October 19, 2022

According to leaked documents obtained by Engadget, Amazon appears to be having serious trouble retaining its workforce, with only a third of new employees staying longer than 90 days before leaving the company last year. The New York Times also reported that about 3% of the company’s hourly employees leave each week.

According to the report, which is based on internal Amazon research papers, slide decks, and spreadsheets, employees are more likely to leave on their own as they are ultimately laid off or fired eventually. It also claims that the problem is widespread throughout the organization.

The company generated annual attrition costs of nearly $8 billion, with the lowest attrition rate for one of Amazon’s ten tiers of employees being nearly 70% and the highest at 81.3%.

Managers are said to leave because the disorganized training program required for promotion makes it difficult for them to advance their careers at Amazon. Warehouse workers face an unfavorable compensation structure and an unfair automation process that monitors their performance and fires them if they fail to meet strict standards.

While Amazon appears to have a problem with people leaving, according to leaked internal memos obtained by Recode, the company has also been reprimanded for its approach to layoffs, due to the company firing the bottom 6% of employees without notifying the affected employees, so they could buckle up.

The sources for this piece include an article in TheVerge.