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I had similar experience at Amazon. My Amazon badge didn’t work at SF Twitch office.

After experiencing that I started to periodically write at amazons elevator whiteboards “Twitch is NOT Amazon” as little petty rebellion.

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I'm pretty sure that's just how the badging system works. Amazon is orders of magnitude too big for 'everyone has access to everywhere' to make sense. When I traveled I sometimes had to talk to people (or send email) to make sure my badge was activated in a new location, even for offices in a different city but the same business unit. There were also restrictions based on whether you actually worked on a particular thing, even for non-acquisition parts of the company.

My badge was working at Amazon's SF location without anything of that. Only international travel required security contact.

Companies do this all the time. The Android team famously had their own isolated building for the longest time. Some of the newer acquisitions and bets are not accessible to Google employees. Most places have this sort of thing.

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