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

81–90 of 143 posts

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

#81

Post by notahacker »

JackC wrote: post #20

Purely on a legal level, getting your most disgruntled employees to identify themselves and waive all claims in exchange for $2,000-5,000 is probably a pretty good deal.

Defending against costly litigation and employment law claims - warranted or otherwise - costs a lot more in legal fees and reputational damage than a couple of months severance pay. And even if they do find themselves in the dock, an employee being shown to have turned down a couple of nonspecific, nondiscriminatory financial incentives to leave certainly weakens any allegations of protracted mistreatment. Anyone know what strings are attached to this offer?

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

#82

Post by danielweber »

afterburner wrote: post #50
phamilton wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really much less? Last time I was let go I was given less than $5000 severance pay, and that was as a developer.

Hmm, I'm in Canada, and while the legal minimum here probably isn't much higher than the US, maybe companies tend to offer more. Could just be what I've heard of in the largish engineering companies I've been in.

In general, there is no requirement for any severance in the U.S. It can be negotiated for, and in certain specific cases laws may require either notice or severance.

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

#83

Post by curun1r »

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.

> ...then there'll be a bunch of people hanging on until the offer comes around again.

This might be the most important aspect of the program. An employee abruptly putting in his or her notice can cause continuity issues for the business, especially if they don't give them the customary 2 weeks of notice. If $5000 can buy employees leaving at predictable times during the year, the business can take steps to ensure that the employee's job functions are covered. That predictability alone may be worth $5k.

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

#84

Post by avar »

SifJar wrote: post #68
avar wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ap…

I think you misunderstood jordn's comment. When he said "staying in a job they dislike for another year just to get an extra $1k when they do quit." I think he was talking about a hypothetical situation were an employee has been working for Amazon for, say 2 years, and got offered the $2k. They'd be unlikely to wait another full year, just to be able to get $3k when they quit. In other words, if they want to quit, th…

Right, I'm just elaborating and pointing out that this caveat only happens as long as the offer is structured in such a way that you have a massive increase to it at a specified time once a year.

Then if you hate your job and you're close to that specified time it's in your interest to wait, even though the point of the policy is that Amazon would rather that you quit.

If they just increased the offer with more granularity they wouldn't create that conflict of interest. You'd only get more money as a function of the time you stayed on the job, so you might as well quit right away instead of waiting a few months for a much larger payout.

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

#85

Post by nemtaro »

sib wrote: post #62
nemtaro wrote: post #58

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…

Note that this offer is for fulfillment center employees, not software engineers.

Thanks for clarifying this.

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

#86

Post by ashishb4u »

avar wrote: post #51
jordn wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ap…

But that defeats the Conginitive Dissonance side of the things. If the offer is available daily (or even weekly), then the employee can just quit the very day (or next week) he feels crappy about his job.

Right, or did I miss something?

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

#87

Post by Chronic26 »

ritchiea wrote: post #52
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.

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.

No. The point, as stated in the article, is to remove unmotivated employees quickly. Since employees will stick around until the offer is made, this dilutes its original purpose.

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

#88

Post by pvnick »

mediaman wrote: post #72
pvnick wrote: post #56

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'es…

What was your experience of the impact that policy had at that company? Anything? Did any lower performers leave to take the incentive? I've been curious about implementing this at my own company but I'd be interested in someone's actual experience with it, vs. hearing about it from people incentivized to claim it worked well because it was their idea to implement.

I actually don't think it had much impact at all actually. Although it wasn't a huge amount of money. I remember thinking "meh".

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

#89

Post by humannature »

EC1 wrote: post #45
bobjordan wrote: post #38

About 5 years ago during worst of the downturn, I took $20,000 USD option our consulting firm gave and voluntarily quit a $120,000 base salary job. At the time, I thought that job sucked pretty bad and was looking for an out anyhow. I've been an entrepreneur ever since. No quick success story to tell - I've been bootstrapping for 5 years in China and it's been hard. But I've been happier overall focusing everyday on…

What do you do? Why China?

probably cause he couldn't get a girlfriend in the U.S. if you look at all the foreigners in China, most of them have local Chinese girlfriends/wives and basically are losers in their home country. harsh truth.
Post reply on HN