> I reject the notion that Amazon's hiring practices are neither implicitly nor explicitly comparative.
You are absolutely right on that. The core question that needs to be answered at each interview debrief is "when the next review process roles around, do we believe this candidate will end up in the upper half of the stack rank for their role/level?" It's a little more complicated than that as Amazon's stack rank is a two-dimensional rank that looks both at contribution-in-level and perceived growth potential, but in the end it's still a judgment call of "is this candidate better than half the people currently in this role."
You are absolutely right on that. The core question that needs to be answered at each interview debrief is "when the next review process roles around, do we believe this candidate will end up in the upper half of the stack rank for their role/level?" It's a little more complicated than that as Amazon's stack rank is a two-dimensional rank that looks both at contribution-in-level and perceived growth potential, but in the end it's still a judgment call of "is this candidate better than half the people currently in this role."