Same, my best experiences with getting data out of DBs - in an earlier job where I had to work with many external customers directly - were the big ones, cause

Same, my best experiences with getting data out of DBs - in an earlier job where I had to work with many external customers directly - were the big ones, cause they always had dedicated Database dev teams that could prepare the data in a way that worked for me and the database. Contrast this with the small shops, which - if at all - had someone as a db admin (usually in addition to their normal job) and could only provide database access and "here, figure it out", which meant I had to write all the SQL myself. But I think that supports the GPs point. At big companies you are more specialized, which means if you get hired into the database dev team you better know SQL really well, cause the non-database devs won't even get access to it and instead depend on you.