>Requiring permission to do work is the enemy of progress and engineering dignity. It creates a presumption of incompetence and an atmosphere of low trust that punishes people who want to push the envelope of what's possible.

Its not a permission to do work, its permission to merge the results of the work to master. Those are different.

>Google's design document culture is bad.

Then why do we have JEPs, PEPs, and rfcs in perhaps every other major project out there?