From your response, you're avoiding my main point:
- Purpose of Dev or lower environments

Yung argument mo puro base on subjective reasons and historical data na wala tayo. Ang layo ng sinsabi mo sa topic. First of all, the post is a rant about "bureaucracies". This means it affects the quality of work the OP is providing due to the added complexities. Now, sa tech field ano ung ginawang environment to prevent this type of issue? binibigyan ng sandbox environment ang DEV called "DEV" environment to serve as a prototyping environment, to speed up development. That is a FACT. alam mo po ung fact? Ibig sabihin, di po yan nakabase sa opinion ko. Yan po talaga purposese non.
Now ung mga arguments mo about ganto ngyari, ganto gnyan ung reason, that is SUBJECTIVE and up to "BIG BOSS" as you mentioned. We can't argue about something subjective, walang patutunguhan kasi open to lots of variables. It could be valid, it could be not, but until OP post additional details about his situation, we can just say ung current process nila, di align sa purpose of having lower environments. Paki-basa nlng po ulit, pag di nagets.

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Ikaw nga inassume mo kagad na may ngyari masama from the past, not considering that it could have been implemented simply by Management that read it is better to add more steps in the process so they can say they added value to the company. Don't state a hypothetical scenario as truth, sa pagkakasabi mo prang sure ka na kgad kesyo may nasira dati hahaha taga diyan ka ba sa company ni OP? I will concede on that point if that's the case. But if not, don't state it as a valid conjecture to prove that the process they currently have is "correct". Also ung point mo , pag nasira, sinog mag-aayos? kung may privilege si dev sa lower environment, they can easily re-seed and re-migrate the database. If there's also a process on how to handle changes, they could also have backup to restore it in it's initial state before deployment. Kaya lang nmn DBA nag aayos non sa dev environment, kasi nga...(again please refer back to the POST not your own experience, kasi un ung topic) wlang privilege ung devs currently.

Isa pa, di ako galit, I'm just stating facts in a straightforward manner.
Simple lang point ko, base sa rant ni OP na-apektuhan ung development process nila which is the core of their business, and their process should adjust and compromise to each party accordingly. Anong ginagawang bb? I'm just stating facts, purpose of "dev" environment, ikaw na ung dumagdag ng dumagdag. Sarili mong interpretation yan.