[nostrademons]

The levels don't work like that, as the blog post describes. They basically count for paygrade and job title, and that's it.

At Google you were basically expected to make all the decisions you had good information on, and you had access to a lot more information than people did at most companies. I launched the [blink tag] easter egg by socializing my ideas around a few peers who said "Cool idea, go for it", implementing it in my spare time, getting a code review, and then e-mailing PR, legal, and Amit saying "Hey, I'm planning to launch this easter egg in a couple weeks, any objections?" I had approval powers for putting stuff up on google.com myself, so in theory I could've launched it with just one other person's code review, but if you launch without approval and things blow up you (and your peers) will never ever be able to do cool stuff again, so it's a nice courtesy to keep the execs in the loop. (Although this rule has been bent before - [do a barrel roll] was launched without any execs' knowledge.)

[dsplatonov]

ok, agree, but thats doesn't covered in the article, which can lead to misunderstanding

[dekhn]

Those points were covered in Matt's previous two articles on the subject.

But Matt is writing primarily for Researchers who leave academia for industry. They are a special class of people who tend to be more.... experienced with pushing back against management to achieve their research goals. However, the same idea applies equally to motivated low-level engineers who want to get things done.