[snorkel]

Non-Amazonian here but I can tell you this so-called OLR process is same as how most companies with more than 100 employees deal with the promotions process.

In most companies your line manager does not solely decide your performance rating and promote you based on that, but rather the manager should be telling you how your are performing, how to improve and grow, and once you have proven you can manage added responsibilities then your manager suggests and advocates for your promotion. The promotion candidates are then considered across all teams during an annual or semi-annual review process.

This practice ensures that a lenient manager isn't promoting their junior interns to VP roles, every team has the same performance standards, and managers of other teams can endorse or disapprove of someone being promoted based on whether they work well with other teams rather than just performing well within their own team.

[gadders]

And that someone who doesn't like you can black ball your promotion efforts anonymously.