OldTuber granted you the ability to completely bypass the new Google-oriented code enforcement policies, enabling anyone holding it to commit code

OldTuber granted you the ability to completely bypass the new Google-oriented code enforcement policies, enabling anyone holding it to commit code directly to the YouTube codebase, with only the most glancing of code reviews from anyone. No need for code readability. No need for exhaustive tests. No need for maintaining code coverage. If you broke the site by improperly wielding OldTuber status, it was on your head and you would lose the privilege immediately, if not your job. So you just had to be a good citizen and never break the site. I have a secret theory from seeing this at a few companies by now; I think that it’s nearly critical to deploying complex / cloud-based stacks. There’s so much unique infrastructure to production that at some point you need a few people at least with engineering / ops expertise who can be the unblocker for getting something seeded or whatever. I’ve seen this either done explicitly or through a slow burn of acquiring grants over time which just never get revoked. But now I’m curious seeing it elsewhere if this is just a common and sort of necessary thing that happens.