[nirvana]

And by that mechanism, C players use the "only hire A players" rule to claim that A players are "not good enough", though such objections don't get raised about other C players.

There were some A programmers at Amazon, and they were respected, but they weren't the ones who made the hiring decisions. Since any B or C can veto any hire, A people often didn't get hired in favor of B or C people. (and A people who already worked there, eventually, got excluded from hiring loops because they're "needed elsewhere.")