6 ms·

Amazon Career Choice Program

89 points by ryanwjackson 14y ago

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GuiA 14y ago
From what I've heard, read and experienced, I'd argue that Amazon (or at least its Seattle HQ) is likely the company that offers the best benefits. And real benefits that affect the employees' lives, not things like beanbags in every office and foosball table. One of my best friends recently got hired by Amazon. I won't disclose his full benefits+relocation package because that's private to him, but it included many little things that just make it feel like Amazon deeply cares about its employees: for example, they paid a special recruiter to help his fiance find a job in Seattle, bought a plane ticket for his cat's relocation (the devil is in the details), and so on.
- ntkachov 14y ago
  I'm interning at Amazon at the moment, and I can say that as far as office perks go, they don't have many. But when it comes to the connivence of living, they do far more than I would have ever expected. For example, I got corporate housed pretty far away from work (hour by bus), Amazon not only payed for a shuttle every morning to work and every night from work, they also reduced my housing costs and offered a rental car for the summer. And this wasn't just to me, every intern that didn't get housed right next to campus got some sort of benefit to make getting to work easier. They take almost the opposite approach to some places. They assume you'll take care of yourself at work, and then they take care of you outside of work.
  - mleonhard 14y ago
    I think that's because they want to maintain the culture of frugality on-campus. Wastefulness on the job is pernicious because it adds up and cannot be tracked the way employee benefits can. Another point is that internship programs are for recruiting. I expect that Amazon's internship program and all its perks cost less per hire than their regular recruiting process.
- cperciva 14y ago
  I think it's safe to say that Amazon is like most companies: The more they want you, the more they'll pay to get you. I've heard of exceptional relocation packages (all the way up to "having trouble selling your house? no problem, we'll buy it from you for its assessed market value") being provided by many different organizations to a select few recruits. Obviously Amazon is enthusiastic about your friend!
  - philwelch 14y ago
    I think it's because relocation is a discretionary case by case expense. The standard stuff, like health insurance, is on the "frugal" side, or so I've heard. But that's because you set that up all at once for the whole company. You can't offer a better health insurance plan to an A player the way you can offer a more generous relocation package. Which I will add is little consolation to anyone who already lives in Seattle.
    - cperciva 14y ago
      Yes, relocation is definitely an easier place for a company to provide special treatment to a prospective hire than "boilerplate benefits" like medical. I've heard of exactly one case where someone managed to get special treatment in the area of health insurance -- a diabetic who found that the corporate health plan wouldn't cover an insulin pump until he had been on it for X years, and was told "ok, we'll throw in a free insulin pump as a signing bonus".
- danshapiro 14y ago
  Having had firsthand experience with Google and Microsoft, and secondhand reports about Amazon from many friends who've worked there, I think Amazon is the lowest of the three for benefits - although all three are spectacular when compared with average companies. Both Microsoft and Google have similar white-glove treatment for relocation. For example, when I was recruited to MS out of college, I got a gift bag of scuba gear and a call from a local dive shop because I asked the recruiter about diving in the area. Microsoft paid for movers to pack me and ship everything, while my dorm-mates looked on with envy. Google, in turn, makes Microsoft look stingy. Everything you've heard is true and then some. Random example: most BigCos have top-notch coverage if you have international problems while traveling on business, provided by an expert 3rd party. Google extends this to international travel you may take for pleasure. Amazon is very good by the standards of all companies, but not particularly notable when held up to its closest competition.
  - BadassFractal 14y ago
    On that note, I think Amazon's tuition reimbursement is also more meager than that of Microsoft's, if not absent altogether. MS is happy to cover something close to 10k a year for your graduate degree.
    - _delirium 14y ago
      That's comparing very differently compensated employees, though. This Amazon program is for hourly employees, such as warehouse staff. My guess is that Microsoft's willingness to pay $10k/yr for graduate tuition only extends to their salaried white-collar employees, unless they treat their hourly staff a lot better than I'd realized.
      - eli_gottlieb 14y ago
        Amazon doesn't give tuition assistance for white-collar salaried engineers at all. Source: my Amazon offer from Fall 2010.
