Amazon to pay full college tuition for its front-line employees
aboutamazon.com
aboutamazon.com
Also for those complaining about the 40hrs/week then you have part-time school on top: this is actually something that a lot of people do. My engineering university is somewhat known for this in Canada, you have classes at 6PM every day of the week + on Saturday. It is absolutely exhausting but everyone in my class that was in that particular situation was more than happy to have the opportunity to do it even if they were +30 years old. At the end of the program they get to be in a much better financial situation and guarantee a better future for their family.
Just as America has the bizarre situation of healthcare being tied to employment, we may end up in the same situation for education, where becoming an indentured servant for Amazon or Starbucks takes the place of what should be a public education service.
But that's literally not what's happening?
>Indentured servitude is a form of labor in which a person is contracted to work without salary for a specific number of years.
Do you honestly think people willingly work at McJobs that still require them to live on food stamps when they have better options available to them, like living with their parents?!
Amazon's warehouse workers are not buying organic takeout or getting luxury condominiums, they are buying the cheapest (unhealthy) food and living in the cheapest parts of town. What you asking to keep in mind sounds a lot like a rehash of Reagan's incorrect "welfare queen" characterization from the 70's. Or more recently: "Why do poor people need a smartphone for?"
Just less than an hour ago I was listening to the radio and they were interviewing someone who literally fits this description: They voluntarily left their parent's house and worked at McDonalds for a bunch of years. Not going to school or anything. Living their own life.
I also personally know someone who did this. Comes from an upper middle class family. Not kicked out of the house or anything. Just didn't like the small town he was in. Moved to another state and worked at McDonald's while doing some art projects when not working.
People do this. All. The. Time.
People here on HN (and especially in the comments for this submission) are showing how way out of touch their world view is from reality. How many of you here even know any Amazon warehouse workers? I know two, and talking to them has impacted my view of Amazon.
Anti-disclaimer: I don't work for Amazon and prefer not to buy from them.
Living with their parents is an alternate option, that may or may not be the better option. Maybe it is cheaper and has comparable living standards, but at the same time it might also be in the middle of nowhere. The point is that there's a choice available, which isn't the case for indentured servitude.
>Amazon's warehouse workers are not buying organic takeout or getting luxury condominiums [...]
I specifically said they're not all doing it. I brought that up not to disparage the plight of the average amazon worker, but to point out just factoring in room and board fails to account for certain cases.
Exactly, most people don't get this. This is exactly why I am vicious, cruel, and unkind to the employees of my small business - it seems counter intuitive, but I'm actually doing them the least harm this way, and so I'm actually optimizing for their long term happiness. They should be thanking me. /logic
[From the perspective of someone trying to abolish slavery] kind slavers are the worst because they make the situation just tolerable enough that people aren’t motivated to change the system.
[From the perspective of an individual slave] kind slavers are the best because they suffer the least.
Kind slavers force a system settle on a local minimum of suffering rather than a global one.
Who says kind slavers weren't also helping to change the system? It's a pretty big assumption that all kind slavers were only being kind to keep their slaves from being uppity. Re: George Washington
Depends on the meaning of "own". Quoting from https://www.mountvernon.org/george-washington/slavery/martha...
> After George and Martha Washington married in 1759, she took many of these people with her to Mount Vernon. As property of the Custis estate, they could not legally be freed or sold, and were inherited by the Custis heirs upon Martha Washington’s death.
In this case, Martha Washington owned the rights to the labor of the people involved until she died, but did not own the people themselves; the Custis estate did.
(Now what she would have done if she did own them outright is a separate issue, of course. Nothing suggests she would have freed them.)
1) The ones owned by George Washington himself. He did not free these while alive; he did have a will that said that once Martha died they were free. That is, he did not free them until he (1) made use of their labor himself and (2) ensured that what he viewed as his financial obligations to Martha upon his death were satisfied. Obviously this is not a hard-line abolitionist stance, and I do wonder what he would have done if he had living children when he died. As it was, he just had living step-grandchildren (kids of Martha's son from her previous marriage; the son had died earlier and George and Martha had raised his kids).
2) The ones owned by the Custis estate. Those could not be freed unilaterally by either George or Martha. They were inherited by the above-mentioned step-grandchildren when Martha died.
What would happen for people in set 2 if they were in Philadelphia for more than a year is a legal question I don't have an answer for... The most plausible way to reconcile the various legal bits I can think of is that they would be free but then Martha (or George? family property law in 1700s Virginia is not my strong suit) would owe restitution to the Custis estate for the lost value or something like that?
