Few business leaders can say they started their career as an hourly worker, and managed to climb the corporate ladder to the very top. Outgoing Walmart CEO Doug McMillon is one of those rare gems whose decades of dedication paid off in the end—but now that his end date is in sight, he’s eager to hang up his hat and enjoy the radio silence.
“I’ve never had a blank calendar, and I’ve now seen what one looks like in a few months, and it’s kind of exciting,” McMillon said recently on CNBC’s Squawk Box.
But don’t expect his schedule to remain empty for too long. The 59-year-old admitted that his post-Walmart retirement will include “some combination of business and philanthropic stuff.”
And his next venture—be it full-time, part-time, or voluntary—might not be too far in the distant future either, with the outgoing chief revealing he’s “going to take a few months” off.
It is perhaps not surprising that McMillon’s vision for retirement includes some form of work. He’s a few years shy of the typical American retiree, and recently said he “was loving” his job.
But McMillon said he knew it was time to pass the torch on at Walmart now, as AI is ushering the company into a new era: “About a year ago, I really started feeling this next run, you could see what agentic commerce was going to look like, the vision for AI shopping. And I started thinking about everything that needs to happen over the next few years, and it really caused me to think that now was the right time.”
John Furner, who like McMillon has been at Walmart for 30 years, will take the throne in the new year.
“When you see somebody who is ready to run the next lap better and faster than you, it is time to hand the baton and get out of the way and just cheerlead,” McMillon added.
From hourly warehouse worker to CEO: McMillon’s 30-year rise up Walmart’s corporate ladder
McMillon has spent the past 10 years leading the $918 billion retail giant as CEO, and is set to retire at the end of January next year. But the chief executive of America’s largest private employer—who commands a workforce of 2.1 million employees—has a much different resume than many of his Fortune 500 executive peers. Instead of job-hopping from business to business in search of bigger pay bumps and position titles, McMillon stayed loyal to the company for his entire 40-year career. He got his start unloading trailers at Walmart warehouses, earning a few dollars by the hour; as CEO, he reeled in a salary of $1.5 million yearly, with another $25 million in stocks and non-equity compensation.
“My first time with Walmart was just to make money during the summertime to help pay my way through school,” McMillon said at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business in 2017. “And I didn’t mean to be there very long at all.”
It was 1984, and McMillon was just a college student when he landed his first Walmart gig: picking up orders and unloading trailers at a warehouse, earning $6.50 hourly. But after wrapping up his bachelor’s education at University of Arkansas in 1989 and securing his MBA from the University of Tulsa, McMillion traded the warehouse floor for office cubicles. He became a fishing-tackle buyer for the retail giant in 1991, and the rest of his white-collar career is history. After making his way up through several senior leadership roles, he eventually landed the coveted CEO gig in 2014.
While there isn’t an exact formula to McMillon’s remarkable career ascension, the outgoing CEO credited his proactive work ethic to getting him to the top. He volunteered to work on challenging assignments, and attended meetings in his boss’ place when they weren’t around. By the time a promotion was on the table, McMillon had already proven he was ready to take the next step.
“One of the reasons that I got the opportunities that I got was that I would raise my hand when my boss was out of town and he or she was visiting stores or something,” McMillon told Stratechery last year.
“I would go [to the meetings], and if I knew the answer to the question that came up, I’d share it, if I didn’t, I’d say, ‘I don’t know, but I’ll find out fast and get back to you.’ I then put myself in an environment where I became a low risk promotion because people had already seen me do the job.”
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