This rule is actually a good thing and it's just that the smaller teams haven't learned it yet. Even with companies like Etsy, which practice Dev-Ops almost at

This rule is actually a good thing and it's just that the smaller teams haven't learned it yet. Even with companies like Etsy, which practice Dev-Ops almost at a religious level, there are controls to make sure code is tested before it's released. Note that I'm not saying developers shouldn't be given access to production data (or at least a reasonable facsimile). I'd recommend reading Evolutionary Database Design (http://martinfowler.com/articles/evodb.html http://martinfowler.com/articles/evodb.html) for some ideas on techniques to have the best of both worlds.