The rules were considerably more complicated for Pennsylvania residents; the law basically grandfathered in existing slaves owned by Pennsylvanians and provided for a decades-long slow abolition as the children of existing slaves reached the age of 28.
It's interesting that the law exempted members of congress (and representatives of other countries, possibly for similar reasons) but not the president.
I don't think a poet/playwright would ever roll with "the expected utility is less due to preventing a change to the status quo" instead of the original quote.
Is this typo becoming more common? OP, why would you be sticky and slow moving around these people?
The problem with views like the ones being expressed in this thread is that they suggest at every moment that the thing we need is revolution. That there is no way to advance an imperfect system by doing good. And after any revolution, you’ll still be left with an imperfect foundation, so you’re still forbidden from doing good, and you need another revolution.
It is insightful, pointing out where good intentions cause an imperfect status quo to perpetuate longer than it otherwise would. But the status quo will always be imperfect, so we must find ways of advancing it that don’t force everyone through a lower point in order to reach the next maxima (which is sorta what you do when you encourage all those with good intentions to stand down).
Not that I’m saying all revolutions past weren’t valid. When you lose the freedom of movement that allows people to seek out higher maxima, then the only way forward actually is revolution.
Countries that have implemented free public education still have contacts to the industry of course and their involvement is under scrutiny for several reasons.
I don't believe you need a revolution, you just need better policy makers. I understand why that feels impossible for many.
Do good on top a foundation of fundamental injustice? I'm sorry, do you have any other foundations laying around? I surveyed 5000 years of written history and couldn't find any.
The options are try to do some good or don't.
Thank you for your opinion on the life and work of Dr. King.
But, Oscar Wilde's quote here is partially right at the societal level, and absolutely wrong on the individual level. Both can be true. Amazon isn't to be lauded as a company for something that is, ultimately, a competitive advantage, in a landscape they don't seek to change, but the change itself can be lauded as a good one in that it's something they can control
And so maybe one company doing it can lead to other companies doing it more? Although this is covid related...so not sure it really applies
We already have a public education system, and any employee working at Amazon or Starbucks for minimum wage should qualify for Pell Grants that would make community college free anyways.
that the tax evading Monopoly which has subsumed a significant portion of US capital (stripped from the common man) can be seen as beneficent for merely satisfying their own need for skilled labor in an economic context they helped foment wherein education has been made unreachable by normal means.
You do understand that these people, regardless of your opinion on how the government should handle education at a state and federal level, will actually benefit from this move? It's not some kind of dystopian agreement, usually the employer pays for your education and you must stay there for ~2 years or reimburse what the employer paid. That's it, you can leave, you can go work anywhere.
> we may end up in the same situation for education, where becoming an indentured servant for Amazon or Starbucks takes the place of what should be a public education service.
Where "indentured servitudes" means "a form of labor in which a person is contracted to work without salary for a specific number of years". Yes there is a difference with actual slavery, but this is still very much the parallel he was drawing.
Ergo I feel very comfortable saying that this is a very out-of-touch comparison.
I'm amazed at this criticism. College is and was difficult for many people to handle because it's expensive. It's not lack of will or ability to find time.
I got my bachelor's degree while I was serving in the US Air Force at 40 hours plus per week. Yeah, it was a bit of a grunt. But I got the degree. I'm still grateful for their help in funding tuition as well as the flexibility to attend evening classes. I think most people in that situation would feel the same.
This is just capturing the offspring, not too different from other strategies to get control of the market.
Because the benefit of the doubt is for people/companies who haven't repeatedly (some might even say enthusiastically) shown that they don't deserve it.
At this point, it's always safe to assume ulterior motives anytime Amazon does something that seems good.
It's a self-reinforcing cycle
amazon is bad -> therefore when amazon does something good, it's bad -> amazon is bad -> ...
I assume, in this case, there are tax benefits and that Amazon gets a cut of revenue.
https://www.wolterskluwer.com/en/expert-insights/furthering-...
"As the employer, you may deduct the entire amount that you pay for the employee's educational costs as a business expense. However, only $5,250 is not considered wages and therefore, not subject to payroll taxes. Amounts over the annual limit are subject to income and payroll taxes."
The American reaction to a Russian SALT treaty during the Cold War is one well-known example of naïve cynicism in history. Political leaders negotiating on behalf of the United States discredited the offer simply because it was proposed by the Russian side.[1][9]
Former U.S. congressman Floyd Spence indicates the use of naïve cynicism in this quote:
"I have had a philosophy for some time in regard to SALT, and it goes like this: the Russians will not accept a SALT treaty that is not in their best interest, and it seems to me that if it is their best interests, it can‘t be in our best interest."
