FTE

In the context of Amazon and many other companies, FTE is used to quantify staffing resources, regardless of whether the work is performed by one person or shared among several part-time workers.

For example:

• 1 FTE = 1 person working full-time (typically 40 hours/week)
• 0.5 FTE = 1 part-time employee working 20 hours/week

Amazon uses FTE to plan:

• Workforce allocation
• Budgeting and HR reporting
• Vendor Service programs like AVS (which may be staffed based on FTEs)

It’s also a standard metric in capacity planning and performance benchmarking.

💡 Example: “We’ve allocated 2.5 FTEs to manage the vendor onboarding process this quarter.”

In short:
FTE measures staffing effort, with 1.0 FTE equaling the workload of one full-time worker.