[davismwfl]

Out of ~20 engineers, we have about 4 that have unrestricted access to production. A couple more have read only I believe to one of the databases.

I also have direct knowledge of a couple of other startups, similar size of 20-30 people in engineering, and they are about the same, no more than ~6 people.

In most cases, people really shouldn't be accessing production, it should mainly be deployment tasks that do. But you need a certain number of people to have access to cover failures etc. For example, having at least 4 people provides coverage if one person is on vacation, and then another gets sick etc.

I've read other companies basically have every engineer has production access to what they deploy, not sure I agree with that approach but I can see the argument.