- deleted 14y ago
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- potatolicious 14y ago
  Disagree heavily - I worked for Amazon between 2009 and 2011. The benefits are easily the worst in the area, particularly when you compare it against MS's famously generous benefits. And we're not talking about beanbags and foosball tables, we're talking real benefits like, say, health insurance. I'm working for a 20-person startup now with better medical insurance than what I had at Amazon. Amazon really scrapes the bottom of the barrel when it comes to employee health (though I suppose stacking them up against even worse horrors like Wal-Mart would make them seem positively saintly). Compared to Google, Microsoft, etc, Amazon's benefits are horrid, even when completely disregarding the "pointless" perks like foosball and cereal bars. Side note: Did you know Twitter is catered by Bon Appetit, the same company that runs Amazon's (very expensive) on-site cafeteria? They serve the same level of food, for free, every single day. If you ask people, it's a benefit that actually really matters - it saves people oodles of money, is better quality than what most people can pull off by themselves at home, and people seem to genuinely put it up there as a major reason to stick around.
- eli_gottlieb 14y ago
  Having had an Amazon offer and being able to compare it to others, NO! * Amazon's health insurance offering is vastly inferior to that of, say, Microsoft or Google. I don't know what Google's health plan looks like, but I know that Microsoft's was "pretend your Canadian". Everything sensible and necessary is fully covered, with copays never being anything more than nominal. Everything: medical, dental, optical, disability, family, all of it. * Amazon requires longer hours and offers less vacation and holiday time than both Microsoft and Google. As a nice touch from my MS offer at the time, they offer 3 "floating holidays". These expire every year instead of accruing like vacation days, but they are usable more-or-less whenever for the purpose of accounting for cultural/religious occasions (Eid, Rosh ha'Shanah, Tanabata, Easter, Denali, whatever). * Amazon and MS both have cafeterias, but make you pay. MS has free drinks, though, and Google has free... everything. * Amazon offers higher salaries and attracts money-grubbers. MS offers lower salaries but better benefits. Google is more selective about hiring but offers higher salaries and better benefits. * Amazon requires almost every engineer to spend at least a month per year doing 24/7 on-call support. No other company I've ever seen practices this. Overall, Amazon appears to have caught itself in fantasies of being Galt's Gulch, while Google and even MS (not to even talk about Valve!) offer a lot more stability and benefits. It gives the impression that Amazon is perfectly happy with its high worker turnover, whereas the other two intend to hire for the long term.
kunle 14y ago
From the FAQ Link: http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=amb_link_1?ie=UTF8&nodeId=200979350&view-type=stand-alone&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=gateway-center-column&pf_rd_r=0ECBRRR9EJJ6YSYYRP85&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=1385640982&pf_rd_i=507846 http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=amb_... > What are the maximum benefits under the program? Amazon will pay up to 95% of the tuition, textbook and associated fees up to a maximum of $2,000 per year for four years. Better than nothing, though I wonder how expensive the courses are for those fields?
- deleted 14y ago
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- tikhonj 14y ago
  Well, if you're going to a California community college (I think that's the sort of courses this program is aimed at), you would pay $36/unit. A full time student would take 12 units for a total cost of $432.[1] Things like textbooks are extra but obviously vary a ton depending on the courses you choose and how clever you are buying them. [1]: http://www.cccapply.org/faq/costs.asp http://www.cccapply.org/faq/costs.asp Assuming you're not actually going to be doing a full 12 units--a reasonable assumption here, I think--the $2000 limit should suffice. I don't know about more specific vocational schools or anything like that.
fomojola 14y ago
Can't hate them for the gesture, but it is just that: a gesture. It all sounds nice, but reading the actual fine print at http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=amb_link_1?ie=UTF8&nodeId=200979350&view-type=stand-alone&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=gateway-center-column&pf_rd_r=1M0PABF9DFXF83S75C62&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=1385640982&pf_rd_i=507846 http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=amb_..., they'll give you up to $2000 a year. Not exactly covering much, particularly given current educational costs.
- cperciva 14y ago
