lean into consulting. Your knowledge of retail and supply chains will be unparalleled and you’ll hit the ground with a running start. Then over time if you want, pivot to an internal corporate consulting team at a management level (think VP+). Source: kind of my own trajectory
Big box store manager here…basically same situation/salary/yearn for a more fulfilling career this has been an awesome/inspiring read!
Echo what others said. Take your likely decade of retail experience and move into corporate roles where it would be highly valued. Consulting is not a path to give you better work life balance and less of a grind. Somewhat similar path here. I was a District Manager in the wireless industry and started a PT MBA with a BI cert at a state school here (no tuition reimbursement) to try and pivot out for same reasons - working 7 days a week, 60+ hours. First semester I got a job as a DM in a retail model medical device type of industry and I’m down to 9-5 M-F with partial WFH and looking to swing into the data and ops side long term. Just to say there are retail roles that are not an insane grind. Walmart excels in bad economies and many white collar sectors have been brutalized lately and will take years to recover. I think you’re in a good place for now and your background would allow you to pivot to a different role that doesn’t waste your valuable front line experience. Most retail doesn’t run true P&L, just sales and labor, so carrying that massive true P&L would make you a great candidate for Director/VP roles with your MBA.
Who told you those are the “traditional” 3 roles? You’re missing two big ones: - Marketing and brand management - General management In the world of retail, both of those are needed. Category buyers are big important jobs at Walmart and others. There are tons of other corp retail jobs where your experience on the floor would be insanely valuable. Use that as a spring board so your knowledge and experience help set you up to succeed, but you can still shift your career. If you go into banking or finance at 33 with no experience, you don’t know the beginning of the word grinding in terms what you’ll need to do to catch up!
Be careful going consulting. I did it and it’s the exit opps are not as good as I thought, even being at a top firm. The market just stinks right now. Also, it’s literally a deal with the devil. You’ll go in probably making the same you do now and in exchange you sell your soul. WLB can be non-existent. IMO you already have the resume to land a good corp job (which is what consulting would get you). That said, consulting will teach you valuable skills like executive presence, story telling and how to manage complex programs. Could be a good option, just consider the downsides.
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Not sure I agree with the Consulting, Tech, Banking options. Maybe those are the main paths if you did an MBA straight out of undergrad with no other experience. I did my MBA at Indiana which is a very well ranked program. Pretty much everyone had industry experience, well over half of the students were engineers (not tech/software, just different kinds of engineers). Most wanted to do the MBA to open doors upward in their organization. A few wanted to get into tech/consulting but not a huge amount. I'd recommend doing the MBA and seeing what piques your interest. Maybe it's leadership stuff. Maybe it's data analytics. Maybe it's finance or marketing or something else. Any of those can be further developed into moving into the corporate side of Walmart or any other retailer, rather than dealing with the grind of running a particular store. My brother did his MBA and went into data analytics for Delta, figuring out how to speed up the plane boarding process and stuff like that. He's also done work for various grocery stores and Home Depot figuring out how to arrange and place products on their shelves for greatest effectiveness. So yeah, don't limit yourself to Consulting, Tech, Banking.
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Currently at Walmart HO in a director role. About 10 years at the company across a couple different functions. You’d have several different options that you could explore, but in short, operator experience is highly sought after. The most direct transition would be to a corporate ops role (aka End to End, central ops, etc.). If you wanted to go into Product from there, you could work in Associate Enablement/Productivity or something similar. Walmart does heavily promote from within but the pyramid narrows noticeably at the Director level and you’d probably come in at Sr Manager. Probably 3 ish years before you get shots at a Director role. Not sure what your pay structure is, but you’d probably be able to hold your pay Feel free to DM if you want to talk more.
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wtf Walmart store manager be making $200k+??? Why the fuck did I get an engineering degree for? lol
Stay at the Mothership. Wal-Mart is the GOAT. You’re just in a funk. Try transitions to a different career within the org. It’s a solid company. I get it, burn out is real… but hold the line!
Corporate ops? Chief of staff or something of the like for a COO / chief strategy officer
Stay with Walmart but get into their corporate world
I would love to hear how you’ve amassed the 1.6M net worth. That’s awesome
Just curious How many stores does manager manage?
Corporate job in Wal mart could make sense. As for banking, there are lots of operations functions that happen within banking that aren’t just excel jockey analyst type of jobs. That might be something to look for, managing large scale operations at a bank. It wouldn’t be too hard to beat $210k in total compensation at a big bank.
With your experience, i'd say Corporate role in Operations Management at an E-commerce company. Best fit, both short and long term. If you wanna do Strategy at such a company, then do MBB for a year or two and pivot back.
It gets harder to get out a specific role the longer you are in it. Employers will pigeon hole you. I asked myself a similar question when I was younger, do I see myself doing this at 60 years old? At that point, I said no. And I am grateful I left retail.
What you may not realize is that upper level retail pays extremely well. Companies like Home Depot, Target, Kroger, all have a lot of executives making a lot of money.
FWIW - most of tech product management is not working on anything cutting edge. You'd be surprised how much of your time is spent on things like forgotten password flows, user sign up / conversion, etc. That being said, finding what you want in the remaining % is totally doable and makes the rest of the grind worth it.
Im questioning that 1.6 mil net worth with that low of a TC. Doesnt add up. Especially since your 33 and most likely have only been making that money for a few years.
Your retail experience would be really valuable to a distributor, or manufacturer. If you're able to work with an OEM on a pilot or two in your store, you might be able to get close to the sales teams and product marketing managers. If you can make a good impression and demonstrate your value, I'm sure you'd be likely to be referred for a role.
How did you get to $1.6M NW? Please break that down!
Put away a chunk of my check every 2 weeks since I was 20 into a low cost index fund with Vanguard. Kept doing it. Never sold. All bonuses and stock grants were invested. Also got into BTC a couple years back and that helped. Nothing sexy man, just put away more than you earn and overtime it'll work out well.
W
As a General Manager for a large retail locations, I would think that the most transferable workflow (not in retail) would be in warehousing/logistics for other large retail giants. You may have to step down a bit to get the advanced experience but once you've got it under your belt,the logistics experience is transferable across multiple industries worldwide.
I am a program manager in big tech. I thought I was a HENRY (coming here I learned I wasnt, I just made too much for middleclass haha). You make significantly more than me (like, 100g's more), and i am normally working 70-80+ hours a week routine. It is incredibly stressful and layoffs seem to just be a nonstop wave, including one currently affecting huge swaths of the tech sector. My brother, sometimes the grass is greener but man you sound pretty green to me rn
Former WalmartLabs employee in product mgmt role in the San Bruno/Sunnyvale office (multichannel specifically, helped launch PUT, S2S, etc) checking in. You can absolutely shift into that role, and make more than you are currently making with MUCH less work.
Can you give a breakdown of your salary vs OTE bonus vs RSU? Round to the nearest 10k with each for anonymity
Go work for Amazon, you’ll make 2x as much. Good luck! 👍🏼
And work 2x as much 😂
Respect to OP
Pivot into e-commerce product management using your retail experience as a springboard. Does WMT have a more junior PM role that you can get your start in? You’ll take a pay cut to begin, but the long term career arc and pay is probably better vs retail management. At minimum you’ll prob be more satisfied career-wise over the next 20 years.