Walmart

*New! for a limited time, please take our short listener survey. We value your feedback!* On this bonus episode, we head to the World Bank offices in Washington, D.C., where hosts Sam and Shervin joined organizers Jonathan Timmis and Timothy DeStefano from the World Bank and Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business for the day-long conference, “How is Artificial Intelligence Transforming Firms?” in December 2023. In our first of three bonus episodes derived from this event, we explore how AI is used in retail in a discussion facilitated by Shervin featuring Walmart’s Prakhar Mehrotra (who you may remember from the very first episode of Me, Myself, and AI!) and Tapestry’s Fabio Luzzi. This episode offers an abridged listen to the panel discussion; for the full session video, please visit the conference’s website.  Guest Bios Prakhar Mehrotra is corporate vice president, applied AI at Walmart. Fabio Luzzi is head of data and analytics at Tapesty. Shervin Khodabandeh is cohost of Me, Myself, and AI and a senior partner at Boston Consulting Group. Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group and is hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and the coordinating producers are Allison Ryder and Sophie Rüdinger. Stay in touch with us by joining our LinkedIn group, AI for Leaders at mitsmr.com/AIforLeaders or by following Me, Myself, and AI on LinkedIn. We encourage you to rate and review our show. Your comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials.

Prakhar Mehrotra

Senior Leader, AI/ML

Walmart

Saron talks to Madison Kanna, Senior Software Engineer, Health and Wellness at Walmart. Saron talks to Madison about finding the inspiration to transition from being a model to becoming a skilled developer. Madison talks about the experiences, challenges, and moments that sparked her interest in development. Listeners will gain insights into the tools and resources she utilized to hone her coding skills when first embarking on this new path. Madison also highlights the importance of seeking mentorship and how mentorship can open doors to exciting opportunities. Show Links Partner with Dev & CodeNewbie! (sponsor) Madison's Blog Web Development Systems Programming Data Science Python CodeBookClub Deep Work Madison Kanna Madison Kanna started her coding journey back in 2017 after deciding to shift away from her modeling career. In just one year, she made the transition fully and she is now a Senior Software Engineer in Health and Wellness at Walmart! Outside of her role, you can find her blogging about what she's learning, or leading the CodeBookClub, a virtual community she started back in 2020.

Madison Kanna

Senior Software Engineer, Health and Wellness

Walmart

Guest: Seth Dallaire, CRO at Walmart When Seth Dallaire was approached by Walmart about joining their team as CRO, he had one question: Are they serious? Seth knew that Walmart wanted him for his digital experience, having worked at Instacart and Amazon, but he also knew that building alternative revenue streams at a traditional retailer could be an uphill battle. “I knew I was gonna have to [fight the fight], it was just whether I’d have the air cover from up top to say, ‘This is strategic,’” Seth recalls. “And they obviously convinced me of that and we’re making really good progress.” In this episode, Seth and Joubin discuss startup success, advertising attribution, “maintenance mode,” online grocery shopping, “the ultimate tailwind,” over-buying, digital vs. traditional retail, founder-led businesses, John Furner and Doug McMillon, sentiment vs. data, getting told “no,” the theory of constraints, and why you should visit Bentonville. In this episode, we cover: Seth’s unique career path (00:59) Amazon’s elite team in 2000 (05:24) Growing up & dinner table conversations (08:25) Work-life balance (10:53) Ambition and achievement (12:08) Investing in yourself (16:04) Recommitting to a role (17:38) Leaving Amazon for Instacart (20:14) Grocery stores are underrated (23:56) Transitioning to a much smaller company (25:33) How COVID accelerated Instacart’s business (27:54) Advertising is a full-contact industry (32:03) Getting recruited by Walmart (34:06) Visiting Walmart stores with other execs (40:08) A leadership lesson from Doug McMillon (43:10) Product orientation (45:40) Compounding knowledge capital (47:57) Tough feedback (50:19) Leaving a team behind (54:34) Hand-written notes (56:04) The Goal and On the Shortness of Life (57:35) Relocating and refueling (01:00:40) Who Seth is hiring and what “grit” means to him (01:02:25) Links: Connect with SethLinkedIn Connect with JoubinTwitter LinkedIn Email: grit@kleinerperkins.com  Learn more about Kleiner Perkins This episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm

