A few years ago there was a lot of noise about stack ranking at Microsoft, and there was also a lot about people crying at their desks at Amazon several years ago - perhaps you're remembering one of those. I believe the specific "hire to fire" press is pretty recent.
I think it was perhaps circulating in the professional networks and rumor mills before. I remember hearing about it a few years ago.
I remember hearing about "hire to fire" at Amazon as far back as 2014, though the claim was that it happened "merely" enough to have a cute name, not that it was endemic.