Bias note: I've been an Amazon SDE for the last few years, though no where near the devices division (I make warehouses and delivery systems work better, weee).

Bias note: I've been an Amazon SDE for the last few years, though no where near the devices division (I make warehouses and delivery systems work better, weee). Additional note: in no way do I speak for the company, I'm just a guy who writes code and likes working here. Generally speaking, this isn't how Amazon operates. Firing someone for making a bad call is silly. Mistakes were clearly made but firing people in situations like this is like cutting off your hand because you burned your finger. The person who made the call probably has made hundreds of good calls over the years, and will continue to make good calls in the future, given the chance. Sure, if this is a pattern of stupid mistakes then clearly this person is in the wrong role, but that's not nearly as likely to be the case. Instead, I suspect a process will be put in place to help make these decisions better in the future- and process written in large part by the person who made the mistake. This way, not only will they not make a mistake like this again, but no one else will either. Maybe I'm wrong, but from what I've seen of the Amazon culture that's how we generally react to mistakes.