Amazon's New Employment Incentive Program

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Wow, wouldn't it be awesome if other companies followed Amazon's lead on this?

The Amazon Career Choice Program is an innovative program designed to expand the choices available to our associates in their future career, whether that's at Amazon or in another industry. Many Associates will choose to build a career at Amazon. For others, a job at Amazon may be the first step in a career path in another industry. The Amazon Career Choice Program provides associates with a resource for building the job skills needed for today's most in-demand and well-paying careers, such as aircraft mechanics, computer-aided design, machine tool technology, medical laboratory science, dental hygiene, and nursing, to name a few.
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Vocational certs and associates degrees...big whup. If you can't figure out how to roll through 6-18 classes of community college on your own, no cert is going to help.
 
Aluisious said:
Vocational certs and associates degrees...big whup. If you can't figure out how to roll through 6-18 classes of community college on your own, no cert is going to help.
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What school did you go to that gave Associates degrees with 6-18 classes? :eek: Admittedly, there are some vocational certs and degrees from "We're not really accredited" Polytech aren't exactly what I'd call groundbreaking.
 
Amazon...you decided that a meager $2000 dollars is the max per year for this new wonderful Education assistance program? The think tank that put the financial numbers should be slapped across the face with a cinder block. Obviously, nobody in the Exec management has really reviewed how much IT training or other vocational training really costs. CCNA Bootcamp can easily cost $2500 or more. Even SANS security courses are $4000 a pop and that's just for 4 to 5 days of training. Executive Management really needs to try harder and be more committed. A start would be at least offer $6,0000 dollars as the maximum so people working there can actually do shit. Good luck getting an engineering degree or other high tech vocational training (fiber Optic cabling courses) with a meager subsidized $2000 a year.

I worked for a company with policies that outlined good intentions but had a very low education investment program and I left that bullshit company. If you don't want to invest in me or pay me enough money so I can re-invest in myself then who needs you.

Hey Amazon Corp big wigs.. try again.
 
Wow, this is a really interesting spin on paid-internship/education programs that some companies do. Difference being where instead of tailoring your knowledge and skills to some specific job at the company, they're giving you experience for a broader set of skills that are likely to be in high demand in the future.

That's gotta be the best PR spin on an internship program (I mean that in a non-sarcastic way). I take somethings about Amazon with a grain of salt (and god knows I give them enough money), but this is a pretty unique way to separate them from all the other "thugs" in this online market.
 
Most of Amazon's workers are those in the warehouse who are contracted out during the big holiday sales and are not employed directly for Amazon. The pay isn't bad but you get none of the benefits or pay that the other full time warehouse workers do who are employed by Amazon and very rarely do they hire on new people.
 
the-one1 said:
Why is it that all the reviewers are office workers? None or hardly any are rank and file workers, you know, the type that gets the manual work done.
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Logically, i'd assume most of the warehouse workers are less computer-literate.
 
calikool said:
Amazon...you decided that a meager $2000 dollars is the max per year for this new wonderful Education assistance program? The think tank that put the financial numbers should be slapped across the face with a cinder block. Obviously, nobody in the Exec management has really reviewed how much IT training or other vocational training really costs. CCNA Bootcamp can easily cost $2500 or more. Even SANS security courses are $4000 a pop and that's just for 4 to 5 days of training. Executive Management really needs to try harder and be more committed. A start would be at least offer $6,0000 dollars as the maximum so people working there can actually do shit. Good luck getting an engineering degree or other high tech vocational training (fiber Optic cabling courses) with a meager subsidized $2000 a year.

I worked for a company with policies that outlined good intentions but had a very low education investment program and I left that bullshit company. If you don't want to invest in me or pay me enough money so I can re-invest in myself then who needs you.

Hey Amazon Corp big wigs.. try again.
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This isn't a full-ride scholarship program to get 4-year degrees for people. It's an incentive program to get people who (I would assume are low-level) employees the training they need to advance either within the company or transition to another place of employment at a more-competitive level (and hopefully with a path upwards).

No one doing this would be attending an uber-expensive 4-year school (think about it--while open to anyone, this is clearly geared toward getting the un-skilled, low-level workers more training--the hourly-paid associates). People in those positions will more than likely be exploring community college/vocational school, or cheap state schools for their education/training just to get what they need to progress and advance.

What this really is, is a commentary on our current lack of "skilled laborers"--how there's now a divide between no-skills (i.e., cashier workers) and dead-end hourly jobs, and college-graduates with zero job prospects (since the market is flooded with so many people who went to universities because they were told they'd have good jobs afterward). In the meantime, there hasn't been an influx of people in the skilled-labor markets. Things like engine repair, machinery maintenance, precision machining certification/work, etc., yet despite our current shift toward a tech-based society, all of these things are necessary to keep the technology going (to support the manufacturing of our mechanical devices that allow us to use our various tech). This isn't for IT or similar training, or to get people advanced degrees.
 
As someone else said, only full time employees are covered, and I don't think Amazon has many of those compared to "full time temporary".

