Amazon Career Choice Program
amazon.com
amazon.com
--most people working in Amazon warehouses are employed by temporary staffing firms, not Amazon
--most people working in Amazon warehouses don't come anywhere near 3 years of tenure before quitting or being fired
--reimbursement is limited to $2,000/year for four years, while $5,000/year is pretty much the minimum direct cost to take such programs
--the program is limited to full-time workers, so only those who can take classes while working full-time and mandatory-or-you-get-fired overtime can partake
The number of warehouse workers eligible for this is nearly zero. Might even be precisely zero.
also aren't the warehouses generally in areas of the country that don't really have schools?
yeah, I don't think they're going to be paying much out on this program ...
One of Amazon's warehouses cough "fulfillment centers" cough is in New Castle, Delaware-- not far from the University of Delaware, a top US engineering school.
On a side note, does anyone know of other workplaces that offer a tuition payment program? --- A google search later and I actually find this site http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/finance/746434/
I does look like Amazon isn't really doing that much of an amazing thing here though.
I'm not sure if it's the norm.
The most common degrees people go for seem to be general Business, Marketing, Accounting, and then the more specialized tech. degrees. I'm amazed at the number of CS people I come across who have "silent" MBA's. At my last job I knew at least one person who joined with a high school diploma and eventually had an MSEE all paid for by the company.
Yet, for some reason, this company has never made it in the news for its tuition programs, but Amazon offers basically nothing in comparison and somehow they are worth mentioning.
If they were giving a paltry reimbursement to everyone who worked in an Amazon warehouse while taking classes, that would add up to something much more significant than the big companies I've worked for that employed people who already felt set-for-life and who could've gotten an advanced degree on the company dime if they felt like it, for example.
Additionally, i think ALL reimbursement programs are great. But as a comparison, this one is kind of shit. 2k a year max helps with books. That's about it. It is hardly an "Amazon Sends its workforce to school" Program. There is a regional gas station/mini mart here in WA state that offers a better program and you only have to work 35 hours a week.
while their amount per year is low, for low to middle income earners, it's enough to be the difference between not having the option and cutting back a bit to be able to go to school. Sure, there's no way to have it pay for a state or ivy league school, but if your only skill is low-level employee in a warehouse, working towards an associates degree or taking management courses can greatly improve your station.
Amazon has many thousands of warehouse associates. Most of the temporary workers, however come in during the holidays - that's no surprise.
Amazon is experiencing tons of growth right now, the last thing they want to do is keep having to rehire associate workers. If you are good, there is no reason why they should fire you.
A reimbursement of $2,000/ year may not seem like much, but it goes a long way if you are in a state school or in community college. A lot of the associate workers are making somewhere around $12-$14/hour, so this ends up helping them a lot more than you realize.
--
Amazon is experiencing tons of growth right now, the last thing they want to
do is keep having to rehire associate workers. If you are good, there is no
reason why they should fire you.
From the article:
Temporary employees interviewed said few people in their working groups
actually made it to a permanent Amazon position. Instead, they said they
were pushed harder and harder to work faster and faster until they were
terminated, they quit or they got injured. Those interviewed say turnover at
the warehouse is high and many hires don't last more than a few months.
[1] http://www.mcall.com/news/local/mc-allentown-amazon-complain....
[2] http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/mac-mcclelland-f....
The whole program is not bullshit, and let me tell you why. Once upon a time during my early years of college, I held a full-time job for a logistics company doing work in a warehouse. I worked at night and went to school during the day. I took every opportunity of overtime I could take and still managed to do well in school. Keep in mind that my tuition was not that much, but I saved every dollar so it would go towards schooling. You know how much misery $2,000 grand would have saved me? There are much worser places to work and I am not saying that Amazon is setting the bar, but they are improving quite a bit.
Also, your sources don't work.
Where are you getting your information from?
-- Very few tier 1 associates made it three years. Very, very few. On my last shift of about 50 associates, I can only think of about 5, and this was one of the older fulfillment centers.
-- Maybe it has changed, but there was no option to work part-time. Standard shifts are 10 hours. Mandatory OT can be frequent off-peak and is every week during peak. I had plenty of associates that took college classes during the day (I managed on nights). They did it, but were really dragging ass at night. They got maybe two or three hours of sleep a day. Many just couldn't make their productivity goals and would eventually quit before being fired.
This initiative is what I would call a good start, and better than nothing. But as some have mentioned, the ability to move to a part-time schedule would be nice. As would a higher reimbursement amount. But maybe that will come in the future.
Downtime is useful because you can get in and perform preventative maintenance and software deployments, and if there's a problem (like a machine breakdown) that delays picking by an hour or two, you can complete the day's work instead of having the problems spill over into the next day.
Why they don't offer an option to do three 7-hour shifts I don't know.
It does seem to me that these shifts are - however useful for Amazon - really harsh on the people on the floor.
