This is called “The Offer” and is made every year in Q1 to every permanent Amazon employee at every Amazon warehouse in North America. They adopted this practice from Zappos after taking over their fulfillment operations and rolled it out to the entire Amazon network. The basic premise being that if someone doesn’t want to work for your company, it’s cheaper to provide them a bonus to quit to help bridge the gap to a new job, than to allow that person to become a drain on production and culture. The only catch is then you are permanently ineligible for rehire at any Amazon facility or subsidiaries. It was originally $5k at Zappos and Amazon, seems like it's been lowered since implementation.
Hi, resident Amazon FC employee here. This is accurate, it starts at $1000 per "peak" which is the holiday busy season at Amazon, it caps at $5000. It's offered for a week or two this time of...
Hi, resident Amazon FC employee here. This is accurate, it starts at $1000 per "peak" which is the holiday busy season at Amazon, it caps at $5000. It's offered for a week or two this time of year. It is taxed as a gift, depending on state tax laws, I've seen estimates around 40%.
For more context, this time of year is called "firing season" at Amazon. This resignation bonus is part of an overarching strategy at Amazon. Amazon vastly over-hires for peak, then they purge as many people as possible afterwards. It's a horrible practice and leaves a lot of people without jobs unexpectedly. During purge season, rules which were not enforced prior to and during peak are strictly enforced. This generates write ups and terminations and they go after anyone who can't keep up. I'm a good employee and they've tried to write me up twice now, beat them both times because I had a good trainer. They are an omnipotent monolith of a corporation and they truly do not care about their employees. As my trainer and Amazon veteran told me, "cover your ass I've seen the best employees we've ever had walked out that door for bullshit."
Side note: This does have me concerned about the union vote. Amazon pushed the vote back under various pretenses but it truly got them to post-peak and gave them rationale to start firing people. Considering Amazon's actions since Bessemer workers filed with the NLRB, I am confident that many openly pro-union employees have been terminated in droves for various arbitrary reasons like rates, TOT and other haphazardly applied metrics. To prove that would take a suit in civil court and some extensive discovery, but let's wait and see.
Edit: I had a conversation the other day with a coworker about unionizing. I'm pretty outspoken about bullshit at my FC with my coworkers and I've definitely rucked some muck. A coworker of mine said, "the reason that nobody here wants to unionize is because nobody's got the energy. We are all so busy fighting amongst ourselves and for our jobs that we ain't got time."
Edit again!
The basic premise being that if someone doesn’t want to work for your company, it’s cheaper to provide them a bonus to quit to help bridge the gap to a new job, than to allow that person to become a drain on production and culture.
This is bullshit, I didn't read that carefully enough. There's some logic to it, but what Amazon is truly trying to avoid paying is unemployment, and voluntarily quitting a job disqualifies you from that.
From other places I've seen this posted:
Hi, resident Amazon FC employee here. This is accurate, it starts at $1000 per "peak" which is the holiday busy season at Amazon, it caps at $5000. It's offered for a week or two this time of year. It is taxed as a gift, depending on state tax laws, I've seen estimates around 40%.
For more context, this time of year is called "firing season" at Amazon. This resignation bonus is part of an overarching strategy at Amazon. Amazon vastly over-hires for peak, then they purge as many people as possible afterwards. It's a horrible practice and leaves a lot of people without jobs unexpectedly. During purge season, rules which were not enforced prior to and during peak are strictly enforced. This generates write ups and terminations and they go after anyone who can't keep up. I'm a good employee and they've tried to write me up twice now, beat them both times because I had a good trainer. They are an omnipotent monolith of a corporation and they truly do not care about their employees. As my trainer and Amazon veteran told me, "cover your ass I've seen the best employees we've ever had walked out that door for bullshit."
Side note: This does have me concerned about the union vote. Amazon pushed the vote back under various pretenses but it truly got them to post-peak and gave them rationale to start firing people. Considering Amazon's actions since Bessemer workers filed with the NLRB, I am confident that many openly pro-union employees have been terminated in droves for various arbitrary reasons like rates, TOT and other haphazardly applied metrics. To prove that would take a suit in civil court and some extensive discovery, but let's wait and see.
Edit: I had a conversation the other day with a coworker about unionizing. I'm pretty outspoken about bullshit at my FC with my coworkers and I've definitely rucked some muck. A coworker of mine said, "the reason that nobody here wants to unionize is because nobody's got the energy. We are all so busy fighting amongst ourselves and for our jobs that we ain't got time."
Edit again!
This is bullshit, I didn't read that carefully enough. There's some logic to it, but what Amazon is truly trying to avoid paying is unemployment, and voluntarily quitting a job disqualifies you from that.
Thanks for the clarification!