Seriously, the corporate culture is based on hiring really smart people, giving them responsibilities, letting them know what problems the company thinks it should focus on, then letting them figure out how to tackle it. What management hierarchy there is is very flat. And people pay little attention to it unless there is a problem. You are expected to be a self-directed person, who solves problems by reaching out to whomever you need to and talking directly. Usually by email. The result is an organization which is in a constant state of flux as things are changing around you, usually for the better. With a permanent level of chaos and very large volumes of email. It is as if an entire company intuitively understood that defect rates are tied to distance on the corporate org-chart, and tried to solve it by eliminating all barriers to people communicating directly with whoever they need to communicate with. (Incidentally the point about defect rates and org charts is actually true, see Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering for a citation.)