I don't know where the $2000 limit is coming from, the article said they will pay 95% or the cost. Maybe I missed it. Still, better than nothing.
 
teh_chem said:
What this really is, is a commentary on our current lack of "skilled laborers"--how there's now a divide between no-skills (i.e., cashier workers) and dead-end hourly jobs, and college-graduates with zero job prospects (since the market is flooded with so many people who went to universities because they were told they'd have good jobs afterward). In the meantime, there hasn't been an influx of people in the skilled-labor markets. Things like engine repair, machinery maintenance, precision machining certification/work, etc., yet despite our current shift toward a tech-based society, all of these things are necessary to keep the technology going (to support the manufacturing of our mechanical devices that allow us to use our various tech). This isn't for IT or similar training, or to get people advanced degrees.
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I agree with your assessment of what seems to say about our society but I don't agree that we're moving toward a "tech-based society." We're transitioning to a service-based economy that has less need and infrastructure for manufacturing.
 
I worked for Amazon in the warehouse and it was the hardest job I ever had. Mandatory overtime and 6 days a week work made it really tough, and I was working the night shift. The people working with my were all either recently hopping from one job to another or fresh out of high school and paying for college. I saw three people quit to work at Wawa because they paid for college mostly. The incentives were given out every week to people that entered drawings and there were monthly drawing for bigger items for things like cars/cruises etc - but it was still nearly impossible to get. I never got anything but free work gloves. Everyday we talked at lunch about new job openings somewhere else. When you start as a temporary worker, you basically compete under the radar with the batch of temporary workers you were hired with to get a 'permanent' job at the end of your three month contract. Maybe 1 in 100 are non-temps...? Everyone wanted to quit and the people that stayed for a long time were incredibly motivated people and needed the money badly. Injuries tended to get people fired and they were reported to everyone everyday so we knew what to watch out for -certain spiders in the aisles, stepping over broken pallets, etc. You get evaluated every week by two or three managers, although that may be different in other places. They stand there and watch you work and grade you on the speed you work at or they stand far away and try to catch you making a mistake. Some warehouses rewarded them for finding mistakes like people not using a step ladder to get an item on the top shelf or not bending with their knees to get things on the bottom shelf. The problem for me was I had to sacrificed safety for speed to keep up. A few of us kept falling asleep while walking after twelve hours. The breaks were short because it could be a 5-10 minute walk to the breakroom and you have to go through metal detectors/search to get there and you need to clock out and in etc. Two fifteen minute breaks and one lunch for 12 hour days was brutal. Some people just sat down on the floor where they were if it was too far to walk to the breakroom. Some people were fired because they sat down and didn't wake up for hours and weren't found until the next day (only heard of two instances of this). People don't last too long in warehouses. Three years is insane. I was fired right before christmas along with 70% of my warehouse because they didn't need us. People are fired all the time and there is no room for error. I could go on and on, but you get the sum of it. It just sucks to work there and I wouldn't do it again for twice the money. The incentives are strange because there is no way to work there and go to school- I just can't imagine it. They like to keep a carrot in front just far enough out of reach to keep you there.
 
mope54 said:
I agree with your assessment of what seems to say about our society but I don't agree that we're moving toward a "tech-based society." We're transitioning to a service-based economy that has less need and infrastructure for manufacturing.
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Ah, I see what you're saying. I think when I said tech-based, it was more in the terms of that "a lot" of the people considering entering the job market assume they need 4-year degrees in some field. I think we have lost a bit of the manufacturing in the US that we used to have (some due to out-sourcing, some due to the fact that most of the "stuff" we used to need before are replaced by multi-use technological devices--so there's a reduction in the overall need and hence production of devices).

But I think you're right--there's much more of a shift to a service-based society. On the other hand, there's also been a disproportionate reduction in the people entering the skilled labor market.

An interesting story I read recently was discussing the fact that a guy who runs a precision-machining factory for producing all sorts of hardware for machines/instruments just can't find people who are, say, CNC-machine-certified, a position that pays a respectable $25-40/hr depending on experience. They've even had to take unqualified people and pay for them to go through the certification process just to have people to fill these positions.
 
calikool said:
Amazon...you decided that a meager $2000 dollars is the max per year for this new wonderful Education assistance program? The think tank that put the financial numbers should be slapped across the face with a cinder block. Obviously, nobody in the Exec management has really reviewed how much IT training or other vocational training really costs. CCNA Bootcamp can easily cost $2500 or more. Even SANS security courses are $4000 a pop and that's just for 4 to 5 days of training. Executive Management really needs to try harder and be more committed. A start would be at least offer $6,0000 dollars as the maximum so people working there can actually do shit. Good luck getting an engineering degree or other high tech vocational training (fiber Optic cabling courses) with a meager subsidized $2000 a year.

I worked for a company with policies that outlined good intentions but had a very low education investment program and I left that bullshit company. If you don't want to invest in me or pay me enough money so I can re-invest in myself then who needs you.

Hey Amazon Corp big wigs.. try again.
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Haha. Yea, Fuck Those Guys for doing this!
 
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