It's not extra shitty, it's just as shitty as any other situation. It sucks for the person involved but the alternatives are not better.
At least someone that got their offer rescinded can sue for promissory estoppel.
Also, "extra shitty" seems obvious to me. You're not only not hired, you likely have to leave the country. The company rescinding the offer knows this.
The fact that you rescinded an offer doesn't mean that suddenly local people are suitable, it just means this position isn't needed anymore.
Amazon as a multi-national, multi-billion dollar company can absorb the expense of employing him. I’m the worst case, they can lay off an existing low performing employee to compensate.
Training new employees is not a worthwhile investment if you are in the situation where you're already firing thousands.
There are countless other ways they can compensate for the cost of hiring him. A couple quick examples are delaying promoting and giving a raise to some people, or removing another open position they were looking to hire.
The result of not just sucking it it up and doing the right thing here, which was to actually hire him as promised, is 1) a terrible public image affecting future ability to hire talent when people are weighing Amazon vs CompanyX, and 2) increased chance that future new hires will read about this kind of bs behavior and not think twice about accepting an Amazon job offer and then rescinding their promise to start employment, at the very last moment.
That is a very charitable opinion. The idea that because a company is large enough, or profitable enough, that it therefore should be compelled to hire indefinitely, or never shrink in size.
Let me ask, is it your opinion that economies only ever grow forward, that companies in the economy never shrink?
If they can't do simple things like not hiring people they don't need, maybe they should employ this guy as HR manager.
I moved countries within Amazon and it took 3 months, for an external applicant the bare minimum will be 4-6 months.