"I am on-call about 10 days per quarter, usually 3 shifts of 3-4 days each. I am paid extra for my on-call (after-hours) work, but not at my full hourly salary because I only work when there are problems after hours (e.g. on weekends or late at night.)".
Note that depending on the exact team, Software Engineers at Google may also be part of an on-call rotation.
"Note that if I can get you to "su and say" something just by asking, you have
a very serious security problem on your system and you should look into it."
Snowden was low-level, but he was basically an admin doing migration to a new system. His job description required the access he was given.
Additionally, one of the lessons learned from the 9/11 attacks was that keeping data too "Need to Know" might prevent people who actually need to know information from knowing about it.
"I am on-call about 10 days per quarter, usually 3 shifts of 3-4 days each. I am paid extra for my on-call (after-hours) work, but not at my full hourly salary because I only work when there are problems after hours (e.g. on weekends or late at night.)".
Note that depending on the exact team, Software Engineers at Google may also be part of an on-call rotation.