Approvals Skunkworks

(I already asked this in Admin Trailblazers, and have yet to receive an answer https://trailhead.salesforce.com/trailblazer-community/feed/0D54S00000Em4ZvSAJ)

How can an Approval Process route requests to the previous approver's Manager, potentially one or more steps, until it reaches a Manager who is authorized to approve the dollar amount on the record that was submitted for approval? It is not practical to hardcode every managers' $ approval authority into the steps, as there are hundreds of Managers, and the path can start in any department.

I tried to use a custom field on Users to store their dollar approval level, and then created steps with criteria like (Payment Cycle: Payment AmountGREATER THAN25000) AND (Current User: Approval LevelLESS OR EQUAL25000)

but when I test it, the record turns approved before reaching a Manager with an Approval Level that is higher than the Payment Amount.

This is a very common way approvals are routed by accounting systems for purchase orders and invoices, but I cannot find any examples out there for how to do it with a Salesforce Approval Process.  (BTW - I'm using Sales Cloud, and do not have CPQ or Advanced Approvals)