...it's the epitome of bias.
> You assume everything good is done in bad faith by people you've labelled "bad" and then judged them to be bad based on acts you've assumed were done in bad faith.
I assume what Amazon does is bad by default, but I'm perfectly willing to accept that it's good if I'm proven otherwise (maybe someone convinces me, or I do my own research and come to that conclusion). I'm just always going to assume the worst, and that's going to put them at a permanent disadvantage when competing for my patronage. That's like, peak capitalism: penalize bad behavior through the market.
Idk why I need to explain this, since I'm pretty sure everyone understands the concept of a reputation. Is it "intellectually lazy" to not invite a registered sex offender to your child's birthday party? This is basically the same thing, but less dramatic.
It reminds me of the protesters happy to destroy other people's property, but then signal outrage when their own property is destroyed.
Plus, again, I'm talking about corporations, not people. Corporations are not people. For example, Microsoft is a rotten company and I will never be their customer if I can avoid it. But I have absolutely nothing against Microsoft's employees (except maybe some of the C suite)
[1] https://nypost.com/2020/05/01/jeff-bezos-may-have-lied-to-co...
[2] https://www.bookweb.org/news/aba-releases-report-detailing-a...
[3] https://time.com/5629233/amazon-warehouse-employee-treatment...
[4] https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/biden-singles-out-...
You've never lied? If someone found a lie you once said and put it in a comment like this, what would it signify?
I'm pretty sure Amazon doesn't always lie, just like you don't always lie.
> and cheat[2]
Same sentiment as above.
> and try to exploit everyone in my life[3]
Pretty sure Amazon doesn't try to exploit everyone. Lots of Amazon employees feel that way too.
> Hell, I even pay my taxes![4]
You don't take deductions when you can? If you do, how are you different from Amazon?
As an example, for years, I never deducted charitable contributions even though I could. How about mortgage interest?
Unless you willingly do not take tax deductions that you are eligible for, I don't see a difference between your behavior and theirs.
You are a complex person, as is a company like Amazon. Throwing absolutist statements about them is as problematic as throwing absolutist statements about you.
Does it really matter that giving employees benefits like this is in Amazon's best interest when it is also in the interests of the employees themselves? Should we decry Amazon providing warehouse workers with a parking lot as some cynical ploy to get workers to come to work?
Not every benefit given to employees is bad just because it also benefits the company.
You don't see how that attitude, if held by more people, creates the situation it holds in contempt?
If I'm working with someone who responds like that to acts of goodwill, I don't have an incentive to be nice. Being a human, I'll likely be spiteful. (And goodwill doesn't have to be purely altruistic to be good. Win-wins exist.)
I think we have touched the hot stove enough times to know that corporations don't act altruistically. If they do something "nice" it's because it benefits them.
To use a computer analogy, it's like: the problem is SQL injection. The "positive step" is disallowing special characters in user names. The radical solution is parameterized queries.
Adding in shitty character sanitization technically makes the situation better, but the bandaid-solution might make management less likely to sign off on fixing the actual problem.
(Note: radical in this sense basically means "addressing the root of the problem, transformative, fundamental" and not "fringe ideology," because everybody knows you should use parameterized queries.).
This might be a bandaid but this issue existed before Amazon, it's not created by Amazon. And many other companies have done this before Amazon. If the issue is the cost of education, there are so many factors causing that how can we expect a single private company to lead that change?
So what is the actual proposed solution that Amazon is making less viable through this change, and how could Amazon have enabled that radical change better? And once we derive what that action could have been, we have to evaluate the value it has to Amazon because at the end of the day they are operating a business not a social justice non-profit.
An obvious solution is to make secondary education free.
> And once we derive what that action could have been, we have to evaluate the value it has to Amazon because at the end of the day they are operating a business not a social justice non-profit.
This is a rather myopic view of society. If you believe that the status quo is unquestionable (that businesses should only prioritize their self-interest), then of course you can't believe in any radical change to it.
And yeah they are one of the largest employers in the world. You have yet to define what specific action Amazon should have taken to produce radical change. Maybe it would have just been a flat out increase in salaries, but with the lens of education, it seems like this is a positive move.
> This is a rather myopic view of society. If you believe that the status quo is unquestionable (that businesses should only prioritize their self-interest), then of course you can't believe in any radical change to it.
