Pretty much all companies have levels. Even if it's not something as set in stone as Google's 1-11, or Microsoft's 59+, there's almost always some sort of differentiator, from something as small as "Senior" or "Junior" to denote experience.
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.)
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.
> Especially, when junior can't report or discuss ideas with the manager, who can make decisions
Why do you think having levels prevents junior people from discussing ideas with their managers? Everybody has the chance to discuss anything with their manager at the weekly one-on-one meetings which are being held with people of all levels. Also, like the post says, your level determines your compensation, but not the potential impact you may have on a project. Nobody's going to actively prevent you from working on something because you're "not senior enough".
Sure, but that still doesn't explain it. Under the hierarchy, Junior would still be peers with Senior, and they would be under a manager. It's not like each person can only have one person under them.
