The term “frupidity” has spread throughout the Amazon offices.
Former Amazon executive Ethan Evans defined the term as a combination of “frugality” and “stupidity” in a blog post last month.
“Frugality” is one of Amazon’s 16 leadership principles, which are a set of values that guide the company’s business decisions. However, as Insider’s Eugene Kim reported on Wednesday, some employees are concerned that Amazon is enforcing the principles too strictly — and that the company is shifting away from its “Day 1” startup culture and toward a “Day 2” mindset.
An Amazon source told Insider that last year, an employee was forced to drive hours from Los Angeles to Amazon’s San Francisco office for a company outing rather than fly, all in the name of “frugality.”
“[Frupidity] occurs when the Frugality principle is applied without regard for value and is implemented in practise as ‘do not spend money.'” Evans, a former Amazon executive, discussed it in a blog post. “It’s easy (if lazy) to appear frugal by declining most or all expenses.”
Having an employee drive from Los Angeles to San Francisco for a company event, according to an Amazon spokesperson, is “not consistent” with the company’s Leadership Principles or travel and expense policy.
In his blog post, Evans discussed an alleged incident in which a boss of his team purchased team coffee mugs with his own money.
“Whether or not he was Frupid, the culture coerced him into an unnatural act,” Evans wrote. “A successful team, for crying out loud, desired coffee mugs. This is a minor, almost insignificant expense. If it had only helped to retain or motivate one employee, it would have been 1,000 times over.”
As Kim points out in his full report, transitioning Amazon to a “Day 2” culture could be a major challenge for CEO Andy Jassy. “Day 2” means “stasis, followed by irrelevance, followed by excruciating, painful decline, followed by death,” according to Jeff Bezos, former CEO and current executive chairman.
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