No, THIS is a myopic view of society. Entities are always going to work towards the social reward system established, and Amazon/Bezos are acting exactly as you'd expect for our reward system. If the issue is a broader society problem then by definition it cannot be exclusively Amazon/Bezos fault.
And this brings us back to what SHOULD they be doing in this scenario? I am not saying don't question the status quo. But how does questioning the status quo change anything about this scenario? We can question the status quo while also accepting that people live inside the status quo, and thats not inherently bad. I fail to see how it's inherently bad that Amazon is paying for employee education. What SPECIFICALLY does it block in terms of radical change? How do these two things become mutually exclusive in this scenario, not some hypothetical scenario?
Using parameterized queries is trivial, so it's not comparable here. A better analogy would be like arguing we should keep the SQL injection bug there, in the hopes that the hacks will convince management to rearchitect the whole app to using ORMs. Alternatively: we shouldn't use memory safety mitigations like ASLR/stack cookies/W^X, because that would impede the radical solution of rewriting everything in rust.
This is the media breathlessly reporting "Amazon bravely fixes SQL injection bug by disallowing special chars!" while every person who's thought about this for more than a minute goes "why the hell are y'all celebrating, that doesn't fix anything."
It's not hard to fix. It just requires the will do to it.
but it does? It's not the ideal fix, but it does prevent sql injections.
>It's not hard to fix. It just requires the will do to it.
Fixing the soaring cost of education is a non-trivial problem.
People's lives and families are worth investing in, no matter if a company deems it a benefit for itself or not. Such investments should not be coupled to company's bottom line.
For example, if a major shoe or clothing retailer provided a benefit for its (western) retail employees in order to preempt Congressional action into overseas sweat labor, then it's a really complex moral question, not just "it's better than nothing".
Let's say that Amazon is using this college benefit to avoid raising wages for their front-line workers. One could argue that the college benefit is "bad" because it allows Amazon to ignore the root cause. However, this ignores the fact that Amazon could have just kept wages down without the college benefit. The front-line worker still benefits, even if not in the way they would have wanted.
There could also be the argument that Amazon is offering these college benefits to avoid unionization by their employees, legal action in the form of new laws about warehouse work, or some other action I haven't mentioned. This would mean that the college benefit is "bad" in that it has prevented a larger, more beneficial change. Depending on how likely one thought the larger change was, this could even be seen as a decrease in the expected utility for these workers.
I think this situation is what you mean by a "complex moral question" and I honestly agree with that point. However, I think that most people would rather take a smaller guaranteed benefit over a larger, uncertain benefit. This is primarily because well-being tends to rise with log(income), so a small benefit vs a medium-sized benefit has a much smaller well-being difference than it would initially seem.
I do agree that it ultimately depends though, and that suspicion is warranted. I just think that the moral question is too complex to immediately assume that Amazon is acting in bad faith like some commenters seem to indicate.
As it is with most acts of kindness by most people.
This is true for literally everyone and everything
I don't think you get it. If someone took a big shit on my lawn every morning and refused to stop or clean it up but I found out they were paying for some kids college I'd still their they were a giant asshole.
Amazon is doing far worse in the world than shitting on my lawn and isnt doing this out of the goodness of their heart. They are doing it for good pr and because its hard to hire workers like these long term without dangling long term benefits over their heads.
But many people here aren't simply expressing their discontent at amazon in general, they're expressing their discontent at amazon for doing this specific action. You can think amazon is doing a good thing here, but still think that amazon is a bad company. Thinking "amazon is a bad company therefore everything they do is bad" is the wrong attitude to have here.
"Why should our workers be allowed to take bathroom breaks or even think about forming a union? We gave them free college*!"
*Some conditions apply
How much pay is enough? How many benefits are enough? I am genuinely curious.
Last year they posted a job looking for a senior intelligence analyst to gather info on "sensitive topics that are highly confidential, including labor organizing threats against the company." Later that day they claimed they had made a mistake in describing the job.[1]
There is no single answer on what pay and benefits should be, or how well they should treat their workers. That's the whole point of unions: they provide collective bargaining where employees can decide how much their local area can reasonably support.
That's why organized labor is a threat to them. Their business model depends on squeezing wages and benefits, which is exactly what they did when they bought Whole Foods. They removed medical benefits for part time employees[2], and have recently cut paid breaks from 15 to 10 minutes, which now includes the time it takes to walk to and from the break room.[3]
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/01/amazon-seeks-intelligence-an...
