Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Amazon Will Pay You $5,000 to Quit Your Job

time.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 143 posts

Re: Amazon Will Pay You $5,000 to Quit Your Job

#51

Post by avar »

jordn wrote: post #13
tgb wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recall hearing about that for Zappos, but here the offer is repeated every year. Doesn't that ruin the effect - you know you can get (potentially even more) by quitting in a few months? And if it's only offered at certain times of the year, then there'll be a bunch of people hanging on until the offer comes around again.

Well, I suspect there will be people postponing quitting for a few months just so they can cash out with the offer. That's undesirable for Amazon. But I doubt you'd have people staying in a job they dislike for another year just to get an extra $1k when they do quit. Also you'll have compounded another year of turning down cash to work there so the cognitive dissonance might be even stronger.

If the offer is annual and they add an extra $1000 per year then on average the disgruntled employee has to wait 6 months to quit and get a higher severance, not 1 year. Which means that 1/4 of those employees only have to churn through 3 more months to get an extra $1000, hardly something nobody would do.

The obvious solution to fix this flaw in the system would be to raise the offer daily instead of annually, be approximately $1000/365 =~ $2.74 per day. Or more simply by $20 per week, which comes out to about the same per year ($1040).

Re: Amazon Will Pay You $5,000 to Quit Your Job

#52

Post by ritchiea »

tgb wrote: post #11
jordn wrote: post #4

The first (and stated) effect of this policy is to weed out the unmotivated employees. However, Dan Ariely has explained that the secondary effect is potentially more powerful. For those that choose to stay, they will forever live with their past action of having turned down lots of money to work there. So, when they're having a crappy day and hating their job, they're probably thinking "why didn't I take the money a…

I recall hearing about that for Zappos, but here the offer is repeated every year. Doesn't that ruin the effect - you know you can get (potentially even more) by quitting in a few months? And if it's only offered at certain times of the year, then there'll be a bunch of people hanging on until the offer comes around again.

You're missing the point that every pretty much every organization has people hanging on because they need the money, this is incentive to get some of those people to move on, not to eliminate the possibility of employees ever hanging on for a little bit more money.

Re: Amazon Will Pay You $5,000 to Quit Your Job

#54

Post by bentcorner »

mathattack wrote: post #37
dingaling wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For those that choose to stay, they will forever live with their past action of having turned down lots of money to work there. $5,000 isn't really lots of money ; it's probably about six months of mortgage payments in an average town. On a 25-year mortgage that doesn't make much of a dent. Better to keep grumbling, keep earning and keep a roof over the family.

Much less than 6 months of a mortgage in Seattle, no? Or have I been spending too much time in New York?

$833/month mortgage gets (I think) about $150k for a 25 year fixed rate loan.

It's not impossible to get a home for $150k in Seattle, but your choices are very limited.

Re: Amazon Will Pay You $5,000 to Quit Your Job

#55

Post by ninv »

mfisher87 wrote: post #23
ninv wrote: post #18

It starts with 2000$ then 1000$ increment per year up to 5000$ This deal is for warehouse employees only and most of the people(90%+) working in warehouse are contractors. They handpick employee(s) and once a year and offer him/her this deal. BS!

The article made it sounds like a universal offer, maybe I could see per-business unit, but not per-employee. That would require you to already know who the dissatisfied workers are. The stated point was to discover early who is not satisfied in their job. Do you have a source on that?

It's called severance package. It's hard to find dissatisfied workers but easy to find non-performers.

I do not understand why this item is in shareholders' update. I feel sorry for Amazon's shareholders.

Re: Amazon Will Pay You $5,000 to Quit Your Job

#56

Post by pvnick »

A few years ago I worked at a place where the CEO instituted this policy in the wake of reading about Zappos doing it. I remember him standing up at the weekly company meeting and offering a few thousand dollars to anyone who quit. The thing is, a week earlier, another coworker had put in his two weeks, and the look on his face upon hearing that announcement... I'm not sure if he ever got the money, but oh well. C'est la vie.

