I'm not suggesting software developer #1034643 at Alphabet will be able to influence their AI safety policies, I am suggesting Lead AI Safety Researcher #17 at Alphabet will be able to influence their AI safety policies - possibly not, but there's a strong non-zero chance there. Certainly their chances of influencing AI safety policies at Alphabet, which people argue is important, is far greater than if they were a finance engineer earning the same salary at Jane Street. You could argue that Timnit Gebru was unable to introduce change because she was fired before publishing the paper about Google Brain, but nine congressmen have asked for an investigation and it's hardly over so who knows what'll happen there.

I've read similar evidence about people not being able to do much, but someone (or some committee) is having an impact on research direction somewhere within the company (else they wouldn't have even started that research department to begin with).