[2] https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/09/14/amazon-whole...
[3] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/whole-foods-cuts-some-workers-p...
“We just have to work faster to meet the same goals in less time,” the worker said.'
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/mar/06/whole-foods-...
I just don't see the logical progression here. Amazon can still be an asshole and also be doing something positive. Elon Musk is widely known for being an asshole yet most people would say that SpaceX and Tesla are net positives. So it's clear that life isn't so black and white where an entity can only assume one role at a time (Good/Evil). Instead, we all partake in good and evil activities in the micro.
And if the bottom line drives a business then what does it matter if PR drives this decision so long as its a positive move? Why do people have this obsession with purely altruistic acts that don't exist?
I did my master's degree this way and actually did better than when I was an undergraduate with no other responsibilities.
I was a way better undergrad student at year 4 than at year 1 (normally it takes 5 years to complete a BSc where I'm from).
Most obviously, it is clear that this is being pushed as a pathway to IT education. Amazon, as a business, has massive vested interests in, one, increasing the size of the IT labor force, and two, promoting buy-in to its own IT infrastructure. It is irrational to not initially assume that this initiative is being conducted primarily to pursue such interests.
My criteria for being "happy" with the actions of a corporation like Amazon hinge on them doing something utterly unimaginable: going against the interests of their shareholders for the ultimate benefit of society at large. If, for instance, Amazon starts advocating for meaningful and equitable worker representation in business decisions that affect said workers, I'll be "happy".
There's sometimes still some interesting discussion buried in comments somewhere, but you can almost predict the entirety of threads on these kinds of topics without reading it. GPT-3 could probably generate HN comments for these topics and be pretty convincing.
I took to calling it "Training Reimbursement".
Like, basically anyone could expense a business degree. Job related? Doing better at business. But if you are a grocery store stocking shelves, you couldn't submit to the IRS college tuition for say an engineering degree.
But within that, it should be all classes. So if you are a self-taught programmer and going to school for a computer science degree, it's OK there is a class in public speaking or chemistry. As long as the degree itself is for something that you can justify as job related.
* Not a lawyer, hire a pro before offering tuition reimbursement to make sure you don't run afoul with IRS requirements
Employers can provide up to $5,250 in reimbursement tax free for all qualified programs regardless of the programs relation to the job
Over that amount it becomes a fringe benefit subject to income taxation, however if it is job related it can be deducted as an expenses for the employee making it tax free
That's surprising - when I have a chance to take a "remedial" course on something that I feel like I already know well, I always end up learning at least something I had never thought of before.
Pay us more money.
We don't want parties, prizes, perks or pizza. We want money. Determined to show you care about your employees? Pay them more money. Want to retain employees longer? Pay them more money. Want your employees to be able to afford education and health care?
Pay. Them. More. Money.
I’d rather have tuition than money because of tax advantages. Free college is free college. Paying me $1k extra to then pay taxes is less.
Also, this is biased toward people who want degrees so if I use it, it’s way more than they would pay me.
I’m not an anti-millennial (some of my favorite selves are millennials) but having absolutist mantras is stupid when it’s an alternative to having smarter, more beneficial work situations.
I have a long list of things I’d rather have than money. I’d probably take a $30k pay cut to work remotely, for example.
Right, government policy has created an incentive for you to desire an employer-linked scheme instead of higher wages. The employer gets a tax benefit, and you get a more limited and convoluted way of getting compensation.
Wages are an employer tax benefit too. From a tax perspective, wages and tuition are pretty similar.
I think the main benefit is that not many employees will take the benefit. And they can negotiate some big discount with an online university. So buying 10k degrees is cheaper than 10k paying on their own.
In my case, I’d rather have tuition because I’d get more return than higher wages.
Edit: Here is a claim that is similar:
As stated above, any amount of tuition reimbursement that exceeds $5,250 is considered a fringe benefit of the job, and the employee will have to pay taxes on that amount. However, if an employee is taking a class related to their job or career, they can declare that their tuition is a work-related expense, thus making it tax-exempt. However, the employee should be prepared to prove that each class they take helps them improve at their job and benefits the company. Otherwise, the money will be considered taxable income.
https://study.com/academy/popular/is-tuition-reimbursement-t...
> Pre-paid fees. Amazon will pay employees’ tuition and fees in advance rather than offering reimbursement after coursework completion, ensuring employees don’t need existing funds to start accessing the education options they want.
https://www.irs.gov/publications/p15b#en_US_2021_publink1000...
