Leak: Two-Thirds of New Amazon Employees Leave Within 90 Days | Hacker News Reader

Leak: Two-Thirds of New Amazon Employees Leave Within 90 Days

theverge.com

100 pointsMrWiffles11 comments

This is exactly what happened when two of my friends joined Amazon to work as in store shoppers at whole foods. They did their training, got paid, did the (incredibly intense) job a few days, asked themselves “is this really all there is to life” and left. They showed the company the same courtesy the company would have showed them and just didn’t turn up for shifts.

If you treat your people as things, you shouldn’t be surprised when they either hate you or just don’t care.

I used to live near a large Zappos, then both Zappos/AMZ warehouse, in poor area where it was a decent job.

The local forums were full of people complaining they were fired for silly reasons right before their 3 month mark, when they'd become permanent and get benefits. This was oh, about a decade ago.

Now they're sounding the alarm because the employees are just quitting instead? I have a really hard time feeling sorry for Amazon, here....

I think this is a good point and maybe raises a question - are they really quitting or e.g. are being bullied to quit. I have no doubt some part of "quitters" would be exactly that - people "asked to quit".

It seems like you hear stories just like this from every company who hires from temp workers who have to put in months/weeks before they are 'hired in'.

> from entry level roles all the way up to vice presidents, the lowest attrition rate for one of the company’s 10 tiers of employees was almost 70 percent, with the highest reaching a staggering 81.3 percent.

How long till they run out of people? This can't be sustainble in the long term.

Given the number of babies born while I typed this message, they can probably sustain this for quite a while.

Five years ago, when unemployment wasn't at all time lows like they are today, I heard stories about Amazon warehouses that simply could not hire anymore.

CHA1 in Chattanooga needs thousands of employees to function. But Chattanooga is around 180,000 people total, likely less than 100,000 working age people.

Friends of mine based there told me that the site had already hired and turned over every willing potential employee in the region. They were calling people up saying "I know we fired you two years ago because you weren't fast enough but maybe you should come back for an interview".

Sites that couldn't meet goals had their leadership fired too. Hit your rates or you're out, at all levels.

I can't imagine how bad things are now.

> workers are twice as likely to leave by choice, rather than because they were laid off or fired.

> the issue is widespread throughout the company, not just with warehouse workers; from entry level roles all the way up to vice presidents, the lowest attrition rate for one of the company’s 10 tiers of employees was almost 70 percent, with the highest reaching a staggering 81.3 percent.

> around three percent of the company’s hourly employees left each week

Wow. That sounds even worse than things reported in the past.

Nobody wants to work anymore

Realistically, how much can you make at Amazon pretending to work before they figure out and fire you?

Because, honestly, once you realize it’s ethical to do so, Amazon being a bad actor on purpose…

I don't think your attitude is necessarily a wrong one, I think you are misunderstanding Amazon.

The place is a literal cult. In every meeting, no matter how short, you hear people argue not points but leadership principles. "We need to learn and be curious about this ! Lets dive deep!", "Sorry, no, we need to have a bias for action. We've learned enough, lets do this.", two way door / one way door.

You can think you are going to jump into the cats mouth and steal some cheese, but theres a chance that you get changed into a literal cult member by this organization.

Avoid at all costs.

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