Big box retail is currently built on an interchangeable parts model. Retailers keep costs down by making people replaceable, unfortunately at this point that model doesn't work well for tech. It's unlikely that this will change as that mindset is built into the culture of the organization and has done well for the industry in the last 30 years.
It's likely that retail will undergo another change such as when sears took over in the late 19th / early 20th century. Retailers arent going to lose the war they will simply be replaced by more nimble competitors who can properly leverage technology. Contrary to popular belief there are good developers outside of sv and some developers are motivated towards well paying 9 to 5 jobs instead of options and sodas.
The article also conveniently ignores the huge logistics infrastructure retailers have and focuses purely on websites, while the web is certainly important the reality of the situation is that currently retailers such as Walmart have huge competitive advantages due to its investment in logistics tech and infrastructure.
It's unlikely that this will change as that mindset is built into the culture of the organization and has done well for the industry in the last 30 years.
It will change if organizations like Amazon and Zappos prove out that it is a competitive advantage. It is just mainstream retail is not the proving grounds for such revelations.
It's a terrible plan. Paying a bunch of rock star salaries just gets you a bunch of people that say they are rock stars. If you don't have any on staff, you don't actually know if they are or not (pg has an essay about exactly this).
History is filled with these kind of rock star failures.
Buying the company gets you a team that can verifiably build the product you want, because they already did. That kind of conservative risk management is worth a ton of cash in the real world.
You are correct that paying market salaries for competent engineers does not ensure competent engineers.
However it must be noted that not paying market salaries for competent engineers definitely ensures that one employes substandard talent. The market is working well right now and competent engineers have no problem receiving market rate. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever why competent engineers will not find a job paying the market rate for their talent, and that is exactly what happens. As for the companies that can not pay market rate, well they are simply not competitive and will fail. That's how the free market works and it is a very good thing.
Any company that requires being competitive in the tech domain needs to be willing to pay for key talent. Companies like Target definitely need to do everything they can. Arguments that incompetent developers are good enough are absurd. Obviously what they have now is not working.
Building a site that can handle a nationwide retailer the size of Target, second only to WalMart in brick and mortar stores, is completely non-trivial. The top 2 engineers there need to be paid at least $1.5 million annual salary. Sorry. I know many companies don't like this but there it is. Now obviously there are many levels below this, but this requires a pretty large development team and several below this level are going to be getting $200k-$400k. At the bottom, the losers that are just out of college and don't know anything, those guys are going to be making $75k to start. Because that's the starting salary. Companies don't want to hear this. Only the fatuous useless ignorant executives that have run the company into the ground should be paid these salaries, in their opinion. Well, they can keep thinking that and see where it gets them. Many will lobby Congress, that is a popular tactic. Pay a lobbying firm $25 million and maybe you'll be able to flood the market with cheap engineers from overseas who are willing to work for $21 an hour, and are able to do the same things that any other $21 an hour retail employee can do. Because the overseas guys that really know their stuff are not looking for $21 jobs, they are making the same salary as everyone else with their skill level. Because that's how the market works.
$200 K might not sound like much in Silicon Valley (although I suspect it's a good deal more than FaceBook and Google are paying people who don't have PhDs or IPOs), but it's quite a bit more than I've ever seen out here in the Sacramento area (and one can find a house for a family in a safe neighborhood for less than $500 K instead of over $1000 K).
The number was just a straw man to get the discussion going. Find some value that attracts talent, perhaps between my wild guess and your numbers.
Sorry but in what world do you live in? Whatever world it is I'd like to join because I've never heard of engineers making 1.5 million in salary. I think if you look on Glassdoor you'll realize 200k is a very high salary for an engineer at any company in SV.
(Also as a reference a Sr. Architect at Walmart.com according to Glassdoor makes 120-130k)
I am getting ready to put together an article on this subject, it is actually pretty easy to identify a key developer and recruit them, it is just that most companies hiring practices are the antithesis to identifying that developer.