1. https://www.1040.com/tax-guide/faq/did-president-trump-s-new...
Thats different than saying "any accredited institution".
I wonder if it is only low cost educational programs...
And, community colleges provide a better education than state colleges? Seriously? Do you have any evidence for that position?
I misinterpreted you as saying that Amazon was using a real college as a training program.
If Amazon will pay for "education", and the options are a four year degree or an Amazon training program, I'll take the degree and ignore their training.
This seems like more of a PR move than anything.
Meanwhile there are 900,000+ front line employees at Amazon. Bringing up elite schools in relation to this group is missing the forest for the trees, and frankly insulting to people that worked hard and went to state schools that you'd consider "failures".
It's so funny how the tone of your comment completely changes the meaning. Your tone essentially says "normal people aren't good enough to get into elite schools" which is disgusting and classist. If your tone was slightly different, "normal people aren't often given the opportunity to go to these schools even if they deserve it" you would be saying the same thing (statistically, "normal" people aren't the norm at Harvard).
But, either way, I hate to break it to you... but us peons are just as intelligent, clever, interesting, and motivated as the social elite... we just happened to be born to poor parents by the grace of history and (bad) luck.
I personally believe, as a peon, that nobody deserves to go to a top school because they're eugenicist and classist by design. I have nothing because I went to a shitty state school, and the fact that others have happiness and everything handed to them because they're part of the lucky few is why I have a suicide note ready for when I snap and blow my brains out for being an abject, state school-educated failure.
> However, being a normal person making that absolutely enormous leap happens a non-trivial amount of times
Again, it doesn't. 2k admits. Only people that might be normal are the ones that are affirmative action admits from Wyoming or Alaska.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/college-mobilit...
Update: this is getting downvoted. I guess many Dartmouth graduates here with ego...
Universities, especially prestigious ones are expensive in the US. But the prestigious ones also happen to have incredibly good financial aid options. The problem is the classist system that makes it difficult for a low-income person to have the CV that lets them get admitted. Paying the rest after being admitted is comparatively easy (both for the rich and for the poor). It is the middle class that is in a bit uncomfortable situation as the financial aid can still have aggressive cutoffs.
Do you really think front line employees at Amazon are going to go to Dartmouth? People that worked hard in high school and college like me can't go to Dartmouth. Bizarre to equate that with quality when this is designed to give people opportunities to pay for University of New Hampshire.
There are an innumerable amount of "hard working" students that have all sorts of jobs in our economy. I'm now a 30-something tenured researcher at a world class instution, but at one point I was a 19 year old working swing shifts in a manufacturing plant while attending a world class university... because although I worked hard in high school just like you... I also desperately needed money. It would have been great if my greedy/zealous manager would have paid for my college, I was repairing the electronics and software for him at near minimum wage anyway.
Most of us can't attend "world class universities", we're inherently inferior. The vast majority, actually. So bringing up elite schools in this conversation is both irrelevant and in many cases just self aggrandizing.
I don't know how you twisted what I said into the idea that people from FCs can't go to top schools, but the reality is almost none (and probably close to none) do.
I upvoted because he's correct. There's a staggering amount of denial in this thread. Statistically (and recently https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/03/histor...) the trends remain unchanged for Ivy league schools. The competition is high and the prejudices are baked in.
CCs or state colleges would be great imo.
It is common for universities to charge a single sum for "full-time" students--students whose credit load is above some threshhold. But, Kansas State, for instance, only lists per credit tuition: ~$320. If you take 16 credits--a pace that could have you graduate in four years--that would be over $5k/semester, about $41k for the most minimal four-year degree.
Boise State charges (in 2021) $4k/semester for full-time students. Is that low cost?
Boston College charges $30k+/semester.
U of Texas costs ~$6500/semester.
If K-State, Boise State, and UT are considered low cost, I think you'll be fine. These all provide a fine education.
That sounds pretty low cost and I would guess the financial threshholds would apply to most of Amazon's front line workers.
Someone I loved was accepted at a school like Stanford with a similar policy. The good news was the entire $50k tuition (10 years ago) was covered, the bad news was that meant $1500 in work study, $6k in scholarships, and $43.5k in student loans guaranteed. Plus $10k for room and board.
The way schools word this is such a dark pattern.
I'm gonna guess that all your numbers represent a single year. Then I have to ask, they only earned $9000 outside of work study during that period? That seems seriously low for a year. Were they prevented from working during the school year?
The school wasn’t as good as Stanford but top 20 and had a similar policy and tuition.
