Ryan Knudson

Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power.

I'm Ryan Knudson.

It's Tuesday, February 10th.

Coming up on the show, how Doug McMillan turned Walmart around and what challenges his successor might face.

Our colleague Sarah has been covering Walmart almost as long as Macmillan has been CEO.

She started on the beat in 2015, and she sat down with him for an exit interview at the company's shiny new headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas.

All right, so he started at Walmart in high school and then worked his way all the way up to becoming CEO in 2014.

What was Walmart's reputation like at the time and what were the challenges that he faced when he stepped into that role?

But early on, one big investor wasn't sold on the vision.

Here's Sarah in her interview with Doug again.

That's because McMillan's strategy was working.

And once the stores were doing better, Macmillan started focusing on online shopping.

And one way he did that was by spending billions of dollars buying two e-commerce startups, one called Flipkart and the other called Jet.com.

One way Walmart built up its online sales was through groceries.

Right.

So Walmart has had some wins.

But what's the outlook for Walmart now that Macmillan is leaving?

And how are employees today feeling about their wages and their jobs?

And Walmart recently hit a trillion dollar market cap.

How significant is that?