  I know the US has astronomical tuition fees for "academic" college/university programs, but this explicitly doesn't apply to those -- it's for vocational training. What are tuition fees like at the sort of community colleges which offer part-time vocational programs?
  - VLM 14y ago
    "What are tuition fees like at the sort of community colleges which offer part-time vocational programs" The school I attended didn't really have the concept of "full vs part time" it was solely credit hours with one minor little exception of $7.50 for liability insurance per semester no matter how many or few credits. Fifteen years ago when I got my near worthless associates it was approx $1000 for 16 credits per semester. Next fall its exactly $1870.40 for the same 16 credits, however there is a MINIMUM material fee and MINIMUM activity fee adding up to at least $176 per class, even if the class involves no materials or activities. Also there is a mandatory liability insurance fee for all students tacked on at the end of the bill (Student has coverage if during carpentry class he drives a nail thru his classmates hand, that type of thing). If you take classes online its an extra $160, apparently its extremely expensive to heat and cool a virtual classroom... or some BS like that. It would be very difficult to escape below $2100 per semester at full time, so lets call it $1050 in the fall of 2012 for half/part time per semester (at 3 semesters per year) The killer problem is I've never found a corporate employer who cares about AS degrees... considered no different than graduating high school. Perhaps Amazon is the first employer I've ever heard of who cares about a AS degree. My entire career has been about knowing people and no one cared about my AS degree. Now that I've been out in the world for awhile, no one cares about the BS degree I later received, either. The "electronics telecommunications" AS degree requirements were basically the standard EE curricula minus about 64 credits of liberal arts and electives (the suggested curricula had only one possible elective... Instead of photography or whatever I chose microcontroller programming, crazy me). They had a variety of options where you could transfer into the local public or private engineering school after your AS to get your BSEE degree, basically 64 credits of history/fine arts/writing/foreign language/etc plus a little extra math and science (diffeqs, second semester physics, those are the only two "technical" classes I can remember as requirements).
danshapiro 14y ago
I'm pleased to hear that Amazon is doing this. It seems like a change of pace from their past treatment of temps (http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2011/12/seasonal-workers-amazons-grueling-working-conditions-are-only-temporary/46426/ http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2011/12/seasonal-w...) and absence of philanthropic activity (http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2017883663_amazonmain25.html http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/201...).
- potatolicious 14y ago
  The cult internally at Amazon, in response to constant attacks regarding the lack of corporate philanthropy, is actually a hostile attitude towards corporate philanthropy. Internally, amongst the die-hard adherents, corporate philanthropy is seen as tyranny - pushing private agendas and priorities on the entire employee base who "pay into" such donations. The refrain that philanthropy runs counter to the obligation to maximize shareholder value, is also used often. It's kind of a weird attitude, but while I was at Amazon I got swept in it too. In hindsight it's all very Stockholm-y.
  - eli_gottlieb 14y ago
    Sounds like Jeff Bezos confuses himself with John Galt.
uuilly 14y ago
I worked at Boeing for 4 years and they paid for pretty much any education you wanted and as much of it as you wanted. It's not that abnormal for big companies to do this.
- supercanuck 14y ago
  Yep this is pretty why UW Bothell exists today.
mathattack 14y ago
It's better than nothing, but look at the target... $1 and hour of educational benefit ($2000/year divided by 2000 hours/day) is great for someone making $8 an hour. That's a 12.5% raise off the cuff. Apply it to someone making 100K, and it's a lot less. Some big companies do full tuition reimbursement, but the # is shrinking over time.
- jmduke 14y ago
  I don't expect any Amazon employees who are making 100K to need a subsidized associates degree, though.
  - eli_gottlieb 14y ago
    Many of Amazon's competitors in the employment market, however, offer tuition reimbursement for MSc or PhD degrees.
- lurker14 14y ago
  Did you read the page? It's a program for hourly workers in the warehouses, not for salaried employees who already have an education and a desirable career.
lizthegrey 14y ago