The numbers don’t represent any outside work. The $1500/year was like 8 hours a week doing random university jobs. It possible they could work, but it would be really hard on top of the 8 hours work study and class load.
Maybe this program will go entirely unused like my $500 yearly education budget though.
Knuth's set was the most expensive one I've bought recently
Their biggest competitor for employees in many places in America is Wal-Mart; and they’ve been offering this for a while now.
This is significantly higher than most other entry level jobs in the area.
You still have what you "deserve", if you have done the effort to enter and work with a specific company you have free education, otherwise keep looking for better luck.
Yes, it is better than nothing but IMHO is another way to concentrate power.
In Spain where I am from the cost of college is something like €2000 per year (approx, depends on degree). That is for your first attempt, which means if you pass everything the total cost could be 8000 for the degree. If you fail a class and have to take it again, besides gpa, the price increments, and keeps incrementing for each attempt until you reach almost the real cost of that class.
Some other things to note:
- public schools usually have better recognition than private ones, for things such mba's may be different
- the government can help with the tuition fee depending on the financial situation, meaning you can get the degree for free
- if you get the max score in one class you get that fee back, so if you get max scores in all classes you can also get the degree for free
US societal questions aside for the moment, as a very pragmatic matter for individuals, this could be a great opportunity for many.
Can anybody comment on what the hiring needs and career path looks like at Google/Amazon at the moment?
https://www.vox.com/the-goods/22627543/free-online-college-p...
Also, I'll admit that in my current company it is a royal PITA to submit for EDU reimbursement and I would love to have a lower barrier of entry for enrollment friction, etc..
Edit: funny the downvotes cannot disprove my simple math. :)
From: https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/09/business/amazon-college-tuiti...
I worked part-time while an undergrad and it was almost too much for me.
I can imagine doing any two of those, with some difficulty. Doing all three is insane. Is her bloodstream, like, 30% caffeine?
I once heard they were suspose to deliver 500 packages a day.
I hope to a higher power I got that wrong.
That number is obviously wrong. Question your sources.
A lot of people always find a way to blame their issues on something external. Oh it's too expensive! Oh there's not enough time! Oh someone should do it for me! Oh that person just got lucky!
Maybe some of that's true, but it doesn't really matter. Take the cards you're dealt and do something with them. Or.. you can just fold and keep blaming it on something else.
(But don't worry - you'll regrow that skill quickly once you're done with your schooling.) :-)
I did it in my 20s and would not do it now as my body has aged.
You must not know any single parents. Humans are extremely capable when it comes to important things.
They acknowledge the two key constraints but aside from one program for AWS that supposedly provides on the job training, they failed to mention how they helped on the time aspect, only money. 40 hours at Amazon from my anecdata seems highly optimistic, it's probably 50 for many.
I'm highly cyninical of any of these such programs. The last thing I want is a privatized business like Amazon trying to educate and having incentives to lock people into their ecosystem at a fundamental level such as education. Education should acknowledge the downsides of Amazon as well as the upsides and I doubt you'll see much of any of the former.
On a likely related note, I had 4 Amazon recruiters contact me in the past two days which is higher than normal (at least, for me) even after I've told multiple recruiters I'm not interested in working at Amazon until they have a shift in how they treat their labor culture. Frankly I'm not even a good fit for most the types of development Amazon is interested in.
My, again, cynical view here from anecdata of Amazon employees is that Amazon is struggling more than most to hire in tech careers, largely because they've turned off many who have other options. Higher pay to many isn't worth higher associated stress and instability. This looks like a new flailing attempt to plug the hole or perhaps set the stage to request special exemptions or drastic increases on H1B programs to again try and drive down labor rates while also help meet their demand.
They must be desperate. They’re the closest thing to a tech company that has recruiters send me a message and the only FAANG that ever would contact me.
That being said the recruiter messages always feel robotic and impersonal, even worse than the keyword dumps from guys shilling there shitty low paid c2h enterprise roles. I just ignore them. Not interested in the FAANG interview circus anyway.
Is that's what's actually happening though? It looks like they're paying for employee to go to certain (community?) colleges, not for them to get AWS certs.
I went to school and later worked at a state university that had substantial ties to the fossil fuel industry, including a lot of donations for infrastructure and research. Whenever we published something or taught something there was always a behind the scenes discussion about how we had to tred lightly about biting the hand that fed us ("don't say bad things about oil and coal, they give us tens of millions a year"). Heck, it even influenced the lines and the types of research the university would promote publications or sometimes even allow.
