This. Hurry up and wait. That's exactly how it worked for me when I worked for a large company. Need to make a database change? Be prepared to wait 3 weeks unless you can get someone several levels above you on the org chart to take notice. Same for any kind of additional access you might need, or to provision any amount of computing or network resources...
One company I worked for had the same problem - because the (Oracle) database was also linked to their payment system and because they were a big company, the simplest change would require 2 or 3 weeks of approvals (by law, not really their fault).
And you know what my department did?
We've managed to setup our own database servers, so changes became independent of any payment system and could be done on the spot.
I know things suck in corporations, but sometimes it's your fault for not doing anything about it.
Heh, I work in IT and have some users like that. They're pretty smug until they realize it takes us a while to set up any infrastructure because we do little things like, umm, backups, which they don't have, and now suddenly really, really need... Oops.
This isn't about devs versus ops. It's about bureaucracy versus getting shit done. If it takes 3 weeks to ensure reliable infrastructure and backup, I wouldn't complain.
All I was saying is that if you have to wait 3 weeks for the simplest schema change request (which I saw it happens in big corporations), then you should take charge and workaround it before throwing your hands in the air ... sometimes management listens.
This is fine as long as you actually understand what it is you're working around, why it's there, and what the consequences are of working around it. What looks like bureaucracy to a technologist may well be there for a very good business reason.
Sometimes there's a tree across the road simply because a tree fell across the road. But other times there's a tree across the road to keep you from plummeting into the ravine where the washed-out bridge used to be.
Oh yeah, if it's broken, fix it, I don't meant tech but organisationally. Just pointing out that there's often more work that goes into databases than endusers see.