I'm cynical about this for the following reasons: * Amazon's line workers who do picking/packing are not Amazon employees, but instead are temp contractors. * Even if they were employees of Amazon, they frequently are laid off or fired for failure to meet unrealistic performance standards within a year or so, meaning they'll never reach the 3 years required. I don't think this actually will impact very many people. It's a nice gesture, but I'm curious to see how many employees actually currently qualify for this program. http://www.mcall.com/news/local/mc-allentown-amazon-complaints-20110917,0,7937001,full.story http://www.mcall.com/news/local/mc-allentown-amazon-complain... "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."
nirvana 14y ago
Having worked for Microsoft and Amazon, there is a reason that so many engineers go to work for Microsoft, or Google, after working at Amazon for awhile. It isn't just that they offer better benefits than Amazon. I do not think this program will compensate for everything else when it comes to associates. Associates are not respected by management. Frankly, this is because Amazon does not respect employees. Full Stop. (or suppliers, or anyone really. They only treat customers well because it is profitable. It is kinda funny that Zappos got bought by them, since Tony's ideology is the polar opposites of Bezos, but maybe Tony is just propagandizing the way Bezos makes himself out to be a visionary.) Amazon is like the cult of scientology: It sounds really great on the way in, but well before you get to the verbal abuse, the death marches, denial of sleep and the beatings[1] you realize it was all a lie. They do roll out the red carpet treatment in the early days for people that a manager insists need it. But they operate on stack ranking, are completely political, anti-innovation, and really they are very much like a cult, with their own reality distortion field and magical sayings. "Its day one!" For contrast: Over the 25 years of my professional career, I have worked for a lot of startups. Many of them were poorly run, simply because the management was in well over their heads. There's a huge difference between management being well intentioned and over their heads and what I experienced at Amazon. Management at amazon is pathological, because Amazon is designed as a Lord of The Flies experiment, not a company. I've also worked for Microsoft and a number of other big companies. Big companies have Big company suckage syndrome, and Microsoft has management problems. But again it is sorta like management ends up being a bit incompetent in areas where they shouldn't, not evil. Microsoft was also a little bit of a cult but a pretty mild one. Both companies practice the "once you've turned your back on the cult you're unclean" police though. One important lie: "If you don't like where you are at amazon, you can move to another department." Despite getting an offer from the cutting edge part of AWS, my manager naturally blocked it because he was losing too many people (%60 of the team left by the time I left, because he was a total abusive asshole who knew nothing about computers, let a lone programming.) So, I resigned. (This was also after I'd tried to resolve the issue by going to HR, only to discover that HR told my manager everything I said, despite offering confidence, and thus he knew I wasn't going to lie to cover up his misdeeds.) Just FYI, my manager at Amazon was a drug dealer who dealt to other amazon employees in the parking garage next to PacWest. He's had a wonderful career there because his boss is also incompetent, and the incompetence goes all the way to the top, and he's really effective at blaming others for his problems (like, you know, being a drug addict and forgetting to tell his team to do stuff.) Incompetence is irritating. But that said, I had great experiences at a lot of companies, and at least perfectly fine ones at almost all the places I worked. I don't particularly like Microsoft, really, but I would never warn someone off working there. Amazon is the only place I've ever taken the time to warn people against. Some people work there and do fine because they end up working for a manager who knows what a loop is. There are even largish groups like that (namely AWS). But that doesn't change the fact that there are whole divisions run by asshole bozos as well. Amazon's crime is not in hiring an asshole bozo and putting him in charge of programmers. It is in letting him drive out %60 of his team and then promoting him. It is the culture that lets such a terrible person thrive. That culture is what makes Amazon a terrible place to work, because it is completely up to chance whether you will be treated decently or not. [1] I wasn't beaten. If I had been, I would have sued. Everything else is an accurate description of the experience.
codeonfire 14y ago
Anyone making warehouse worker wages will probably qualify for over $10k in Pell grants immediately to complete an AS just by enrolling now, not in three years. Many programs are fully funded with scholarships and grants. Even if the person doesn't qualify for Pell or scholarships, They could borrow the $2k and living expenses, complete the program, and repay the loan well before the five years it would take them to get a two year degree under this plan. Those same students can also take the $2500 American Opportunity Tax Credit and start the AS program right now.

