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You see the sacrificial lamb thing with contractors/consultants because they won’t sue for being put in a bad situation and fired afterwards but not sure if it’s too common with Full time engineers. Amazon is just a toxic workplace and I recommend all my fellow engineers avoid that place like the plague. I’ve heard too many horror stories like OPs.

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Early on in my career, about year three or so like this guy, I got hired into a similar situation - gig wasn't what the company said. The key was to stay calm and set boundaries at every step. If you let it get emotional, it creates an excuse for management to turn you into the scapegoat. If you instead act like the consummate team player, over communicate, etc, it become hard for anyone to actually fault you. It might be miserable for a while, but the key becomes to start building allies so that you can escape the situation as soon as possible either to a new team or a new gig. Or hope that the team goes through a shakeup soon enough and because you did your thing you are a survivor.

> stay calm and set boundaries at every step

absolutely. and document all conversations. Staying calm is an acquired skill that I've tried to mentor in to my hires, and it is even more important to maintain if you are being set up to fail instead of supported to succeed.

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