Jeff Bezos Offered Amazon Employees USD 5,000 To Quit; Here’s Why

Jeff Bezos, the founder, executive chairman, and former president and CEO of Amazon, made headlines for showing the exit door to 18,000 employees. The company’s ‘pay to quit’ policy had wreaked havoc among employees. 

Did you know that the Jeff Bezos-led company offered up to USD 5,000 to employees for leaving their jobs? Yes, you read it right. Employees across various departments were given options to either choose their jobs or take USD 5,000 to quit the job. 

Why did Jeff Bezos offer Amazon employees USD 5,000 to quit?

Jeff Bezos wanted to check how many employees really wanted to stay at the company and how many employees wanted to leave the company for USD 5,000. 

Amazon’s co-founder Jeff Bezos had initiated a ‘pay to quit’ program in 2014, wherein he offered up to USD 5,000 to employees to leave their jobs. The amount was offered to employees across various departments with the intention of only keeping employees who were committed to stay at the company. 

In his letter to shareholders, Amazon CEO wrote, “Once a year, we offer to pay our associates to quit. The headline on the offer is ‘Please Don’t Take This Offer.’ We hope they don’t take the offer; we want them to stay.”

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Recently, Amazon also adopted new strategies to force employees to come to the office. Now, Amazon managers can fire employees if they won’t work from the office. Amazon employees need to work from the office three times a week. If employees do not comply with the requirement, they will be fired. 

Amazon creating headlines

Amazon has been creating headlines in recent days. Earlier this year, Amazon asked its employees to start working from offices. However, an Amazon worker quit job instead of working from the office. When he left the company, he had to let go of $203,000 worth of unvested stocks. He revealed that in his new company he earns around the same base salary as Amazon but the company can’t match Amazon’s stock options.