Zappos offers new employees $3000 to quit after a week

Turning down $3000 requires people to internalize a solid commitment to the company. And engenders a huge sense of camaraderie when you know that everybody else you work with has also turned down the money.<p>And they get these two massive effects by <i>NOT</i> giving away money. It's worth the $3000 to get rid of employees who aren't that committed, but that's minor compared to the effects on the employees who stay.

FYI, this article is back from September 2008. I'm not sure whether or not this practice is still in place now that they've grown exponentially.

Is that $3,000 after taxes or before?<p>It's not really that much (either way) unless you really needed the instant money on the spot. $3000 might only be 2-3 weeks of pay or less.<p>Offer $10,000 and see how well it works out.

That's about what banks offer people in foreclosure to quietly leave the house and not destroy anything. Same thinking.

I'd be really interested to see how well this would scale. There's two problems, as I see it:<p>1) Larger company with more employees means more applicants, and likely a lower overall quality of applicant. Responsibly maintaining this system would require more HR to conduct more in-depth interviews, etc. I can see them reaching a point where this is no longer profitable for them.<p>2) Corporate environment changes as companies grow. An expansion of the bureaucracy, though necessary to manage a larger workforce, legal team, client relations, etc, tends to kill the entrepreneurial atmosphere that attracts quality applicants in the first place. The kinds of people who want to join a startup and are willing to turn down a chunk of cash just for the opportunity to work there are likely not the kind of people who are itching to join a large Amazon subsidiary.<p>I could be grossly mistaken on this last point, and would be quite interested to hear how things have worked out for Zappos in this regard.

$3k or even $10k (as another commenter suggested) to bail out on a company that you just started at, is a way of making the people who really don't like the company not feel bad about leaving. Even at great companies, there are people who join who hate the environment, culture, or whatever. They are miserable. But they stay because they need a job. The walking money of $3k is a matter of getting rid of them, which is a great investment for the company.<p>For people who like a company, or who really want the job, a quick $3k isn't worthwhile. And in the case of Zappos, I'm sure that they've generally had people stay longer, lower attrition rate, etc., primarily because they've gotten rid of the people who would generally be a drag on the company, because they've already bought them out.

Perhaps this is a late comment but as a new Zappos hire I can attest that Zappos still makes this offer (and now it's $3,000 and is valid for 3 weeks after training). The reason is two fold.<p>First, Zappos wants to retain employees that <i>want</i> to be here. The culture is unlike anyplace you'll ever work. For some people it's attractive from the outside but overwhelming once you get in the door. Zappos wants to provide an enticement to help you make the decision to leave in case you want to.<p>More importantly, Zappos realizes that for a lot of people, staying in a job is a matter of finances. I may be miserable but I can't afford to miss a paycheck or two. For a lot of people, $3,000 can provide a few weeks or more of stability to help them find a new job. It makes fiscal sense.

Likely any benefit is a cognitive dissonance type effect. The article says that only 2-3% take the offer (so not much of a filtering effect) and that while you would think people would come in and abuse the offer HR doesn't seem to have a lot of special pre-screening. So likely the idea is to get the new employee to value the position as the internalize the lost value of the money they just turned down to continue the position. Not so much filtering people as attempting to nudge them a bit.

I wonder if this is one of those things that's more effective when no one knows about it in advance. Otherwise it works like marketing to new hires which - at least it seems - might somewhat defeat the purpose.

I think there's a typo in the title. The article says it's $2000, not $3000.

I wonder if 97% will still stay when the economy gets better and there's a reasonable certainty of finding another job in short order.

when did they start doing this? Was it in the initial days too?

Mind games like this has a name when a SO tries something similar.