89 points by ryanwjackson 14y ago

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GuiA 14y ago

From what I've heard, read and experienced, I'd argue that Amazon (or at least its Seattle HQ) is likely the company that offers the best benefits. And real benefits that affect the employees' lives, not things like beanbags in every office and foosball table. One of my best friends recently got hired by Amazon. I won't disclose his full benefits+relocation package because that's private to him, but it included many little things that just make it feel like Amazon deeply cares about its employees: for example, they paid a special recruiter to help his fiance find a job in Seattle, bought a plane ticket for his cat's relocation (the devil is in the details), and so on.

ntkachov 14y ago
I'm interning at Amazon at the moment, and I can say that as far as office perks go, they don't have many. But when it comes to the connivence of living, they do far more than I would have ever expected. For example, I got corporate housed pretty far away from work (hour by bus), Amazon not only payed for a shuttle every morning to work and every night from work, they also reduced my housing costs and offered a rental car for the summer. And this wasn't just to me, every intern that didn't get housed right next to campus got some sort of benefit to make getting to work easier. They take almost the opposite approach to some places. They assume you'll take care of yourself at work, and then they take care of you outside of work.
- mleonhard 14y ago
  I think that's because they want to maintain the culture of frugality on-campus. Wastefulness on the job is pernicious because it adds up and cannot be tracked the way employee benefits can. Another point is that internship programs are for recruiting. I expect that Amazon's internship program and all its perks cost less per hire than their regular recruiting process.
cperciva 14y ago
I think it's safe to say that Amazon is like most companies: The more they want you, the more they'll pay to get you. I've heard of exceptional relocation packages (all the way up to "having trouble selling your house? no problem, we'll buy it from you for its assessed market value") being provided by many different organizations to a select few recruits. Obviously Amazon is enthusiastic about your friend!
- philwelch 14y ago
  I think it's because relocation is a discretionary case by case expense. The standard stuff, like health insurance, is on the "frugal" side, or so I've heard. But that's because you set that up all at once for the whole company. You can't offer a better health insurance plan to an A player the way you can offer a more generous relocation package. Which I will add is little consolation to anyone who already lives in Seattle.
  - cperciva 14y ago
    Yes, relocation is definitely an easier place for a company to provide special treatment to a prospective hire than "boilerplate benefits" like medical. I've heard of exactly one case where someone managed to get special treatment in the area of health insurance -- a diabetic who found that the corporate health plan wouldn't cover an insulin pump until he had been on it for X years, and was told "ok, we'll throw in a free insulin pump as a signing bonus".
danshapiro 14y ago
Having had firsthand experience with Google and Microsoft, and secondhand reports about Amazon from many friends who've worked there, I think Amazon is the lowest of the three for benefits - although all three are spectacular when compared with average companies. Both Microsoft and Google have similar white-glove treatment for relocation. For example, when I was recruited to MS out of college, I got a gift bag of scuba gear and a call from a local dive shop because I asked the recruiter about diving in the area. Microsoft paid for movers to pack me and ship everything, while my dorm-mates looked on with envy. Google, in turn, makes Microsoft look stingy. Everything you've heard is true and then some. Random example: most BigCos have top-notch coverage if you have international problems while traveling on business, provided by an expert 3rd party. Google extends this to international travel you may take for pleasure. Amazon is very good by the standards of all companies, but not particularly notable when held up to its closest competition.
- BadassFractal 14y ago
  On that note, I think Amazon's tuition reimbursement is also more meager than that of Microsoft's, if not absent altogether. MS is happy to cover something close to 10k a year for your graduate degree.
  - _delirium 14y ago
    That's comparing very differently compensated employees, though. This Amazon program is for hourly employees, such as warehouse staff. My guess is that Microsoft's willingness to pay $10k/yr for graduate tuition only extends to their salaried white-collar employees, unless they treat their hourly staff a lot better than I'd realized.
    - eli_gottlieb 14y ago
      Amazon doesn't give tuition assistance for white-collar salaried engineers at all. Source: my Amazon offer from Fall 2010.
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potatolicious 14y ago
Disagree heavily - I worked for Amazon between 2009 and 2011. The benefits are easily the worst in the area, particularly when you compare it against MS's famously generous benefits. And we're not talking about beanbags and foosball tables, we're talking real benefits like, say, health insurance. I'm working for a 20-person startup now with better medical insurance than what I had at Amazon. Amazon really scrapes the bottom of the barrel when it comes to employee health (though I suppose stacking them up against even worse horrors like Wal-Mart would make them seem positively saintly). Compared to Google, Microsoft, etc, Amazon's benefits are horrid, even when completely disregarding the "pointless" perks like foosball and cereal bars. Side note: Did you know Twitter is catered by Bon Appetit, the same company that runs Amazon's (very expensive) on-site cafeteria? They serve the same level of food, for free, every single day. If you ask people, it's a benefit that actually really matters - it saves people oodles of money, is better quality than what most people can pull off by themselves at home, and people seem to genuinely put it up there as a major reason to stick around.
eli_gottlieb 14y ago
Having had an Amazon offer and being able to compare it to others, NO! * Amazon's health insurance offering is vastly inferior to that of, say, Microsoft or Google. I don't know what Google's health plan looks like, but I know that Microsoft's was "pretend your Canadian". Everything sensible and necessary is fully covered, with copays never being anything more than nominal. Everything: medical, dental, optical, disability, family, all of it. * Amazon requires longer hours and offers less vacation and holiday time than both Microsoft and Google. As a nice touch from my MS offer at the time, they offer 3 "floating holidays". These expire every year instead of accruing like vacation days, but they are usable more-or-less whenever for the purpose of accounting for cultural/religious occasions (Eid, Rosh ha'Shanah, Tanabata, Easter, Denali, whatever). * Amazon and MS both have cafeterias, but make you pay. MS has free drinks, though, and Google has free... everything. * Amazon offers higher salaries and attracts money-grubbers. MS offers lower salaries but better benefits. Google is more selective about hiring but offers higher salaries and better benefits. * Amazon requires almost every engineer to spend at least a month per year doing 24/7 on-call support. No other company I've ever seen practices this. Overall, Amazon appears to have caught itself in fantasies of being Galt's Gulch, while Google and even MS (not to even talk about Valve!) offer a lot more stability and benefits. It gives the impression that Amazon is perfectly happy with its high worker turnover, whereas the other two intend to hire for the long term.

