[vadym909]

A bar raiser is typically someone in the interview loop for a candidate that is not from the same team and therefore more objective about whether the candidate is truly 'better' than most people on the team (raises the bar). Although good in theory- its not actually practical to find every single new person better than the current employees but it helps keep things in perspective and is a deterrent to bringing in weak buddies.

Its true Amazon has some great engineers but is not a very engineering centric. I remember a senior engineer in Retail once comparing it to a plumbing system kept together with bandages.