Seth Dallaire

CRO

Walmart

Prakhar Mehrotra, vice president of machine learning at Walmart, shares his experience and how it prepared him to lead an AI team at a $500B retailer. Tasked with using AI to help with decision-making and enhance the business, Prakhar focuses on the technology that improves store merchandising (pricing, inventory management, financial planning). Before joining Walmart, Prakhar led data scientists and developed stochastic models at Uber and Twitter, where he learned how to move quickly and scale AI. (Fun fact: he even drove for Uber to better understand the driver experience — a perfect example of the role empathy plays in AI.) Hear Prakhar share stories on rallying and educating teams on AI, the relationship of AI and business intelligence, and what it means to make big bets in an enterprise setting. Read the episode transcript here. Me, Myself, and AI is a collaborative podcast betweenMIT Sloan Management Reviewand Boston Consulting Group, hosted by Sam Ransbotham and Shervin Khodabandeh. Our engineer is David Lishansky, and coordinating producers are Allison Ryder and Sophie Rüdinger.   Guest bio: As vice president of machine learning, Prakhar Mehrotra is one of the top executives for AI and machine learning at Walmart and an internationally recognized leader and innovator in the field. He was recently awarded The Franz Edelman Medal by INFORMS for significant contributions in data science and advanced analytics. He is a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and serves as a peer reviewer for top conferences and journals in AI, including the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence conference, the Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition, and the International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems. We encourage you to rate and review our show. Your comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials. We want to know how you feel about Me, Myself, and AI. Please take a short, two-question survey.

Prakhar Mehrotra

Senior Leader, AI/ML

Walmart

Doug McMillon (IG: @dougmcmillon) is president and chief executive officer of Walmart, a company that, if it were a country, would be the 25th largest economy in the world. Walmart serves 265 million customers weekly in 27 countries across more than 11,000 stores and online, and the company employs roughly 2.2 million associates worldwide, which would equate to the second largest army in the world (behind China) if it were tasked with defending that 25th largest economy. 75 percent of Walmart's store management team began as hourly associates, and Doug is no exception. He started out in 1984 as a summer associate in the Walmart distribution center, and in 1990 while pursuing his MBA, he rejoined the company as an assistant manager in Tulsa before moving to merchandising as a buyer trainee. He worked his way up, and from 2005 to 2009 he served as president and CEO of Sam's Club (owned and operated by Walmart) with sales of more than $46 billion annually during his tenure. From February of 2009 to 2014, Doug served as president and CEO of Walmart International, a fast-growing segment of Walmart's overall operations. He has served on the board of directors for Walmart since 2013 and is currently the chair of the executive and global compensation committees. In addition, he serves on the board of directors of the Consumer Goods Forum, the US-China Business Council and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. He also serves on the executive committee of the Business Roundtable and the advisory board of the Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management in Beijing, China. This episode was recorded live at the Heartland Summit in Bentonville, AR, surrounded by the jaw-droppingly mind-blowing Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. Please enjoy! This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn and its job recruitment platform, which offers a smarter system for the hiring process. If you've ever hired anyone (or attempted to), you know finding the right people can be difficult. If you don't have a direct referral from someone you trust, you're left to use job boards that don't offer any real-world networking approach. LinkedIn, as the world's largest professional network — used by more than 70 percent of the US workforce — has a built-in ecosystem that allows you to not only search for employees, but also interact with them, their connections, and their former employers and colleagues in a way that closely mimics real-life communication. Visit LinkedIn.com/Tim and get $50 off toward your first job post! *** If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. I also love reading the reviews! For show notes and past guests, please visit tim.blog/podcast. Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (“5-Bullet Friday”) at tim.blog/friday. For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts. Interested in sponsoring the podcast? Please fill out the form at tim.blog/sponsor. Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books. Follow Tim: Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferriss Facebook: facebook.com/timferriss YouTube: youtube.com/timferriss Past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show include Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Jackman, Dr. Jane Goodall, LeBron James, Kevin Hart, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jamie Foxx, Matthew McConaughey, Esther Perel, Elizabeth Gilbert, Terry Crews, Sia, Yuval Noah Harari, Malcolm Gladwell, Madeleine Albright, Cheryl Strayed, Jim Collins, Mary Karr, Maria Popova, Sam Harris, Michael Phelps, Bob Iger, Edward Norton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Neil Strauss, Ken Burns, Maria Sharapova, Marc Andreessen, Neil Gaiman, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Jocko Willink, Daniel Ek, Kelly Slater, Dr. Peter Attia, Seth Godin, Howard Marks, Dr. Brené Brown, Eric Schmidt, Michael Lewis, Joe Gebbia, Michael Pollan, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Vince Vaughn, Brian Koppelman, Ramit Sethi, Dax Shepard, Tony Robbins, Jim Dethmer, Dan Harris, Ray Dalio, Naval Ravikant, Vitalik Buterin, Elizabeth Lesser, Amanda Palmer, Katie Haun, Sir Richard Branson, Chuck Palahniuk, Arianna Huffington, Reid Hoffman, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Rick Rubin, Dr. Vivek Murthy, Darren Aronofsky, and many more. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Doug McMillon

