> Hiring managers are DESPERATE For people. And they will beg barter and steal for hires, and try to convince bar raisers to lower the bar to get people in.

You just described something that comes very close to "hire to fire".

I've been in Amazon for long enough to see the hiring bar float up and down a lot, with big differences based on the team and the country.

Once you put together URA and the staggering attrition rate that exists in many high-pressure teams the managers are left with only two options:

A) Hire very skilled and productive engineers and then find ways to push them out of the company later on B) Let the bar slip sometimes and keep the good engineers for a bit longer

By all means, "A" happens far more frequently than "B" and, in many ways, it's even worse.