First of all, you are talking out of your ass. You make many claims, but provide no sources.

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.

earl who replied to you seems to have been hell-banned. So I am copying his comment because I think it adds valuable data points.

--

   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.

Kindly educate yourself before writing [1]. Because despite your hypotheticals, it's well documented that amazon is doing precisely that: hiring tons of workers, firing them very quickly, and intimidating injured ones into signing papers saying it wasn't from the job. Amazon even stage ambulances outside their unconditioned warehouses in order to be prepared when employees get sick and have to be taken to hospital because of heat.

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.

This whole program is a bullshit ruse to deflect criticism. Because guess what: the first thing a student needs is a reliable schedule. Mandatory overtime kills taking classes, because your butt often needs to be in the seat at a fixed time, particularly for tests.

[1] http://www.mcall.com/news/local/mc-allentown-amazon-complain....

[2] http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/mac-mcclelland-f....

Why on earth was earl "hellbanned"? His post completely made sense and his account has 4334 karma. I'm emailing him now to tell him.

It happens to a lot of people.

That's disturbing since a hellbanning is a much more vile punishment than a simple ban. Why is it doled out so casually?

It's probably a case of an anti-spam algorithm gone wrong. At least, that's what I remember hearing about a previous incident.

No, it's almost always done directly by a human if your account itself is hellbanned.

The only case I'm aware of where pg has commented indicated that a person posted a link that was being spammed on HN in one of their comments and got banned accidentally.

The reason for the fast hiring is to get ready for peak times. They hire tons of temporary workers from local agencies, and when there is no more work, they are let go. That's what temporary agencies are for. The only difference between Amazon and others who use temp agencies, is that Amazon hires 10s of thousands of employees to work in response to seasonal work. I don't really see your point here.

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.

I left Amazon just over a year ago, but have just over two years as a manager across three of their large fulfillment centers. I can offer some perspective: -- Yes, the ratio of temp associates to "blue badge" Amazon associates can be 50/50 at best during off-peak (though trending worse as Amazon expands) and during peak season temps will be 80% of the workforce. And yes, temps get absolutely nothing from Amazon as far as benefits. This is in stark contrast to a company they own - Zappos.

-- 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.

"Standard shifts are 10 hours. Mandatory OT can be frequent off-peak and is every week during peak" That's pretty rough. What's the benefit to Amazon of doing 10-hour shifts instead of, say, 8?

10 hours shifts are actually 10.5 hours as there is a .5 hour lunch in the middle. So you have a night shift and a day shift that total 21 hours of work in the warehouse. This leaves three hours of down time for maintenance (both mechanical and software) that is very much needed to keep things rolling. In order to fill customer orders, they NEED the labor to be as constant as possible. The difference between 17 hours and 21 hours of filling orders would be quite drastic. During peak, especially the three weeks prior to Christmas, the shifts are actually 12 hours. This leads to massive amounts of frustration as night and day shifts step on each other trying to get the hell in/out. And parking, long lines at security, crowded break room, etc add to the frustrations. Maintenance has to fix things on the fly while we try to work and software pushes gone bad (they limit them as much as possible during this time) can just kill a facility.

I would have assumed Amazon operates three eight-hour shifts per day.

If you need four hours of downtime, either the three 8 hour shifts would have to overlap (meaning for the overlap periods you'd need twice as many workstations, i.e. a warehouse twice as big) or the third shift would have employees standing idle for 4 hours.

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.

Simple really - productivity. On every shift you lose time starting up and getting everyone to work. This happens twice a shift (start of shift, coming back after lunch). There is a gap in time from when everyone clocks in to when they actually start producing. This time is referred to as "stand-up" and is when the manager covers safety, quality, admin messages, announcements, etc and also performs stretches. Multiply the time spent doing this by the number of minutes your shift is producing absolutely zero and you start each shift in the hole. You also lose some towards the end of a shift (everyone stops just a bit early until you start dropping the hammer). Knowing this, the fewer the shifts, the less "lost" productivity.

Thank you for providing your thoughts here.

It does seem to me that these shifts are - however useful for Amazon - really harsh on the people on the floor.

While I wasn't getting reimbursement, I was working roughly 60 hours a week on the assembly floor at Dell while taking a full load of classes (12 credit hours). Before any financial aid or assistance, tuition and books at the community college I was going to was around 1800 a semester. After financial aid, it was around 800. This is a great program for those who cannot live on financial aid alone (need to work for whatever reasons) and have the drive to better themselves. I didn't get a degree, but not because I was working so much.

or maybe it was because you were working too much? You shouldn't sell yourself short or overlook the affects of overwork on a persons ability to deal with outside forces.

