Excerpt from the linked content^1 by Eugene Kim:

>Amazon had little oversight over its job opening process until last year, allowing managers to recruit far more, and ultimately hire more employees, than they were approved to bring on, Insider has learned.

>For example, the utility computing team at Amazon Web Service had 24,988 hiring job posts opened in 2022, when only 7,798 positions were approved for, according to an internal document obtained by Insider.

>That means the utility computing team had over 3-times more job postings than the headcount target at the time.

>The document points to Amazon's lack of standardization and governance for the gap between the job postings and open headcount.

> 

>The result was "a process prone to inconsistency, error, and potential mis-use," including "over-hiring," the document said.

>"This enabled over-hiring in certain cost centers and contributed to span of control and level ratio defects," the internal document said.

>Levels is tech-industry speak for an employee's seniority level, which determines their pay. In theory, if multiple job postings for the same job called for different seniority, a unit could wind up with more over-qualified, or under-qualified, people in the unit than planning budgets assumed.

>"Span of control" is industry jargon for the number of direct reports under each manager, according to Gartner.

^1 Eugene Kim for Insider/Axel Springer, 21 Mar. 2023, https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-flawed-job-listing-process-over-hiring-layoffs-2023-3