Amazon offering $5000 to any of its staff who quit their job

If your boss walked up to you today and offered you $5000 to quit your job and never look back, would you take the offer, or would you realize that $5000 is just a drop in the bucket over the long-term? Many Amazon employees are experiencing that exact scenario right now. Amazon says that it is offering its warehouse workers $2000 to quit their jobs, and increases the price by $1000 every year to those who refuse until the amount reaches $5000.

Amazon says that it makes this offer to employees as an effort to see who really wants to work for Amazon, and to weed out those who are just there for the job. The idea is not new though, and was pioneered by Zappos who made similar offers to its employees. In his earnings call to investors Amazon's CEO, Jeff Bezos, elaborated on the idea behind offering employees rewards for quitting their jobs.

"The second program is called Pay to Quit. It was invented by the clever people at Zappos, and the Amazon fulfillment centers have been iterating on it. Pay to Quit is pretty simple. Once a year, we offer to pay our associates to quit. The first year the offer is made, it's for $2,000. Then it goes up one thousand dollars a year until it reaches $5,000. The headline on the offer is "Please Don't Take This Offer," Bezos said "We hope they don't take the offer; we want them to stay. Why do we make this offer? The goal is to encourage folks to take a moment and think about what they really want. In the long-run, an employee staying somewhere they don't want to be isn't healthy for the employee or the company."