"During summer heat waves, Amazon arranged to have paramedics parked in ambulances outside, ready to treat any workers who dehydrated or suffered other forms of heat stress. Those who couldn't quickly cool off and return to work were sent home or taken out in stretchers and wheelchairs and transported to area hospitals. And new applicants were ready to begin work at any time."
What's vocational tuition like in the States? Is $2,000/year for 4 years actually going to cover most, or any of it?
So if a credit hour is an hour of class per week. Our classes all had 3 hours per week, so 4 classes is 12 credit hours and 5 classes is 15 credit hours. That fits the bill.
I think I understand now. I just hadn't been thinking of it in terms of "credit hours".
Edit: The person above me said they went to a Community College in the midwest, but I have no idea how it cost them so much. I was attending in Fresno, California, and a full semester wouldn't even get close to 1k.
I guess this program would work for anyone who wanted to pursue a vocational program as a part-time student while slaving away in an Amazon warehouse. :O
Maybe if this actually works well people will be joining Amazon's workforce to pay for school instead of the military. Ha!
A lot of people who work warehouse-type jobs don't have any additional money available for school. This program is an incentive to attract people who are likely to stick around at Amazon while their education is paid for. It self-selects for people willing to work harder to get ahead and my anecdotal evidence is that tuition reimbursement increases company loyalty.
$2k/year may not seem like much, but when your only other option is to work yet another job to pay for the education, or not get the education at all, then it's a huge benefit.
I have always recommended that people take advantage of tuition reimbursement: the benefit is there, why not use it? There is typically no downside, other than you have less free time. The upsides are obvious.
http://www.kckcc.edu/academics/classSchedules/spring/tuition...
Institution Comm. Coll[1] % of $2000 University[2] % of $2000
Resident $4,000 50% $10,347 19.3%
Non-Resident $9,235 21.7% $27,831 7.2%
Not to say that this is an people will be lining up to get a job at an Amazon warehouse for, but it is something that can help some employees get a little ahead.
Not that it matters for home state advantage - their warehouse workers are spread across the country, not in the most north-western point of the continental US.
Then again, the money may be targeted towards warehouse managers, who Amazon could see as potential higher-ups in the main organization if they had formal training.
[1] http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/mac-mcclelland-f...
I went to Maricopa community colleges and I had better instruction there than I had at the big schools. The best teachers I had were at community college.
So while some argue its not much, its almost enough to cover your tuition for a year at a community college.
If someone has the drive, they'll go do it and take advantage of the program.
The teaching quality at COA was astoundingly much higher at COA than at UNC.
At UNC most of my classes, even at the higher level, were taught by graduate students who had clearly received little to no instruction on how to effectively teach. They were there to learn and research, not to teach.
At COA my classes were taught by professors with a graduate degree in the field (usually a PhD) who were dedicated to the art of teaching. They were there to teach, not to research.
Of course higher education should be dedicated to research and expanding our knowledge, but that doesn't mean that they are good at sharing the basics.
Since I transferred in I never actually took one of the 100+ person courses.
You can't expect Amazon or Walmart to adhere to the laws of a country a facility's not located in. If you think the laws aren't strict enough, then change the laws.
Apple are doing this with sourcing.
The big mining firms, like BHP Billiton, often apply much higher environmental and safety standards than the local laws. I saw this in a plant in Mozambique, several in South Africa and Australia and one in Colombia. Australia had the toughest laws, but even there the imposed corporate standards were higher than the minimum. It's the right thing to do, but it's also just good business to treat your staff and environment well.
The subject limitation I can understand, it's not unreasonable for the employer to lock out degrees that they feel might not directly benefit the company.
But the two year degree restriction, which locks out all serious degrees and universities, has no justification other than being incredibly cheap on reimbursements. It would be better to have nothing at all since community college tuition isn't that expensive to begin with. If I was there I'd interpret this limitation as more of an insult than anything, and I have no doubt that many there will see it the same way once they look into the details.
This is like saying, it's not you, here's a chance, take your time, we'll help you and then move on when you are ready. I wish every company did that... It is way better than laying you off and even more superior to keeping you in a job you resent and do just because you need to pay the bills...
That is /really interesting/ I mean, why? from an employer's perspective, it seems like you'd keep your low-skilled employees longer if you helped them pursue their dream of, you know, something unemployable. (I mean, assuming they are going to learn something that doesn't help amazon, amazon keeps people longer if they learn something that isn't in demand.)
I like to think "do things right, or don't do them". In that case, I'd prefer if Amazon would go all the way and give maybe, 5..8k$, or give nothing at all.
2k$ a year, that's really not much. I like the initiative, I was reading it and thinking "Hum, this is interesting and nice" until I got to the "huh what?" of the 2k$ line.
Average salary for a "Amazon.com Warehouse Associate Salary": $24,756
With 10 hour days (as mentioned in the comments) that works out to be... disgusting.
Because, you know, Amazon is the only player in its industry. Oh wait ...