kunle 14y ago

From the FAQ Link: http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=amb_link_1?ie=UTF8&nodeId=200979350&view-type=stand-alone&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=gateway-center-column&pf_rd_r=0ECBRRR9EJJ6YSYYRP85&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=1385640982&pf_rd_i=507846 http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=amb_... > What are the maximum benefits under the program? Amazon will pay up to 95% of the tuition, textbook and associated fees up to a maximum of $2,000 per year for four years. Better than nothing, though I wonder how expensive the courses are for those fields?

deleted 14y ago
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tikhonj 14y ago
Well, if you're going to a California community college (I think that's the sort of courses this program is aimed at), you would pay $36/unit. A full time student would take 12 units for a total cost of $432.[1] Things like textbooks are extra but obviously vary a ton depending on the courses you choose and how clever you are buying them. [1]: http://www.cccapply.org/faq/costs.asp http://www.cccapply.org/faq/costs.asp Assuming you're not actually going to be doing a full 12 units--a reasonable assumption here, I think--the $2000 limit should suffice. I don't know about more specific vocational schools or anything like that.

fomojola 14y ago

Can't hate them for the gesture, but it is just that: a gesture. It all sounds nice, but reading the actual fine print at http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=amb_link_1?ie=UTF8&nodeId=200979350&view-type=stand-alone&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=gateway-center-column&pf_rd_r=1M0PABF9DFXF83S75C62&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=1385640982&pf_rd_i=507846 http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=amb_..., they'll give you up to $2000 a year. Not exactly covering much, particularly given current educational costs.

