Me applying for any database access ever: “read only. I do not want write. READ ONLY.”

Just a funny story. All of our devs and even BAs used to have prod access. We all knew this was a bad idea and put in a process of hiring a DBA.

I think in the first two weeks the DBA screwed up prod twice. I can't remember the first mess up but the second he had a lock on the database and then went to lunch.

We eventually hired two awesome DBAs to replace that one but oh boy.

I would say you can expand that on the following criteria: 1) a lot of people can have read access, but only a few should have write access, and read access should be restricted to specific tables without PII. 2) The people with write access should go through a Change Approval process: they submit the SQL they're going to run and someone else approves or denies it before it can be done. 3) Every piece of SQL that modifies a table should be annotated with a comment and the ticket number in it in which that change was approved. 4) You should be able to rollback any committed change within an hour of it happening.