You contradict your own point above
> has higher-ups (L7 and up) involved in deciding who performed according to the manager's expectations.
These higher ups tend to have extremely well-tuned bullshit detectors and it would be extremely hard for a manager to sabotage an employee and get them categorized as underperforming.
It would reflect worse on the manager not the employee.
Orange/red badges are typically a big deal because it is very rare for people to last at Amazon past even 2-3 years, nevermind 5 years.
1. The company has grown rapidly, so many/most people seem fairly new. That doesn't mean that people that have been here a long time are leaving (although some obviously are). 2. The tool available to employees shows tenure of all employees, including fulfillment center workers, which are much less likely to be long-term.
Are some career ladder jumpers actually planning to leave anyway after 2-3 years so they can leverage compensation offers between FANG?
Speakig as someone who is an interviewer, your point means nothing. The interview process is tailored to get people in, but it's totally independent of the decisions to decimate teams.
Where managers step in is in the company's yearly performance review process, and those tend to be brutal. unlike the hiring process, that has higher-ups (L7 and up) involved in deciding who performed according to the manager's expectations.
> How? It's not their choice.
The choice of who gets in is irrelevant. It's the choice of who gets out that matters. The hiring process gets bodies on desks, and afterwards managers decimate them.
Getting the orange badge is a feat, and I've been to meetings where orange badges were quite blunt in stating new hires they were in the company when blue badges get in, and they will stay in the company when said blue badges get out. This is not new to anyone working in the company. What's the average tenure at Amazon? Less than two years?