Amazon Offers Employees $5,000 to Quit

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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Amazon is looking for a few good men….to quit the company. A new program introduced this week will offer employees up to $5K to quit their jobs. The program was initially instituted by Zappos, a company purchased by Amazon back in 2009.

"In the long-run, an employee staying somewhere they don't want to be isn't healthy for the employee or the company."
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So just $5k, you want someone to leave their only source of income in a tough job market.....Amazon paving the way for the future of Unemployment in America....
 
samm said:
So just $5k, you want someone to leave their only source of income in a tough job market.....Amazon paving the way for the future of Unemployment in America....
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It's better than getting fired and/or quitting without any money. $5k to find a new job/career seems pretty reasonable.
 
Quitting with severance basically. This is rather clever and worth the cost if efficiency goes up and new motivated people get into new positions.
 
For some, say management level workforce, their skills are horizontally applicable to other markets. But for say a person who works at Amazon's warehouses, its probably hard to find a workforce with only $5K. Not saying their are exceptions, but its difficult. Leaving is easy, picking up somewhere after that is hard.

I think this should be reasonable for those close to retirement and who are suffering under their boss, but for most others its not really anything.
 
samm said:
For some, say management level workforce, their skills are horizontally applicable to other markets. But for say a person who works at Amazon's warehouses, its probably hard to find a workforce with only $5K. Not saying their are exceptions, but its difficult. Leaving is easy, picking up somewhere after that is hard.

I think this should be reasonable for those close to retirement and who are suffering under their boss, but for most others its not really anything.
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Well most people will find a new job before quitting the old one. ;)
 
Skillz said:
Well most people will find a new job before quitting the old one. ;)
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Kind of sounds like they are trying to get around that. Get you to leave and take the cash to help you find that job that you want.

Have to agree with the mindset, if somebody doesn't like their job and pulls down productivity because they hate being there best to try to help push them out the door. We have people like that at work hate their job and don't want to be there so they don't get things done on time, don't do any more than the absolute minimum that they can. Makes it hard for everyone else trying to get things done
 
I wonder if this is primarily an enticement aimed at speeding up the resolution of employees already in the process of getting fired?

Unless you are a small company operating solely in a right-to-work state, firing folks can be a costly proposition requiring a lot of documentation over time. Even then, they might successfully sue for unemployment unless their incompetence was an open-and-shut case.

This way, employees who know damn well that the clock is ticking (bad job reviews, etc.) can opt out gracefully, and Amazon saves a ton of time and effort. Also, if you resign, you don't qualify for unemployment, which can hit a company for a lot of scratch all by itself.
 
Skillz said:
It's better than getting fired and/or quitting without any money. $5k to find a new job/career seems pretty reasonable.
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You need to move...then $5K will likely not even cover getting an apartment. Depending on the area and your tolerance for shitholes, ofc.
 
How does this factor into those non-compete clauses?

Here's 5k to find a new job, we hope you can make those dollars stretch, because you have to wait a year before you are allowed to work for anyone else
 
sir-gold said:
How does this factor into those non-compete clauses?

Here's 5k to find a new job, we hope you can make those dollars stretch, because you have to wait a year before you are allowed to work for anyone else
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The people that have non-compete clauses... are likely the people who would laugh at 5K as any sort of real incentive. I.e. Skilled people, educated people, who would have no problem going and making 50-100K anywhere else.


I'm an admin at a distribution facility (aka warehouse) and the people that are doing the grunt work.... for lack of easier words... are a dime a dozen. Largely unskilled, uneducated, not motivated, and in a general crappy position in life due to previous choices. If we actually enforced our drug testing policies 1/2 the people would be gone overnight.

5000 dollars to people like this is a mountain of money. Combine that with the difficulty of getting rid of the bad apples, 5K out of the employers pocket is a bargain relative to what it can cost to get them out the traditional way.
 
Skillz said:
Well most people will find a new job before quitting the old one. ;)
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I don`t think this is directed to those individuals, I think its to those who can`t find a job anywhere else, have a hard time at work due to lack of productivity or conflicts with upper management (right or wrong is not the point), and just want to get out. Its difficult, and again if your upper management i can see that you might have little to no downtime between jobs, but a factory warehouse worker...its pretty challenging.

Again, $5k is great, compared to nothing, but again the grass probably isnt going to be green on the other side for some individuals who take this way.

Non-comp clauses are really more for Company insiders, like for instance those who directly were involved in a leading product design and development. They probably won`t be offered $5k for to leave, as theirs more incentive for Amazon to retain them rather then let go.
 
sir-gold said:
How does this factor into those non-compete clauses?

Here's 5k to find a new job, we hope you can make those dollars stretch, because you have to wait a year before you are allowed to work for anyone else
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5k is laughable to anyone that has signed a non-compete.
 
Skillz said:
It's better than getting fired and/or quitting without any money. $5k to find a new job/career seems pretty reasonable.
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Getting fired, if its part of a layoff, is much better as you can rack in massive amounts of unemployment. Thanks Obama!
 
Wow ... people seem to want to write tons of conspiratorial elements into this ... I think this is just a quick and easy way to weed out potentially bad apples ... When I worked for Intel in the 90's they had a similar (although more valuable) option ... Intel required 5% of their employees to receive a needs improvement review every year ... part of this review resulted in you being placed on corrective action automatically for 1-3 months ... they gave you an option to take a buyout of the salary for the corrective action period and leave if you didn't want to attempt the corrective action process ... there are lots of unhappy employees that want to leave and maybe the 5K incentive will inspire some of them to go (your high performers will not be affected by this since they can make more than that in salary increases and stock options)
 
I think it's probably a slow burn, indirect way to make room for the robots, which are already being used in a some warehouse locations.
 
sound like amazon wants to lay people off without laying people off.

I wonder how much they want to reduce the workforce by.
 
Not everybody gets $5k to quit. Must be real Amazon employee and not a temp. Only one week to decide if you want buyout.

Amazon employee for 0-2 years = $2k.
Amazon employee for 3 year service = $3k.
Amazon employee for 4 year service = $4k.
Amazon employee for 5+ years service = $5k.
 
chameleoneel said:
I think it's probably a slow burn, indirect way to make room for the robots, which are already being used in a some warehouse locations.
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Yup, Amazon is actually in the process of hiring a lot of skilled workers, particularly those in IT and robotics and the like, but each of those skilled workers will be taking the place of ten unskilled workers, as more and more processes are automated.
 
Do the Feds get 33% of that, or more? Kind of like winning the Ferrari in a game show? KaChing!
 
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