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- Amazon is known for an obsession with frugality.
- In one instance, an Amazon manager took away free cereals to save money, a former employee said.
- The episode is one of many stories recently shared among ex-Amazon staff, who now work at Google.
Amazon is known for its frugal culture. But some managers go too far — to the point of trying to save a few bucks on cereal.
In one instance, an Amazon manager took away a team's cereal privilege because it didn't abide by the company's leadership principles that include frugality, according to a former software developer who now works at Google.
"Eventually, we got told, 'Spending a couple hundred bucks on cereal isn't frugal. You are free to solicit donations to try and keep it running,'" this person said in an internal email thread seen by Insider.
The incident is one of several signs of Amazon frugality going overboard, according to former Amazon employees who now work at Google. The stories were shared through an internal Google email thread in recent weeks, as Insider previously reported.
Episodes like this have been so frequent that Amazon employees have come up with a specific phrase for it: Frupidity, a combination of the words frugal and stupidity. Ethan Evans, a former Amazon vice president who spent over 15 years at the company, recently wrote in a blog post that frupidity was the official name of one of the most frequently "degenerate" leadership principles at Amazon.
Some employees say these anecdotes are a hallmark of Amazon's slowing culture. They're worried it's a sign of the end of "Day 1," a mindset to preserve the speedy, entrepreneurial zeal of that founding moment, as Insider previously reported.
Do you work at Amazon or Google? Got a tip?
Contact reporter Eugene Kim via the encrypted-messaging apps Signal or Telegram (+1-650-942-3061) or email (ekim@insider.com).
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