President and CEO

Walmart

Chase Adams joined the show to talk about working on distributed systems with distributed teams, giving people opportunities to learn and grow, and other interesting Go projects and news. Join the discussion Changelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today! Sponsors: Linode – Our cloud server of choice. Get one of the fastest, most efficient SSD cloud servers for only $5/mo. Use the code changelog2017 to get 4 months free! Fastly – Our bandwidth partner. Fastly powers fast, secure, and scalable digital experiences. Move beyond your content delivery network to their powerful edge cloud platform. Featuring: Chase Adams – Website, GitHub, X Erik St. Martin – GitHub, X Carlisia Thompson – GitHub, LinkedIn, X Brian Ketelsen – GitHub, X Show Notes: chaseadams.io Walmart Labs Building planes in the sky Volvo Trucks - The Epic Split feat. Van Damme Chuck Norris - Epic Christmas Split between Two Planes Interesting Go Projects and News faas (Functions as a Service) Go 1.9RC2 go-tracing (swiss company, got Go training from Mark Bates) Transcripts available for our podcast! Awesome work by Changelog crew! Free Software Friday! Each week on the show we give a shout out to an open source project or community (or maintainer) that’s made an impact in our day to day developer lives. Erik - Jesse Frazelle - Am I Contained? Brian - iTerm2 by George Nachman Carlisia - All the women in tech who persevere! Chase - GitLab, Org mode, Ramya, Dominik, and Fatih Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Chase Adams

Software Engineer

Walmart

Eran Hammer joined the show to talk about updates to Hapi.js, Node.js, OAuth, and deep discussions about Oz – Eran’s replacement for OAuth 2.0. Join the discussion Changelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today! Sponsors: Codeship – If it works with Docker, it works with Codeship Jet. Toptal – Join Toptal and work with awesome people from anywhere in the world. Freelance with companies like Airbnb, Artsy & IDEO. Casper – Casper mattresses are awesome! Use code CHANGELOG at checkout to get $50 towards your mattress. imgix – Real-time Image Processing. Resize, crop, and process images on the fly, simply by changing their URLs. Featuring: Eran Hammer – Website, GitHub, X Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X Jerod Santo – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X Show Notes: Sideway (@sideway) | Twitter hapi.js (@hapijs) | Twitter On Leaving Walmart | hueniverse hueniverse/oz oz/LICENSE at master · hueniverse/oz Auth to See the Wizard | hueniverse OAuth 2.0 and the Road to Hell | hueniverse RFC 5849 - The OAuth 1.0 Protocol RFC 6749 - The OAuth 2.0 Authorization Framework OAuth - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The Changelog #116: Node Black Friday at Walmart with Eran Hammer Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Eran Hammer

Creator of Hapi.js

Walmart LabsWalmart

Eran Hammer joined the show to talk about Node.js and Black Friday at Walmart. Join the discussion Changelog++ members support our work, get closer to the metal, and make the ads disappear. Join today! Sponsors: DigitalOcean – Use the code CHANGELOG to get a $10 hosting credit when you create a new DigitalOcean account Toptal – Join Toptal and work with awesome people from anywhere in the world. Freelance with companies like Airbnb, Artsy & IDEO. Show Notes: Eran Hammer (eranhammer) on Twitter Twitter / Search - #nodebf spumko/hapi Billion Dollar Question - Palo Alto - Developer Center - Joyent Node.js at Walmart: Going to production, debugging, monitoring - Developer Center - Joyent Twitter / eranhammer: 100% of Walmart US mobile traffic … Walmart Node.js Memory Leak - Blog - Joyent Walmart Node.js Memory Leak Part I - Developer Center - Joyent Walmart Node.js Memory Leak Part II - Developer Center - Joyent Walmart Node.js Memory Leak Part III - Developer Center - Joyent Node Summit 2013 Bedtime Story - Blog - Joyent Realtime Conference, the Imagination Platform « hueniverse #fuckoauth @realtimeconf « hueniverse Roberta Williams - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Eran Hammer

Creator of Hapi.js

Walmart LabsWalmart