cperciva 14y ago
I know the US has astronomical tuition fees for "academic" college/university programs, but this explicitly doesn't apply to those -- it's for vocational training. What are tuition fees like at the sort of community colleges which offer part-time vocational programs?
- VLM 14y ago
  "What are tuition fees like at the sort of community colleges which offer part-time vocational programs" The school I attended didn't really have the concept of "full vs part time" it was solely credit hours with one minor little exception of $7.50 for liability insurance per semester no matter how many or few credits. Fifteen years ago when I got my near worthless associates it was approx $1000 for 16 credits per semester. Next fall its exactly $1870.40 for the same 16 credits, however there is a MINIMUM material fee and MINIMUM activity fee adding up to at least $176 per class, even if the class involves no materials or activities. Also there is a mandatory liability insurance fee for all students tacked on at the end of the bill (Student has coverage if during carpentry class he drives a nail thru his classmates hand, that type of thing). If you take classes online its an extra $160, apparently its extremely expensive to heat and cool a virtual classroom... or some BS like that. It would be very difficult to escape below $2100 per semester at full time, so lets call it $1050 in the fall of 2012 for half/part time per semester (at 3 semesters per year) The killer problem is I've never found a corporate employer who cares about AS degrees... considered no different than graduating high school. Perhaps Amazon is the first employer I've ever heard of who cares about a AS degree. My entire career has been about knowing people and no one cared about my AS degree. Now that I've been out in the world for awhile, no one cares about the BS degree I later received, either. The "electronics telecommunications" AS degree requirements were basically the standard EE curricula minus about 64 credits of liberal arts and electives (the suggested curricula had only one possible elective... Instead of photography or whatever I chose microcontroller programming, crazy me). They had a variety of options where you could transfer into the local public or private engineering school after your AS to get your BSEE degree, basically 64 credits of history/fine arts/writing/foreign language/etc plus a little extra math and science (diffeqs, second semester physics, those are the only two "technical" classes I can remember as requirements).

danshapiro 14y ago

I'm pleased to hear that Amazon is doing this. It seems like a change of pace from their past treatment of temps (http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2011/12/seasonal-workers-amazons-grueling-working-conditions-are-only-temporary/46426/ http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2011/12/seasonal-w...) and absence of philanthropic activity (http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2017883663_amazonmain25.html http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/201...).

potatolicious 14y ago
The cult internally at Amazon, in response to constant attacks regarding the lack of corporate philanthropy, is actually a hostile attitude towards corporate philanthropy. Internally, amongst the die-hard adherents, corporate philanthropy is seen as tyranny - pushing private agendas and priorities on the entire employee base who "pay into" such donations. The refrain that philanthropy runs counter to the obligation to maximize shareholder value, is also used often. It's kind of a weird attitude, but while I was at Amazon I got swept in it too. In hindsight it's all very Stockholm-y.
- eli_gottlieb 14y ago
  Sounds like Jeff Bezos confuses himself with John Galt.

uuilly 14y ago

I worked at Boeing for 4 years and they paid for pretty much any education you wanted and as much of it as you wanted. It's not that abnormal for big companies to do this.

supercanuck 14y ago
Yep this is pretty why UW Bothell exists today.

mathattack 14y ago

It's better than nothing, but look at the target... $1 and hour of educational benefit ($2000/year divided by 2000 hours/day) is great for someone making $8 an hour. That's a 12.5% raise off the cuff. Apply it to someone making 100K, and it's a lot less. Some big companies do full tuition reimbursement, but the # is shrinking over time.

jmduke 14y ago
I don't expect any Amazon employees who are making 100K to need a subsidized associates degree, though.
- eli_gottlieb 14y ago
  Many of Amazon's competitors in the employment market, however, offer tuition reimbursement for MSc or PhD degrees.
lurker14 14y ago
Did you read the page? It's a program for hourly workers in the warehouses, not for salaried employees who already have an education and a desirable career.