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.

When I had to stop taking courses was about a year after I had saved up enough money that savings + GI Bill + financial aid would cover tuition, books and living expenses. There was a paperwork screwup on my financial aid that meant I couldn't pay tuition which meant I couldn't get the GI Bill payments which meant I couldn't cover rent which meant I had to get a job. The end result being I never had a need to go back to school.

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.

Not to mention Dick's burgers: College, vocational/self-improvement scholarships up to $22,000 over 4 years to employees working 20 hours per week for at least six months and continuing to work at least 20 hours per week while attending school. http://www.ddir.com/employment

yeah i completely forgot about that. that's a really cool program and its for people who work in essentially the lowest income positions available in the state.

I suppose it's better than nothing, the full time thing is the kicker, I'd say a year and part time should suffice to weed out people that are just getting hired for college money. Plus, if they quit before the schooling is up they wouldn't keep getting tuition.

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.

Unfortunately, most companies don't seem to publish it, but you can find out through HR. I worked at a company (now Lonza), and they had 100% tuition reimbursement with no caps. I did my entire Master's degree at their expense (ECE), and I am familiar with one full-time warehouse employee who started moving boxes and ended up leaving after he had enough education to become an actuary! Of course, your reimbursement was contingent on maintaining at least a B in each course, which I think is completely fair.

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.

Well, Amazon is making news because we can naively assume by looking at a summary that they're doing it the same way they make money — by working in volume. We can estimate pretty quickly how many people work in Amazon's warehouses, at something in the neighborhood of "an awful lot of people". So it sounds good at a glance. Few people will even notice the details that whittle away the eligible base down to around 0.

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.

yes. almost every employer offers some degree of tuition reimbursement because, as far as I understand, they can get a tax deduction for the money they pay to their employees under such a program. most places will offer around $5000 a year, as the federal cap (the last time I looked) for reimbursement was $5250.

Is it actually common for hourly staff? I know it's common for tech employees, but I didn't realize it was also common for warehouse staff, janitors, etc. to get tuition reimbursement.

I have never seen a restriction on the class (exempt/non-exempt) of employee. The only restriction I remember seeing for tuition reimbursement at the companies I've worked at was that you must be full time and the coursework must somehow be related to what the company does. That last bit is typically only there to discourage "underwater basketweaving" courses.

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.

It's been available at companies such as UPS for a while: https://ups.managehr.com/Benefits.htm

I'm not sure if it's the norm.

I worked at a FedEx Kinkos part-time for a few months and was eligible. I think it kicked in after less than 6 months.

Relevant, and good read: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/mac-mcclelland-f...

don't they work 10-12 hour shifts? sometimes more? for 6 days a week?

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 ...

There are 1,721 2 year colleges in the US (as of 2011), pretty good chance there is one nearby wherever you are. Also, the whole purpose of putting warehouses around the country is to be closer to people. So they are turning up in suburban areas of large cities (e.g. Phoenix, Nashville, Dallas). These are places that will have access to schools.

almost all of these communities have community colleges or junior colleges nearby (less than an hour away)

Two hours of travel round trip to go to, what, an hour of class? And that's alongside however far one has to drive to work in a day. So maybe you can get away with doing that one day a week? Two? It's going to be a very slow, very miserable slog. Even an hour of travel total, which is probably near the average minimum, is a lot when your days are as packed as Amazon's full-time warehouse employees.

What data do you have that an hour each way is the average? I looked up a few Amazon warehouses. The Irving, TX facility is 6 miles from North Lake College. The Phoenix warehouse is 10 miles from Glendale CC, and the one in Lebanon TN is 20 miles from Volunteer State CC.

No, why would you think that? The warehouses have to be not only where people are, but close to shipping and mail hubs. That means near infrastructure, which means there are plenty of universities and colleges nearby.

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.

--Amazon has more than 15,000 full-time employees at 69 different warehouses (fulfillment centers) in the United States and of course the program is limited to full-time employees. What industry or job have you ever seen a employee working 20/hrs work week getting benefits?

Where are you getting your information from?

It has been a few years since I worked there, but I am pretty sure the threshold for qualifying for benefits at Starbucks was actually 20hrs/wk. Their basic theory was that training was one of the most expensive things they had to do, so giving people an incentive to stay for a while was a net benefit.