[meddlepal]

At a technical level it is always possible somehow but the point people are trying to make is that there should be access controls and protocols in place. The CEO should not have absolute unconstrained access in all matters.

[GauntletWizard]

The person I would trust the least to run raw SQL at (easy to find if you care) has the most privilege to do so: The "Growth Hacker" business operations person. Probably reddit is among the few companies where the CEO is technical enough to be doing raw SQL queries themselves, but it's trivial for a CEO to generate a purpose for credentials to be stored in their remit: Business reports. The bizops people with direct ties to the CEO will do whatever they're asked.

Still, agreed - The fact that they've now shown, multiple times, to have insufficient auditing and repercussions for the administrative abuse is sobering.