lizthegrey 14y ago

I'm cynical about this for the following reasons: * Amazon's line workers who do picking/packing are not Amazon employees, but instead are temp contractors. * Even if they were employees of Amazon, they frequently are laid off or fired for failure to meet unrealistic performance standards within a year or so, meaning they'll never reach the 3 years required. I don't think this actually will impact very many people. It's a nice gesture, but I'm curious to see how many employees actually currently qualify for this program. http://www.mcall.com/news/local/mc-allentown-amazon-complaints-20110917,0,7937001,full.story http://www.mcall.com/news/local/mc-allentown-amazon-complain... "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."

nirvana 14y ago

Having worked for Microsoft and Amazon, there is a reason that so many engineers go to work for Microsoft, or Google, after working at Amazon for awhile. It isn't just that they offer better benefits than Amazon. I do not think this program will compensate for everything else when it comes to associates. Associates are not respected by management. Frankly, this is because Amazon does not respect employees. Full Stop. (or suppliers, or anyone really. They only treat customers well because it is profitable. It is kinda funny that Zappos got bought by them, since Tony's ideology is the polar opposites of Bezos, but maybe Tony is just propagandizing the way Bezos makes himself out to be a visionary.) Amazon is like the cult of scientology: It sounds really great on the way in, but well before you get to the verbal abuse, the death marches, denial of sleep and the beatings[1] you realize it was all a lie. They do roll out the red carpet treatment in the early days for people that a manager insists need it. But they operate on stack ranking, are completely political, anti-innovation, and really they are very much like a cult, with their own reality distortion field and magical sayings. "Its day one!" For contrast: Over the 25 years of my professional career, I have worked for a lot of startups. Many of them were poorly run, simply because the management was in well over their heads. There's a huge difference between management being well intentioned and over their heads and what I experienced at Amazon. Management at amazon is pathological, because Amazon is designed as a Lord of The Flies experiment, not a company. I've also worked for Microsoft and a number of other big companies. Big companies have Big company suckage syndrome, and Microsoft has management problems. But again it is sorta like management ends up being a bit incompetent in areas where they shouldn't, not evil. Microsoft was also a little bit of a cult but a pretty mild one. Both companies practice the "once you've turned your back on the cult you're unclean" police though. One important lie: "If you don't like where you are at amazon, you can move to another department." Despite getting an offer from the cutting edge part of AWS, my manager naturally blocked it because he was losing too many people (%60 of the team left by the time I left, because he was a total abusive asshole who knew nothing about computers, let a lone programming.) So, I resigned. (This was also after I'd tried to resolve the issue by going to HR, only to discover that HR told my manager everything I said, despite offering confidence, and thus he knew I wasn't going to lie to cover up his misdeeds.) Just FYI, my manager at Amazon was a drug dealer who dealt to other amazon employees in the parking garage next to PacWest. He's had a wonderful career there because his boss is also incompetent, and the incompetence goes all the way to the top, and he's really effective at blaming others for his problems (like, you know, being a drug addict and forgetting to tell his team to do stuff.) Incompetence is irritating. But that said, I had great experiences at a lot of companies, and at least perfectly fine ones at almost all the places I worked. I don't particularly like Microsoft, really, but I would never warn someone off working there. Amazon is the only place I've ever taken the time to warn people against. Some people work there and do fine because they end up working for a manager who knows what a loop is. There are even largish groups like that (namely AWS). But that doesn't change the fact that there are whole divisions run by asshole bozos as well. Amazon's crime is not in hiring an asshole bozo and putting him in charge of programmers. It is in letting him drive out %60 of his team and then promoting him. It is the culture that lets such a terrible person thrive. That culture is what makes Amazon a terrible place to work, because it is completely up to chance whether you will be treated decently or not. [1] I wasn't beaten. If I had been, I would have sued. Everything else is an accurate description of the experience.

codeonfire 14y ago

Anyone making warehouse worker wages will probably qualify for over $10k in Pell grants immediately to complete an AS just by enrolling now, not in three years. Many programs are fully funded with scholarships and grants. Even if the person doesn't qualify for Pell or scholarships, They could borrow the $2k and living expenses, complete the program, and repay the loan well before the five years it would take them to get a two year degree under this plan. Those same students can also take the $2500 American Opportunity Tax Credit and start the AS program right now.