I was never a manager so I don't know the official policies around dev lists and PIPs.

Generally, new hires are given a few months to ramp up and become contributing team members. People are usually placed on the dev list if they don't meet expectations, and placed on a PIP if their performance does not improve. I'm guessing it reflects poorly on managers if they devlist someone shortly after hiring them.

During my time at Amazon, I know only one person who was placed on a PIP and he was kind of a bad engineer. But I have heard stories of managers abusing the dev list to meet org-level dev list quotas.