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> you also benefit because people aren't just changing stuff willy-nilly. E.g. your project you've been working on wont suddenly stop working in production out

> you also benefit because people aren't just changing stuff willy-nilly. E.g. your project you've been working on wont suddenly stop working in production out of the blue because Clive decided to totally change the database table schemas at 4am on Wednesday morning and nobody told you about it It can. I worked at a 2400 person company. 'Dev/tech' side was... ~150 or so, so not thousands of devs, but not just '3 folks in a basement' sort of place. Lots of 'process', but only for some people (like me). Other people - people who were dating management, for example, could make whatever changes they wanted. I would need to have a formal meeting with 2-3 "sr" folks to request a database index, then have to do a presentation about why it was needed, then wait for 'review' ("this might break something else"). But then other folks would literally just go on the database (because they had direct access) and fuck with whatever they felt like. And... I'd be dinged because my deliverable was late because... "well... you should have planned your project better" (when... I had no hand in planning or setting deadlines). Not in my wildest dreams did I think requesting 2 indexes on a couple tables that only our application used would require 2.5 calendar weeks and multiple meetings, so... unsure how I should have raised a flag earlier that we might hit some roadblocks. But yeah... hey, if you already had access to prod dbs, you could just go in and make live changes without testing or documentation ("it's OK, Steve used to be on the database team - he knows what he's doing"). Process/overhead isn't necessarily bad, but applied unequally, you wind up with hypocrisy and resentment (and people like me leaving in less than a year).

mattlondon 4y ago
Sounds shitty - when there are personal relationships/nepotism/etc going on and it is impacting what gets done, then that is a major red flag for so many reasons. This time it sounds like someone gets to do what they want with database in production, but there can be so much more going on that is simply unseen, but could be much more odious (running the gamut from covering-up/ignoring harassment, right through to fraud or other criminality). Regardless, I'd probably argue that a company with only 2400 employees let alone engineers is not what most people would consider "BigCo". In my mind, BigCo are thousands/tens-of-thousands of engineers - think FAANG, major Investment Banks, major technology companies (e.g. the IBMs, Microsofts, or Samsungs of the world). The sort of places that people (rightly or wrongly) aspire to work at, or at least have some common mind-share amongst the average person on the street.

mattlondon 4y ago

Sounds shitty - when there are personal relationships/nepotism/etc going on and it is impacting what gets done, then that is a major red flag for so many reasons. This time it sounds like someone gets to do what they want with database in production, but there can be so much more going on that is simply unseen, but could be much more odious (running the gamut from covering-up/ignoring harassment, right through to fraud or other criminality). Regardless, I'd probably argue that a company with only 2400 employees let alone engineers is not what most people would consider "BigCo". In my mind, BigCo are thousands/tens-of-thousands of engineers - think FAANG, major Investment Banks, major technology companies (e.g. the IBMs, Microsofts, or Samsungs of the world). The sort of places that people (rightly or wrongly) aspire to work at, or at least have some common mind-share amongst the average person on the street.