Not sure if the pandemic helped or hindered public university revenue streams, but I have to suspect all the economic downturn hurt admissions and revenue more than helped. They were already hurting across the country prior to the pandemic so I only imagine it's worse now. That means piles of money can carry even more influence than before.
it can be a good opportunity to reskill in a totally different domain without sacrificing comp.
What's odd is that it didn't even feel like much of a chore. You stayed so busy things just kinda flew by.
Thinking about doing that now completely stresses me out.
You can't pay your house/apartment and other bills without a fulltime job, so if you want to go to college to try to get in a better life position, you've got to do it on top of also working fulltime.
I tried to do this for a while as a teen -- I worked as a landscaper all day, then would ride a bus 1 hour each way to night classes at a community college.
Said FUCK THAT and dropped out after 2 semesters.
I applaud anyone who can actually do this. I'm not sure I could finish college even with zero responsibilities, you have to take so many boring classes you don't care about as pre-requisites.
C's get degrees, but the marginal difference between a C and and A wasn't all that much time.
It's entirely your own doing if you don't get good grades IMO unless you have a legitimate disability. But some people were idiots when they were younger, or had other (questionable) priorities. I've also heard really sad life situations where teens wind up essentially having to take care of their siblings and the household due to dysfunctional parents or other stuff.
Because yeah, if your pubescent, immature brain decides that you have better things to do than schoolwork, you've really screwed the pooch and lost your shot.
Can't well go back to highschool and try over, haha.
(It worked out okay for me, I eventually got a GED and that's it. Never finished highschool or went to college, but programmed for fun as a kid and so managed to worm my way into software eventually. It probably would not have worked out in about a billion other scenarios, RIP)
I couldn't imagine even working twenty hours delivering a ton of packages, and getting through school, especially if you need decent grades for grad school.
Amazon knows very few of their workers will take advantage of their college offer.
Great PR though.
but "here" you can attend college at weekends, so every two weekends you spend weekend at school
This allows you to work full time and study
I'm starting to understand boomers more lately. The comments on here reek of entitlement.
Just stop being a corporate dick. is that really so hard to be competitive and NOT also be a corp asshole?
It is somewhat beneficial for employees if they were already going to be working a job while going to a school Amazon will pay for, since their tuition would be paid with pre tax dollars.
The impact being them being able to eventually escape the minimum wage slavery that is working for Amazon?
So in a way it's tax payers who are paying for the education. How? Because more taxes have to be collected elsewhere.
Given the continuing-to-soar cost of education, I'd expect Congress to considerably increase that number. People will increasingly get chained to jobs for education cost reasons like they already are for healthcare cost reasons.
I'd pick it any time over working for Big Jeff.
I still believe that for those that must choose between either option in order to access higher education with no option for an acceptable loan, it's not so clear to me that people (who am I kidding, able-bodied men) would choose Amazon first.
In war time, total deaths per military FTE is often in the 1/1000 rate each year. Obviously your MOS and assignment area are going to be big factors in that -- get assigned to a US base and your risk is less than that of a construction worker.
This might derail the thread but I'm genuinely curious to know: if I joined the US military during wartime, what's the statistical chance that I would suffer a non-fatal but still life-changing injury? And what's the chance that I would survive combat with such a severe case of PTSD that it drivese to suicide?
(On the latter point, I've read that significantly more American servicemen have killed themselves after returning from Iraq and Afghanistan than were actually killed while serving in those countries.)
So the rate of major injuries falls between those, but the rate of severe PTSD is probably independent.
The perk provides a win-win by allowing for the company to have group bargaining power, as well as force the expenditure on something that also benefits the company.
These programs are a win-win for the employee-employer relationship.
Going to college offsite, off hours doesn’t immediately benefit the corporation. The investment only benefits the company if the employee “moves up the ranks”.
My understanding from the article is that the benefit is for front line employees. My guess is most do not care for college and would rather take in even 50% of the college tuition
If the accounts of Amazon front line workers having to pee in cups and being PIP'd for taking lunch breaks is true how could a significant % of workers maintain that level of workload while attending university?
How the GI Bill works: https://www.va.gov/education/about-gi-bill-benefits/post-9-1...
Source: https://www.va.gov/education/about-gi-bill-benefits/post-9-1...
There were some specific changes two years ago, but it doesn't look like it covers the problems I mentioned: https://www.benefits.va.gov/GIBILL/FGIBSummaries.asp
Feel free to be specific beyond "That's not how the GI Bill works"