Re: Amazon Will Pay You $5,000 to Quit Your Job

#57

Post by Crito »

joosters wrote: post #43
fecak wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$2500 a month is 30K. The average warehouse worker at Amazon is around $25K (1), so the temptation might be there for them. For engineers, that amount is not likely to be considered. 1 - http://money.cnn.com/2013/07/30/news/companies/amazon-wareho...

n.b. the vast majority of Amazon warehouse workers are not actually employed by Amazon; it is unlikely that they ever get these offers.

However the offer is for warehouse workers, not for engineers.

Re: Amazon Will Pay You $5,000 to Quit Your Job

#58

Post by nemtaro »

As someone who actually worked at Amazon for a few long years, I'm always skeptical of such seemingly positive news, and often think "hmm, could this be another marketing trick to influence people's perception of Amazon rather than actually changing anything", and %90 of the time I'm right :)

Here's how their typical financial offer is structured for new software engineers:

1st year: signing bonus + relocation bonus + 5% of stock grant

2nd year: signing bonus + 15% stock grant

3rd year: 40% stock grant

4th year: 40% stock grant

If you quit within the first year, you have to give the relocation and signing bonus back. That's much much more than $1k. So there's a strong financial incentive / golden handcuffs to keep you there for at least 1-2 years, even if you are unhappy!

After the 2nd year, the financial incentive of staying is still there in form of the large stock grant (which has grown due to their stock price rising) that you've been promised and waiting on for a long time.

I can see someone rationally and happily taking the incentive after the third or fourth years and quit (i.e. after they've done damage to the work environment as an unhappy/unmotivated employee, and no longer have to give a fortune back to the company)... but before then, I doubt it'll change the behavior of any currently employed, overworked, over-paged, under-paid, under-appreciated software engineers.

Who this policy might affect though is future hires, and their perception of Amazon. People who have a choice between offers from MS and Amazon for example. They might consider this an interesting policy and assume that it would have improved employee morale at Amazon even though it's common knowledge that Amazon has terrible work life balance, etc.

I should also note that the Zappos policy makes a lot of sense to me, but this is very different from that, as is the employee culture of Zappos from Amazon.

Re: Amazon Will Pay You $5,000 to Quit Your Job

#59

Post by disputin »

vidarh wrote: post #40
disputin wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The only way to reconcile their thoughts and actions is to explain that, in fact, they must really love this job and therefore should work hard at it." Is my mind supposed to work like that? I'd think "I should've taken the money, oh well, I had my reasons at the time, they've turned out to be wrong, nevermind, time to go."

Your mind almost certainly works like that whether you like it or not, unless you're a substantial outlier. There's tons of research that attacks this effect from various angles, and pretty consistently it finds that we have an exceedingly strong drive towards consistency between thoughts and emotions and actual physical behaviour. Of course this is not an absolute: It will not work on everyone all the time. But that…

I'm aware of cognitive biases, and know they get me, I just find this use really feeble. Individuals and all that. When I make bad decisions I don't reconcile anything, I swear and grumble and cut my losses and tell myself to forget about it and move on, and sooner or later I usually do forget about it. New day, new situation, new factors, new decisions. New opportunities to make new bad decisions! I'll take a look at that book, thanks.

Re: Amazon Will Pay You $5,000 to Quit Your Job

#60

Post by sib »

mathattack wrote: post #37
dingaling wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For those that choose to stay, they will forever live with their past action of having turned down lots of money to work there. $5,000 isn't really lots of money ; it's probably about six months of mortgage payments in an average town. On a 25-year mortgage that doesn't make much of a dent. Better to keep grumbling, keep earning and keep a roof over the family.

Much less than 6 months of a mortgage in Seattle, no? Or have I been spending too much time in New York?

Don't forget that this offer is for employees in the fulfillment centers, most of which are in areas with very low cost of living.
Post reply on HN